mike carey

Remember that the big cities in that you hear about in the southern hemisphere like Cape Town, Perth, Sydney, Santiago and Buenos Aires are less than 35ºS, that's about the same as the middle of the Carolinas or Los Angeles. Corrientes is about the same level as central Florida. Most of the land masses in the southern hemisphere are much closer to the tropics than those in the northern hemisphere, so the winter temperatures of places that Americans might think of as being similar to where they are will be warmer, and that's before you factor in the chilling effects of a continental climate and arctic vortices. (BsAs was 12º or 54ºF and raining when I looked at about 10am local time yesterday, so much cooler than Corrientes.) Edited: The cities I listed are further north than I remembered so the equivalent is more like SC/GA.

Regardless of anything else, if you are uncomfortable with the term, you're entitled to refrain from using it.

No, no, a thousand times no. It's not a racially charged word, it's an anglicised version of a Cantonese expression. It's not even associated with it etymological origins any more, it's now a fully assimilated English expression.

I've received all sorts of scam e-mails but not that one. It's likely that the sender has access to some list of addresses and knows nothing about their owners or even if they are valid addresses, and that they are sending the same message to hundreds or thousands of them. It only takes one to respond and pay to make the effort worthwhile.

I was in Sydney yesterday and it was 25 degrees (I must say that it was beautiful to be out on a ferry on the harbour the day before). In the three hours of my drive back to Canberra, the temperature dropped to 7 (with the help of a cold front and rain). On the heat in north America, I read that many of the deaths in Montréal have been of single men in the higher floors of unairconditioned apartment buildings.

Lol, good point, it's not cheap to get here!

Why will you never make it here, it's only a 14 hour flight from the west coast and if the flight from the NE to LAX/SFO is too long, Qantas flies non-stop from DFW and United from IAH, so you can have a shorter connecting flight (Qantas also flies out of JFK with a stopover in LAX, so it's easy!). Come in Feb/Mar for Mardi Gras. From Sydney, Mount Victoria is about 2.5 hours by train, and they run every hour, under AUD10 no reservations required, and the Blue Mountains National Park is spectacular: you'll love it!

Before he was elevated, Archbishop Sin joked that he would never be made a cardinal.

Colour me stunned. My immediate reaction if I don't get something like this is to say it out aloud. Worked this time too (although to me it was obvious straight away).

Not something that bothers me, but the emergency services make a big deal of it because of the possible confusion with the letter O being 6 on mobile phones. The emergency number in Australia is 000.

Not ads to hate... There is a Royal Commission into the finance service industry. Its hearings have been a litany of banks etc behaving badly. These two ads were commissioned by a public broadcaster program about ads to persuade people to abandon the big banks. The end of the first one where the customer's 'Dear John' letter to the bank says, 'I cheated on you once with a credit union and it was fantastic' is fantastic itself.

Public broadcasters that do not carry advertisements are a blessing. Unfortunately not everything I want to watch is on the ABC.

Not funny in the 'joke' sense, but I had a good laugh at this, in a tweet: We offer a free car ventilation service. All you have to do, is leave a dog locked in a hot car, we do the rest. It was tweeted by the Metropolitan Police in Camden [in London].

And this, about the 'Tasmanian done good', from the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-comedian-forcing-stand-up-to-confront-the-metoo-era

Thankfully nothing like the purge and massacre of the PKI has happened this year in America.

20-18. And for those years this century where I would include the word 'thousand' (more often those in the first decade) I would say 'two thousand and seven' or whatever.

Bon anniversaire!

Lol, no, and I've made no secret of that. Lance can have his way with me, and as soon as possible. But I do want the shirt too.

@Lance_Navarro tweeted a photo of himself in a t-shirt saying no one is illegal on stolen land. I need one of those shirts.

Happy Canada Day!! // Bonne Fête du Canada!! O Canada, terre de nos aïeux.

Bon Anniversaire!

The original post was about the extent to which countries accepted homosexuality. Rightly it cited countries where it is legal but oppressed. What it didn't do it calibrate its condemnation of countries where it is illegal but not oppressed. The law is clear in Singapore, but the enforcement is light. I wouldn't want to live there, but would happily visit and hire there. I would be much more worried about visiting the UAE than Singapore.

Happy birthday, @glennnn!! I know you haven't chatted here for quite a while, but I saw that you had visited the forum last night your time. Hope you are having a great birthday. Hope you have overcome the challenges you spoke of last time you commented here.

Works for me!

Germany finish fourth in their group and are bundled out in the group stage. Makes Australia's loss in the same circumstances a little more bearable. Actually, no it doesn't. Separately, I note that Fleet Street was in full 'we're going to win the cup' insufferable hyperbole mode after England beat Panamá and Tunisia, but have gone a bit quiet after they lost to Belgium.