mike carey

I agree, @poolboy48220, it's not something that I would throw in the face of a Christian friend, but I might raise the mathematical calculations with them if they raised the truth+god equation with me. Just to point out the mathematical consequences of the equation!

Oh dear, my memories of the stage are so mundane! I was in the chorus of the Gondoliers and Patience in 1st and 3rd form at high school and had the minor role of Samuel in Pirates in 2nd form (I was still a boy soprano at the time). With cat like tread ...

I'm sure I've said this before, but timing is everything. I read in the Economist years ago that when asked whether the Portuguese word amanha had the same connotation as mañana the speaker said that yes, it did, but without the sense of urgency.

@Truereview, I thought you'd be far too busy with tradesmen for all this salacious posting!

Well is both an adverb (in a proficient manner) and an adjective (healthy). Usually context tells you which one is being used. To feel has two meanings, the use of the sense of touch, and to sense your emotions or wellbeing. So I feel the ground (which could be modified by an adverb like 'well') or I feel happy. I feel well could mean either version of feel, so it could mean that your sense of touch is in good order, or you sense that your health is good. There is no such ambiguity with taste or smell. (With the possible exception of cancer sensing dogs that detect cancer by smell - their handler could well tell you that the dog thinks you smell well or unwell.)

Yet 'I feel unwell' sounds perfectly normal. To me, 'I'm feeling well' sounds less pedantic than 'I feel well'. There is less difference between 'I'm well' and 'I'm good' when you're asked how you are.

There was one episode where they filmed one of them having a bacon buttie from a roadside van (think taco trucks). They needed seven takes to get the scene right, and the fat lady in question (Clarissa) ate a new bacon buttie for each shoot.

I like the attention to detail - the Union Flag cushions are the right way up. Not the only detail I appreciate, of course.

There was a time when you could rely on sub-editors to come up with witty headlines (and these days screen captions) but I have the feeling that more often than not they occur by accident these days. My favourite (and clearly not accidental) came when in the Scottish Premier League, Inverness Caledonian Thistle convincingly defeated [Glasgow] Celtic. The [since repeated headline] was 'Super Cally go Ballistic, Celtic were Atrocious'.

A reasonable suggestion, but my reading of comments in the various threads about him is that the payoff is worth the risk of waiting to see if Plan A comes off.

That's how I read it too, and sufficiently veiled that unless he was alert to such language the escort would take it as a serious compliment.

I lament his retirement, but as I have to, I'm moving on!

Yes, I know how people in the US spell those words, my comment on tonne was on the same level as the rest of the petty points I made about the fig newton joke (we don't even have fig newtons here but I got the point). In Australia we wouldn't refer to metric tons (or metric tonnes) because the term would always mean 1000kg here, not 2240lb, we would just write tonnes. When I was learning Chinese I always used simplified characters (I was lazy) and I know they are used in the PRC but not ROC or Hong Kong [Xiang Gang in Mandarin] (and they only affect writing, not speaking, so no one speaks in simplified characters).

Technically not but close enough, and as I said yesterday in another context, that's beside the point, it's a joke. If you aren't aware that a newton is a measure of force, it's easy to focus on the ton part (it would be tonne in SI, but who's looking at that). If the figs are falling the force in question would be gravity which causes an acceleration of 9.8m/s² not 1m/s². Even that much explanation is too much.

If @TylerandAce are there, damn right I am!!

To go? No fucking way, I'm staying there to play for as long as I can!

Never take risks with superglue, too much potential for unexpected consequences!

You know I'm only joshing with you, though!

It's very GGG for you to post these selfies, TR!

I make no comment on what that might involve!

@Truereview, un ménage a quatre si beau!

Physicist Brian Cox posted this on Twitter when he was flying back to the UK from Australia (he had been here for Science Week): Flying back from Singapore the other evening - didn't expect the map to pass comment on my character