Month: October 2022
Partial eclipse
What more can I say? shortly after 11…
Editors
There is increasing evidence that the editor no longer reads the articles placed in the newspaper critically. Sometimes the most obvious mistakes are made, up with which the later Sir Winston would not have put but which featured often in the Grauniad. Take this as a recent example:
“Up to half of people died when the Black Death swept through Europe in the mid-1300s.”
Continue readingSARS
I normally think that when a thing is referred to by the initial letters of its proper name there is no need to add an S to pluralise it. The plural S is hidden behind the initial capital letter. So we have, for example, OS. You would not ask how many different OSes are there? You would ask how many different O(perating) S(ystems) are there. The plural s is hidden. There are exceptions of course but these prove the rule for the combination of the initial letters has become a noun in itself which does not describe the same thing as the string of words describes, so though we refer to LASER, if we have two sources we shall speak of having two lasers.
Continue readingHarvest time
It is the end of harvest time.
If you received the letters ‘himnnsy’ in Scrabble, you might think you had been dealt a loser, unless you were second to play and the first word put down before you was ‘groin’. On the other hand ‘harvest’ is full of possibilities, you would stare at the vast array knowing that would not starve for choice as you share the heat with your opponents, just as the pastor demonstrated in his children’s talk today, and when you add a single letter to them the field is fully ripe to harvest. There will be no tares or tears when your turn comes round. But there were two words he did not mention, probably because they were not in line with what he wanted to say today, but do you see them?
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