Quarter Life Crisis

The world according to Sven-S. Porst

Smartassing¶

321 words

A little bit of linky goodness:

International Calling Codes: Tell it where you are and where you want to call – the site will sort out the numbers you need to dial for you. It will also tell you the local times involved.
Turns out, I didn’t need the site above, though – as numbers in most countries really work the same. Dan just mistyped his own phone number.
Reinstating Latin in school curricula. Is that really a good idea? I attended more years of Latin classes at school than I found enjoyable. Of course you do learn a fair bit about grammar and Cesar that way, and it may enable you to be the smartass when watching Who wants to be a Millionaire? (doesn’t beat my dad, though, who’s an even worse smartass having learned Latin and ancient Greek at school).
But is that really an excuse to learn a dead language that’s mostly useless? Shouldn’t languages be about actually communicating with people? Couldn’t you just learn French or Italian instead? Or even – shock horror – just teach people about grammar in their own mother tongue?
That’s actually what they do in many countries outside the UK. I never considered English a very ‘grammatical’ language when compared to French, German or Latin – but there’s surely enough grammar around to learn a thing or two.
Buy prints from Getty Images at amazon. Quite a neat idea. Of course the big question is whether 24×30 is large enough (I assume those are inches, which would make the size about 61×76 in centimetres, which must be a bit less than A1).
I see shopping opportunities for your local alpha grump coming.
Dubya says: War on terror ‘like WWII’. Well done. So there are just a few million to go – and that’s just in terms of body count.
Would you have thought Cyberduck is a Java application? I didn’t. There may be hope.