Andrew Dalke's Comments

You're right. The FAQ goes into details, at http://11foot8.com/faq/ . There's a sewer line only a few feet under the bridge, making it hard to lower. Raising the tracks would be even more expensive. Still, the solution seems to be that it's cheaper to let people crash and possibly die than to spend the millions to fix it. Or to wait until a gas tanker truck crashes into it, catches fire, and cause the trestle and road to be rebuilt.
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There's also a certain comfort in doing your daily commute and seeing the same people. It reduces the complexity of a city into a village, defined not just by location but by the time of day.
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I think someone got the history wrong. (It could be me.) That looks like a WWII Evacuee Girl ... from England, to avoid German bombing. An example from children's literature is the Pevensie children, in 'The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe'. Here's a picture from http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/evacuation/ which is similar to the costume: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/schools/primaryhistory/images/world_war2/evacuation/ww2_children_evac_kentish_town.jpg . But the Daily Dot article says: "“World War II Evacuee Girl” outfit instead, which is heinous in its own right for trivializing Jewish evacuations from Germany during the war." I don't know of any distinctive dress like this for Jews fleeing German persecution and murder. For one, Jews needed authorization to leave, and permission from the countries they were fleeing to, which was difficult to get. (Remember the tragedy of the Jews on the MS St. Louis?). And the tag contains name and contact details, which was needed in England because the children were evacuated without the parents, while in Germany Jewish parents left with their children.
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YouGlish is very handy for these sorts of things. A month or so back my wife and I disagreed on how to pronounce a word. After looking at 10-15 examples from YouGlish we found out that we were both right. About 1/2 the people pronounced it one way and 1/2 the other, and what we hoped was the tiebreaker pronounced it a third way. Also, I've been curious about Longyearbyen ever since I saw a airmap showing this one route that went extremely far north, with a "*" saying "summer only". What, I wondered, was there?
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I don't trust the pronunciation of Thule. He uses "too-lay". With YouGlish I found some anthropologists talking about the Thule people saying "too-lee". https://youtu.be/VpRy2tR6JYQ?t=1434 . According to the lecturer at https://youtu.be/akh4iSCqLJU?t=431 the Thule in "Ultima Thule" is pronounced "thool" while Wikipedia says the IPA is /ˈθjuːliː/ . There are a couple of examples which name the old air base, but I think they are guessing on the pronunciation.

My doubt started because he pronounced "Tromsø" with a "z" sound for the s, which isn't the way to say it in English or Norwegian. He does the same 'z' substitution for "Helsinki", pronouncing it "Helzinki", which isn't correct. He pronounces "Longyearbyen" ending it "ben" when it should be "by-en", with two syllables. (See https://youtu.be/5NhIRwCq428?t=3 , which has some nice drone shots.). Finally, here's a Norwegian saying "Ny-Ålesund" https://youtu.be/aBEGnLtVk64?t=121 . That speaker points out there's one store, open twice a week, and Wi-Fi and mobile phones are not allowed. Wikipedia points out it's a company town, so there's likely no place available to live.
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That ... makes sense! It also helps explains why Canada, which has a different VAT in each province, does the same thing. The other countries I investigated tax the same item at the same level across the country and include tax/VAT in the price. (I couldn't figure out how it works in India, however.)
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Regarding meal portions, a European friend flew in for a job interview. He and I got dinner. His eyes grew wide as he saw the size of a single pizza and Coke. Then again, after I lived in Sweden for a few years I went to Atlanta for a conference. A bunch of us went to the Hard Rock, and my eyes grew wide at the size of the hamburgers. I ended up getting the Lady's Special, because the "small" 1/3 of a pound was the same as the "large" 150g here.

No, I don't know why there are gaps at the bottom of bathroom stalls. It seems Craig might still be a US senator if they were fully enclosed. And having the taxes not included in the price is indeed frustrating!
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It's a swamp cooler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler#Direct_evaporative_cooling . It'll cool the air and raise the humidity. This is quite useful in hot, dry areas, less so in hot, humid New Delhi, because when the humidity is high, the human body's own sweat-based cooling gets worse. The comments on the BP page point out that it's being used to cool industrial exhaust, not cool a home - take a look at the big louvers behind it. And it uses electricity to pump the water.
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Yes, it was a great summer holiday book. The end left me hanging, as they had just started the recovery. I then searched for more details and learned about hiding from the cops. A short time later his capture made the news. Here's some more details for those interested: ABC News from when the ship was found: http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/treasure-hunter-uncovers-ship-of-gold-28553558 . A report about the early lawsuits: https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0619/158.html . His capture: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/30/how-treasure-hunter-tommy-thompson-one-of-the-smartest-fugitives-ever-was-caught/?utm_term=.a18e9101837c
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Gary Kinder's book "Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea" gives an engaging description both of the sinking of the SS Central America and, decades later, the search for the wreck and initial recovery of the gold. genealogybank.com only gives a paragraph to that search. To fill in some details, they used all of the newspaper stories and other written records, combined with their knowledge of the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic in general, to narrow down the search, which still took a long time. Once they found the ship they had to recover the gold from the deep waters. They didn't want to damage any of the coins, because that would reduce the numismatic value so invented an epoxy technique that would cover the coins for recovery. There was also a long lawsuit because dozens of insurance companies which had paid damages back in the 1800s claimed rights to contents. Later some of the financial backers and crew members sued Thompson for not providing enough of the promised payout. Thompson went on the lamb for years, and was finally caught in 2015. The US Marshals service called him "one of the most intelligent fugitives ever sought". He and his partner had been living for two years in a Hilton in Florida, living under false names and paying cash for everything. Going back to the ship, it's estimated only 5% of the ship has been excavated.
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No. No, it wasn't. It doesn't even fit the stereotypes with a broad stroke. Since when is Florida "intellectual"? Of course the nuances are far beyond it's ken. New Mexico, unlike its neighbors to the east and west, are racists in denial, not heartfelt racists.
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The flat tire one seems trick to pull off. Clues like the sun angle or weather, or image metadata like a timestamp or GPS, can give it away. The comments on that page list some additional problems with a few of the other ideas, like how #15 won't work because there's already an easily accessible sex offenders registry, and because parents with loud, rambunctious kids want their kids outside for a reason.
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After I started learning Swedish I tried to pronounce Häagen-Dazs "correctly", and realized how wrong the word is. And yet (as this piece points out) how right it was for branding purposes.
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Profile for Andrew Dalke

  • Member Since 2012/08/04


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