Tate doors

The entrance to the Liverpool Tate Gallery has twin revolving doors, one marked IN, the other marked OUT. Doesn't that kind of defeat the whole point of having revolving doors in the first place?

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Loonies

One drawback of running a Charles Darwin website is that you occasionally get pestered by religious loonies. Such a problem did it become at one stage that I went so far as to publish a polite note on the site, explaining why I won't be wasting any more of my time crossing swords with them - but still they keep writing. Here's the start of the latest offering, which is nuttier than a tit feeder:

This discovery has been published in the "Turkish Daily News" and in 18 others publications, including "Shekulli", the most important daily of Albania. The authorities are reluctant to its publication, but I hope that your editorial staff will be not afraid of it and that your news agency is independent.

Of the Truth of Paradise and the Flood: Of the End of Christianity

Replace the legend of the flood with the perspective of a Deucalion, a Pyrrha, a Noah that is a fetus and not yet adult, and everything is illuminated: The diluvial waters are the memory in the fetus of the flow of the uterine water which precedes all birth 'I will make disappear all life on earth': The flow of uterine waters from the mother's womb constitutes a cataclysmic change for the fetus: Its entire universe disappears. The fetus has no other choice but to advance. He has to be born or die According to Christian theology, which is to say according to the explanation of the world by the Christians, man was created as an immortal in the beginning. He lost this dignity by a fault of the first man, Adam, against God.

So there you have it.

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Simply (D)Red(ful)

I've just been watching Parky. Correct me if I'm wrong, but:

Mick Hucknall = Talentless, ruby-toothed ginner.

His name also happens to be an anagram of lick lank chum, but let's not go there.

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Oversight

BBC: Pub industry faces blurred future
Dwindling visits to village locals coupled with a slowing of the High Street pub boom are taking their toll on the pub industry. "Use them or lose them," says the Campaign for Real Ale as it launches National Pubs Week…

Top attractions at a pub:

  • The people
  • Quality Food
  • Friendly staff

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p>Ahem, and what about the bloody beer?

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The Subjunctive

Challenge posed in an email from Stense:

…I spent yesterday musing about why I thought 'If I were you' was more grammatically correct than 'If I was you' - answers on a postcard please!

An excellent challenge! So I sent her a post card (printed in very small letters), which went as follows:

Stense,

You asked for answers on a post card for why you (correctly) thought 'If I were you' was more grammatically correct than 'If I was you'. The answer is that you are employing the subjunctive, i.e. you have changed the form of a verb when the content of the clause in which it is contained is being doubted, supposed, feared true, etc., rather than being asserted. It's the word 'if' that's the dead give-away... You are raising the hypothetical supposition that you could be me and choose to act differently to me. English isn't the only language that has a subjunctive (s/t)ense (ouch!). I learnt all about the subjunctive in my Latin lessons, and it's a very useful weapon to have in your arsenal. If we didn't have the subjunctive, how would we be able to tell whether 'if I was you' meant 'supposing I was in your position' or meant 'if I used to be you'? (Although, if you'll forgive a somewhat pedantic aside, the latter doesn't make much sense in a world where people do not swap personalities. Indeed, the fact that we do not swap personalities renders the phrase 'If I were you' completely preposterous - for I shall never be you, and, even if I did miraculously manage to become you (and could somehow resist the overwhelming temptation to take a hot, soapy shower before covering myself in baby oil), I would still do exactly the same as whatever you would do in that situation - because I would actually be you!)

But, having said all that, note how I failed to employ the subjunctive in the phrase 'If we didn't have the subjunctive, how would we be able to tell...' above. By rights, I should really have said 'how should we' and not 'how would we', for I was exploring the hypothetical situation in which the subjunctive did not exist. You see how tricky the subjunctive can get? Indeed, so tricky is it that I'm not entirely sure that it shouldn't have been 'how would we' all along.

Unfortunately for those like me who had the benefit of a classical education, and who tend to appreciate this sort of arcane mumbo-jumbo, the use of the subjunctive has gone into a steep decline in recent years - or, to put it another way (look out, Stense, here comes the pun:) the world seems to be suffering from a severe bout of subjunctivitis.

I hope that answers your question - although perhaps it would be simpler for me to email a reply next time.

Near-Death Experience

I was carrying out some diagnostic work with an electrical meter yesterday, trying to work out why the light over my bed still wasn't working after I had re-connected a loose wire. I wasn't quite careful enough with my probe, and the room lit up for a brief instant.

As near-death experiences go, I'd give it 6 out of 10.

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Premonition

I had a strange, whisky-induced dream last night: I was in a cow shed with a farmer friend of mine, and drank water from a rusty old ladel, realising it would give me a sore throat. When I woke up, I had a humdinger of a sore throat.

Less sceptical people than myself would say that I'd had a premonition; I say that I developed a sore throat during the night, which I then incorporated into my dream.

How do you manage to get a sore throat after drinking whisky?

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