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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

 
Countdown

Forty-seven hours from now, I'll be at the movie theater. It'll just be so nice to spend time with Mulder and Scully again and see what they've been up to. So yes, definitely excited for the movie.

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| 8:29 PM |

Monday, July 21, 2008

 
Grammar Lady

The woeful misuse of the apostrophe drives me absolutely bonkers. It's nails on a chalkboard to me to see someone write you're when they really mean your or vice versa. Who's versus whose is another good one, but I cut people some slack on that one because it's way more confusing than the previous example. More recently, I don't like the practice of adding an apostrophe to make dates plural such 1960's; I always think that something ought to belong to 1960 when I see that. Also, abbreviations with random apostrophes -- such as SAT's instead of SATs. Since so many people do these things with apostrophes, I decided to do a bit of research and find out what the actual rules are.

Turns out, I'm mostly right. The apostrophe for dates and plural abbreviations can be accepted in some places by some people, but the more proper way is to omit the apostrophe in cases of plural abbreviations and dates unless there's the potential to cause some confusion such as multiple A's -- so it's A's, not As or if there is punctuation (ex: periods) within the abbreviation. A good write-up on the rules are here. Here's another post on the same subject. And there's apparently an Apostrophe Protection Society, complete with examples of apostrophe abuse.

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| 9:37 PM |

Sunday, July 20, 2008

 
Holy crap

Have you heard about this? You know, it's one thing to be anti-abortion, but anti-contraception?

"[...] Department of Health and Human Services draft provided to Reuters this week carries a broad definition of abortion as any procedures, including prescription drugs, "that result in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation*."


* emphasis mine

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| 8:32 AM |

Friday, July 18, 2008

 
Things that make you go hmmm

Anyone else notice AT&T's DSL connection slowing down right around the time they raised the prices another $5? I'm a little aggravated because when I started out, the connection was much faster at $14.99 and then they raised it to $19.99 and now it's $24.99 -- just six months after the $5 raise to $19.99. I'm paying $10 more for slower service! I am *so* an undelighted customer.

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| 5:11 PM |

Thursday, July 10, 2008

 
Nostalgia

I'm going on a road trip this weekend, so of course I was updating my iPod and came across an old Celine Dion song -- "Water From the Moon" -- that I was really fond of when I was in high school. So on the spur of the moment, I splurged the $1.06 and got the song. Turns out I still really like it. What I noticed is that Celine's voice seemed so much more pure back then -- less affected and overly styled than it is today. Incidentally, I think the same about Sarah Brightman's songs. The songs from 15 years or so ago are much more rich and vibrant, and these days, Sarah's voice is a lot more thready and breathless -- still beautiful, but you notice it more when you take a trip down memory lane. Anyway, here's a video of Celine's "Water From the Moon"; it actually sounds like it's underwater, but it's a great song.

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| 10:16 PM |

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

 
Yikes

This link about commercial fishing and how fish are treated is deeply disturbing. Today someone told me crabs are also boiled alive and they flail violently as the water gets warmer; to me this is a response to a stimuli they perceive as threatening and dangerous -- I'd call it at least *fear* if not pain. It seems impossible to me that these animals don't suffer. They do, maybe in a different way than humans, but still they suffer.

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| 6:25 PM |

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

 
Ick

Today I learned fish is filleted alive. I can't tell if they were messing with me or not, but it was deeply disturbing and I'm not even an animal lover. Ugh. Now I'm so glad I've never had fish.

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| 6:29 PM |

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