Civil Partnerships require a verb
This morning on the Telgraph’s website, there’s an article with the headline BBC newsreader Jane Hill is to ‘marry’ a woman cameraman. Despite the awkward term ‘woman camerman’ (why not camerawoman?), there’s an issue with the word ‘marry’. It has had to be quoted, because they aren’t actually getting married. Homosexuals in the UK can’t get married; they must enter a civil partnership. But what is the word that encompasses the act of entering a civil partnership? It isn’t ‘marry’, because that refers to the legal process of getting married (which is where this poor headline writer got stuck). So we need a new verb for the specific act.
In fact, the whole of this post is rubbish. What we really need to do is allow homosexuals to get married. You know, with all same rights that heterosexuals have. That would solve the linguistic problem together with so many other more important ones.
November 16, 2011
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words 
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Spirit: A Life
The Spirit rover explored the Martian landscape for over five years – more than twenty times its expected lifetime. A nice Youtuber (I’m not calling them a root vegetable) has put together a timelapse of its activities over that period.
(You can see a longer, 9-minute version here. Take a coffee break. You deserve it.)
See those wheeltracks? We’ve left wheeltracks on another planet. How awesome is that?
Its demise led to one of the most heartbreaking comics I’ve seen in a long time (from XKCD, naturally):
Spirit’s sister Opportunity, meanwhile, keeps on going.
November 14, 2011
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space, timelapse, videos No Comments
Facebook – Leading the great philosophical discussions of our time
If you release a new feature that’s identical to one you removed a few months ago, is it still a new feature?
November 14, 2011
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internet, marketing No Comments
Space station timelapse
Those pesky space persons have been at it again. Lording it over us with their views of the planet they’ve decided isn’t good enough for them.
November 13, 2011
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space, timelapse, videos No Comments
Installing add-ons in recent Thunderbird versions
With the recent release of Thunderbird 8.0 (and possibly 7.0 – I didn’t check), the Mozilla folks have made a small change to the way add-ons are installed from downloaded files. Until the last version, opening the Add-ons page (Tools -> Add-ons) allowed you to install add-ons from downloaded files by clicking a separate Install button. Indeed, this is how most installation instructions for add-ons tell you how it’s done.
Unfortunately, the Install button has disappeared. Instead, there’s a small drop-down menu next to the search button, and in there is a menu item labelled ‘Install add-on from file…’, which is the new replacement. Click the image on the right for a screenshot to help you out.
November 10, 2011
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apps No Comments
