Home

I'd be interested in a source for much of that, particularly the French part, because it's just not true. Congress never seriously considered any other language than English and never made any provision for an official language, even the German thing was a suggestion that laws be promulgated in both...

Never having actually been to a cinematographic presentation in the US, presumably such large drinks lead to an epic amount of traffic during the film?

A base-10 system was actually proposed for American units of measure shortly after the revolution (and before France's adoption of metric units) that used the old British system's base-units. For unknown reasons, it was never adopted. Precisely the same reason that German was never adopted as the n...

Yes. And Australian pints are 570ml. Anyone want to complain about getting 2mls more beer than they asked for?

Have fun trying to buy a pint there, it seems there is quite a variation in what a pint is depending on where you go. Luckily though, a jug seems to be universal! ;) I think they pretty much agree on what a pint is, it's a pint (except that they round it up by 2ml to 570ml, IIRC). Yes, there are di...

fearghas wrote:(Universitatis Sancti Andrae in Scotia)

Universitatis Sancti Andreae Apud Scotos.

I suppose it depends how you were using it. I'd tend to only go with John Smith MA (St And), personally. Or in a CV or such like MA (Hons), St Andrews.

No. You won't be able to. Thanks to the online voting you need to wait a year before you get your vote. If you don't have an email address, you cannot vote at all. Equally now it's all online candidates are freed of the onerous necessity of showing up to the meeting. They are, however, not banned fr...

It is. Though for some very old graduates one does occasionally just see (And.) or (Andr.).

Oldest parliament in the world? I think not. That would be the Alþingi in Iceland or the Løgtingið of the Faroe Islands, or possibly the Tynwald of Man which is a little newer than either but has been continuously operating unlike each of those.

I prefer a deck chair.



I'll get my coat.

No more than the band of the Royal Marines playing at a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.

Most of that building, incidentally, was funded by a wonderful thing that used to exist in the 1960s/70s called JIF. The Joint Infrastructure Fund which funded (or supplemented) infrastructure at universities and colleges from a central fund rather than each university having to raise the funds for ...

That sounds like one of those all-too-frequent made-up answers that are given when something looks like being actual work.

Gosh, imagine using a demeaning term for someone. Shocking. Perhaps what they should aspire to is to not be in the underclass?

In the way that a disfiguring scar adds character to a face?

Can be asked and indeed was, by me, a couple of posts back.

Is BESS still out front and the bookshop inside the building? That's always struck me as an odd arrangement. Insofar as either has a broader appeal, I'd have thought it was the bookshop and that a great deal more rent could be asked for a street front location than tucked away inside. That said, I t...

Ah, no, you misunderstand. There's always been over-subscription from societies to use the rooms. The objection that has been raised in the past has been to refurbishing or doing anything constructive with rooms like the Fraser Suite/Venue 2, the Salad Bowl/whatever it is now, and the TV room. The a...

Yes, the opposition seems to have died down a little from a decade ago, thanks in large part to transferring a lot of the rectors' executive functions to "senior governors" instead - who are selected from a Court largely made up of appointees, so much more democratic than it being the rect...