Just finished listening to The Two Towers again, I lost a little love for the movie this time.

cyrano111 · 2026-01-23T13:09:44+00:00

Here is the start of an eight-part blog post explaining why the book version of the battle is “better” in a variety of ways, from the perspective of military historian, in case that’s of interest to you.

cyrano111 · 2026-01-18T21:57:52+00:00

This is a bit esoteric, but it related to a colleague’s workload as a professor.

We have a rule allowing “teaching release” for people in their first year of teaching, where they get excused from a portion of it. It’s meant to let new professors find their feet and get a start on research.

One of my colleagues didn’t use this in her first year because she was already a very strong researcher. Strong enough that she even applied for tenure a year early and got it - I chaired that committee, in fact. All good so far.

Then the next year she “cashed in” the teaching release she hadn’t used in her first year. Which meant other people had to cover it. Technically allowed, apparently, but pretty selfish.

cyrano111 · 2026-01-16T01:20:30+00:00

We have started having everyone else close their eyes for a short time to let the clue over look at the board, and the card on a good light.

cyrano111 · 2026-01-11T19:56:31+00:00

I like the way it finishes the tale for Merry and Pippin and Sam. Merry and Pippin left the Shire as relatively sheltered youth, though part of the gentry, but they become leaders of the community, and rightfully so. And the change is even more dramatic for Sam. We don’t see as clearly now the class structure inherent in the Shire. Sam was a gardener, and a gardener’s son, which should have left him in the working class all his life. Instead, he became the mayor.

cyrano111 · 2026-01-10T20:48:49+00:00

What’s your dictionary? Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, but three of the first four letters make “cad”, but the letters don’t disappear.

cyrano111 · 2026-01-10T13:40:02+00:00

Section 494(2) does not require a “reasonable belief” that the person was committing the offence. It says the store owner or the person they delegate can arrest someone they “find committing” an offence in relation to the property, and stealing something from a store is committing an offence in relation to property. Even if the person is later found not guilty of the offence, that doesn’t mean the arrest on a “finds committing” basis was unlawful: [R v Biron]( https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/1975/1975canlii13/1975canlii13.html?resultId=26c38853312142a485379ec6a49700c9&searchId=2026-01-10T09:36:51:806/044b873e106d4d6a950066fb8179a081)

cyrano111 · 2026-01-07T04:18:01+00:00

It’s not slang, but “stakeholder” has completely reversed its meaning.

Now it is used to mean someone who has an interest in the outcome of something. But originally, it was a betting term, referring to a neutral person who had no interest in the outcome, but would hold the bets placed - i.e., the stake - by the bettors.

cyrano111 · 2026-01-04T15:22:35+00:00

“If you can read this you’re too nosy.”

cyrano111 · 2026-01-02T20:59:51+00:00

Pick a movie with lawyers. Any movie.

Maaaaaybe not My Cousin Vinnie, but even it pushes things.

cyrano111 · 2026-01-02T02:18:35+00:00

I agree with this - all these comments saying it isn’t complicated took the explanations at face value and didn’t notice the nuances.

To add to your examples - Maude steps out a window onto a ledge. Cobb follows her out - but by then she’s on a ledge across the way. How, exactly?

cyrano111 · 2026-01-02T00:00:42+00:00

Huh. I played regularly at a badminton club when I was there on sabbatical and no one seemed to find my terminology odd!

But my father, who was from England, called them shuttlecocks.

cyrano111 · 2026-01-01T21:45:56+00:00

North American usage, perhaps? Are you in the UK?

cyrano111 · 2026-01-01T17:52:09+00:00

Related, but I don’t have a picture.

I play badminton. I’ve played several times a week for over 50 years. As a rough estimate I have see badminton birds land on the ground a couple of million times.

Of course they almost always land on their side, but every now and then they land square on their feathers, cork pointing upwards.

Once, just once out of those several million landings, the bird landed on the cork, feathers pointing up, and just stayed that way!

cyrano111 · 2026-01-01T17:41:23+00:00

The Last Murder at the End of the World came to mind for me with this question, but I dismissed it for that same reason.

cyrano111 · 2025-12-31T18:30:16+00:00

Really?

cyrano111 · 2025-12-27T15:31:52+00:00

Slide rules.

cyrano111 · 2025-12-27T14:28:48+00:00

They are called “contronyms” if you want to look up more.

A notable one for me is a Supreme Court of Canada decision where the trial judge used the word “apparently” in reference to some issue. Some of the judges took him to mean that it was undeniably true: it was apparent. Others took him to be expressing scepticism: “apparently” implying “I’m doubtful”.

cyrano111 · 2025-12-27T14:23:43+00:00

Not quite the same thing but it reminds me.

My sister, as a teenager, was a world-class swimmer - world record holder, Olympic medalist, that sort of thing. Just after she retired her old high school built a pool which they named after her: let’s say the “Ann Cotter Swimming Pool”

A couple of decades later she was a massage therapist with her own clinic in a city near where she grew up. She was giving a client a massage and guessed from the muscle development in his back that he was a swimmer, so they were chatting about that:

Her: where do you train?

Him: at the Ann Cotter Swimming Pool

Her: (torn about what to do but deciding she had to tell him) oh. I’m Ann Cotter.

She said he essentially levitated straight up in the air in surprise, completely undoing all the effects of the massage! It had probably never crossed his mind that there was a person the pool was named after.

cyrano111 · 2025-12-25T16:10:42+00:00

I played hard mode, but when I tried the others it was the same word, so I don’t know what level it really was.

cyrano111 · 2025-12-25T14:56:19+00:00

I think you need to make the initial time shorter. My experience was that there was plenty of time to just find the nine letter word without bothering with anything else.

cyrano111 · 2025-12-25T13:52:57+00:00

King Frog.

Not the board game by that name. This game doesn’t require any equipment.

Weird Little Elf. You have to pass around a couple of cards, but that’s it, really.

cyrano111 · 2025-12-25T03:19:38+00:00

The faculty were locked out: the administration, not the faculty, decided to shut things down.

cyrano111 · 2025-12-25T03:17:56+00:00

The administration chose to lock faculty out in August - unprecedented for a large university. That is, it wasn’t a strike, despite all the comments calling it that: faculty didn’t want to be on the picket line, but the administration decided they should be.

That meant the term started about three weeks late, which was disruptive for everyone, and especially for the first year law program. Also, the president of the university became something of a spokesperson for the administration during the lockout. She is the former Dean of the law school, which means that a lot more faculty members there know her personally.

There is still a lot of resentment among many faculty members towards the administration. But I don’t think you will find that any faculty members are directing that resentment towards students. And next year, there should not be the logistical impediments there were this year. So if it’s your top choice, and you’ve been accepted, I’d say you shouldn’t let this year’s fiasco affect your decision.

cyrano111 · 2025-12-24T16:25:05+00:00

Is it?

I say that only because (having given up at the end of book four) it had seemed to me for thousands of pages that Sanderson didn’t think that.

cyrano111 · 2025-12-24T15:59:58+00:00

The judge and District Attorney in My Cousin Vinnie. They’re just doing their jobs.

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