Magere Hein

Don Larsen, the baseball pitcher who threw the only perfect game in the World Series, 85 now. The catcher in that game, Yogi Berra (in the picture with an 8 on his back), is also still with us at 89, but I knew that.

Damn fine writer and artist. I read several of his novels. I liked The Flounder in particular.

Paging Dr RadGuy.

Future voters are thoroughly excited by the election campaign.

I consider inheritance tax the fairest tax of all. After all, an inheritance is captital for which the recipient has done nothing to earn it, so we might just as well all benefit from the happy occasion. I've pleaded several times (in private discussions) for a flat rate inheritance tax of 100% on all inherited money and real estate. Strangely enough very few people agree, whatever their political ideology.

Guessing the post-blindness paintings weren't worth a fuck. With some modern painters there wouldn't be a difference. Jackson Pollock - Convergence (1952)

In the late 80s and early 90s I worked as a programmer for a tiny software firm in Made. Its main product calculated whether a ship would capsize or break, depending on loading and weather conditions. I was the second employee, the first one was a university trained naval architect from London, who didn't know Dutch. For conversation that was no problem, since both the boss and I knew English well. His English writing was a nightmare. As a standing procedure I checked all his correspondence and documentation for grammar and spelling. At that time there was no Internet, so one of the first things I did there was order a good English dictionary, a grammar and a thesaurus. I still have them. The dictionary sits, dog-eared, with coffee stains and ciggie burns, on my desk.

Which shows that the Russian revolutionary approach to deposed royals has its merits.

I do my best to spell English correctly, according to the British spelling conventions. Every now and again I make mistakes. So do, to my relief, almost all native speakers (native writers?). In this case I got confused (rather than distracted, I have no little sister) by spellings of words of a similar derivation, such as semaphore and chromatophore. English spelling is a bitch.

Is that some kind of yoga used to piss off DDP players? Wicked.

With a BB gun, I'd guess.

I'd love to learn our Caledonian hero's reaction to Jewish words.

Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau went skiing, found an avalanche and is in hospital and 'critical condition'. He's an unremarkable man, his only claim to fame is that his mum is Queen Beatrix. regards, Hein

Believe it or n ot he's not the oldest former Dutch PM.That was William Drees who died 2 months short of his 102nd birthday .I think there's a good chance Piet De Jong will outlive him .He seems to be in pretty good nick I seem to remember that Drees wasn't very mobile in his last few years. Apparently De Jong still is (or at least he was last year), so yes, he may well outlive Drees.

"[H]ydration and pain management issues", is that what they call a hangover now?

In that case, could some administrator post the picture to every thread? Tempting...

+1 for bloodymindedness.

Bit late for that April fools joke. Surely he'd want to stay alive to visit the home of UK monarchy, Germany, in June. State visit coming up? He's bound to mention the war.

Only if she died a non-ironic death. Entirely possible, I'd imagine most people have seen this, but in case you haven't, Ed Byrne explains irony to Alanis. I didn't know that one, but yes, such a rant was on my mind. I watched a few more clips by Byrne; pretty funny chap, that.

Hmm, a nasty turn.

It would be difficult to say Particularly for Joni Mitchell.

Only if she died a non-ironic death.

I was wrong. Oh well.

Give up. It's useless and extremely difficult. W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w cinie. Cheers, that's encouraging. I already knew that Polish words can have long strings of consonants. Dutch can as well, and interestingly also long strings of vowels. Words like angstschreeuw, herfststruweel and zwartstreepkruiplijster come to mind, and ooienuier. I'll have a look. Thanks.

Though my mother recently died of essentially Alzheimer's, it was a previously unknown and incredibly fast growing kidney cancer that helped put her down inside of about 2 weeks from discovery. When she was under 'pain management it was four days. She was 12 years older than the good Cardinal but I'd be shocked he survived beyond two weeks from hospital readmittance, which was last week. I think Easter Sunday a fitting end. SC Better than Good Friday: he might cause quite a stir at Easter if he died then. ETA: I've never quite understood what's so good about that Friday.