RE: Vehicles that you've owned that are no more.
Borrowed Mom's Ford Falcon until I made enough money to buy Grandpa's Studebaker Lark. Moved up to a new Ford Maverick, until someone stole it. Had a Fiat hatchback, forget the model. Then a Ford Pinto, floowed by Mazda GLC, then 303. Ford Escort GT next. Oh, and a Ford Ranger, a few trucks ago.
RE: Words That Melt My Brain
There are 2 types of diabetes: diabetes mellitus and diabetes insipidus. The former is "sugar diabetes" where you urinate too much due to a failure of insulin to control the sugar level in the blood. The latter is excess urination due to insufficiency of a hormone that controls the kidney function. Before the role of insulin was determined less than a century ago, the only way to know you had DM was to see if the urine was sugary. The 2 conditions have nothing in common except that you pee too much.
RE: Thnigs which drive me nuts!
Hammerhead, Yep, that bugs me when people pull into the slow lane to interfere with merging traffic. What bugs me even more is when someone on a multilane highway waits to the last second to shoot across all the lanes to exit from the left lane, or enters the road from the entrance ramp and shoots across all the lanes to go straight to the left lane. Never signaling, checking their mirrors, or checking to see if they are cutting other vehicles off.
RE: Thnigs which drive me nuts!
Things which drive me nuts?: Posters who hijack the thread topic and go off on some tangent.
Also, going into a restaurant that has the "music" (or whatever that obnoxious noise is) turned up so loud that you can't communicate with the server to place your order, let alone trying to communicate with your dining partners. The older I get, the harder it is to hear voices through the background noise.
RE: Words That Melt My Brain
Mowermech, there actually is a word "preventative." It is a noun; it means a thing that prevents something. If you want to avoid crabgrass, corn gluten is a good preventative. However, the adjective IS preventive. You are absolutely correct. I practice preventive medicine. Washing your vehicle is a good preventive measure against corrosion. Entirely too many people use the noun when they intend the adjective. I place it in the same category as the dimwits who speak of "orientating" the new worker, or being orientated to the new RV. The correct terms are orienting and oriented. I refer to the misuse of such words as extra syllababble.
RE: Words That Melt My Brain
I agree with those posters who are offended by the frequently improper use of apostrophe s to signify plural. Once again, for the readers who never had the opportunity to learn this in school: apostrophe s is used for plural only following numbers, or letters that stand for themselves, but not for acronyms. One may write: "that sign had four 3's and seven A's." However, the bank had 2 ATMs (ATM stands for automated teller machine.) RNs (registered nurses) need to earn A's and B's in school. We travel in RVs, not RV's. It is never correct to use apostrophe s to signify plural of a word. Educated readers were offended by the uneducated reader's use of reader's when he wrote about readers.
I was at the auto parts store today, and noticed that a fuel cleaner bottle claimed to protect your engine from "the sulfers in fuel." Why didn't someone proofread the label before it was printed? A restaurant chain used to claim to have "tarter sauce" on the fish sandwiches. I told the waitress that my wife wanted plain tart sauce, but I preferred tartest sauce. She looked at the menu, laughed, and told us the company was run by semiliterate troglodytes.
A term that torques my gizzard is when newscasters speak of how events will impact us. Granted, a coming hailstorm may impact me, if I stand unprotected in it, but I am more concerned with how it will affect me. A railworkers' strike may impact us? Does that mean the train might leave the tracks and head for our house? Or will the picketers swing their signs at us?
RE: da vinci robotic surgery, update as of 1/11/13
All the studies I have seen in my medical literature show that the outcome is similar regardless of whether the surgery is robotic or open. Robotic has a shorter recovery, open has lower complication rates. But neither is significantly different. The real factor in determining outcome is the skill and experience of the surgeon. I, personally, would have the open procedure by ann experienced and talented surgeon, but you should choose whomever you are most comfortable with. I just don't like the idea of the surgeon sitting at a console elsewhere, and not sterile and able to step in if there is a problem. A surgeon has much better control and tactile feedback when actually holding the instruments, rather than playing a video game, in essence. Among the surgeons I have worked with, the general opinion is that robotic surgery is for surgeons lacking the delicate skill to do the procedure open. It is also considered mostly for marketing; patients tend to flock to whatever is new and high-tech, whether or not it is better. But if you have a surgeon who you feel comfortable with, and he or she is extremely experienced and successful with robotic, then you should feel comfortable going that route. It's the carpenter, not the hammer, that builds a good house.
RE: Best female vocalist...?
I have to agree that Ella and Reba are the tops of their genres. Grace Slick and Ann Wilson bring beauty not often heard in Rock. Karen Carpenter had the clearest, sweetest voice I have ever heard in Pop. How to choose just one favorite?
Now, Celine Dion has an amazing voice, but she refuses to use it, opting instead to warble and scream rather than sing. I try to avoid her recorded noise, but have heard a few of her songs that start out beautifully, then degenerate into screeching torture.
Someone else whose voice I love is Chantal Chamberland, a smoky and sultry jazz voice backed by a sax that tugs at your heart.
RE: Left Lane Closed Ahead...Left Lane Closed Ahead...
Simply don't let the jerks in when they get to the front of the closed lane. Once the traffic moves to the point where the jerk first pulled out to pass, let them back in - behind the vehicle they were first in front of. If they can't get ahead of the people who are cooperatively driving in the proper lane, they lose the incentive to run down the closing lane.
There is generally plenty of room for everyone to merge when the warning signs first appear, so there would be little or no slowdown if everyone merged then. The disruption from proctocephalics waiting until the lane ends is what causes the traffic stoppage. The cops should just target the last-second mergers, instead of going after the truckers/RVers who move over to stop the jerks.
