Picking on Brits a Bit

[OzPiper]

It's not so much 'warm beer', it's actually served at room temps. I prefer room temp beer but not so much in summer. What I detest more than warm beer is that super chilled muck that tastes like fizzy ice cold water.

Jay.

Jay,

You will understand the logic of an ice cold beer if you’re ever in Australia during the summer

I was holidaying in New Caledonia (just off the Queensland coast) one summer and got quite dehydrated.
My French guide insisted that I have a beer - despite my protests that I was not a beer drinker.
For the first time I understood the Aussie saying “didn’t touch the sides going down”

 

[woodsroad]

My wife and I like to go to the shore in the winter. As we stroll the beach, we always pick up trash, stringing plastic jugs and pails on to stretches of rope found washed up, and stuffing other detritus into trash bags that we bring along. Three times now, as we're lugging along bags of trash and long strings of plastic crap, a can of Budweiser has come rolling out of the surf, sun bleached and ice cold. I'm a beer snob, have never bought Budweiser and won't drink it at a party, even if that's all there is, but damn, those beers were exceptionally good, right when we needed them.

 

[OzPiper]

As a formal ASM with a hard core backpacking troop, soaps are something we rarely used. Unless they are biodegradable. Even then, we didn't trust how it will interact with the environment. So, the standard procedure was to wash all the dishes with just water, and we drink the wash water. We called sumping. Now, me being me, I taught outdoor washing machine. A gallon Ziploc bag, and a frisbee. Turn the bag inside out. Slide the frisbee in the inside out bag. Eat off that setup. Once done, carefully remove the bag, turn the bag right side in, squeeze the air out, and pack it out. You just have to lick your spoon carefully.

What does that have to do with Britain? Baden-Powell was a British. Boy Scout started in Britain under his leadership based on American Indian Scouting. If he was alive, he would appreciate the outdoor washing machine.

@bullet08,
I hope you got a sackful of badges for your dedication.

The only time I attended a scouts jamboree, my mother showed up with my nanny because I forgot to pack my pillow and tin of Milo (no, she didn’t bring Teddy). Then supervised and instructed my nanny to cook dinner for my troop.

Needless to say that was my very short lived stint as a Boy Scout
Seared indelibly into my psyche

 

[bullet08]

Back when I did a lot of canoe lake tripping, we ate out of the mess kit pot, rinsed it in the lake with a scrubby. It was a feast for the little fishies. I figued that if a moose could shit in the lake, a few scraps of food wasn’t having a negative impact.

I never understood how you could drive your car for hours or days to a remote location, pack up all your manufactured clothes and gear that had been produced in a third world shithole, shipped half way around the globe, then obsess over your impact on the environment.

True. But Bushcraft wasn't exactly what BSA was going for. I tried. Teach the how to make fire with US made steel, and UK flint. Quality of well made US steel. How to make camp furniture. All good. But too much for 5 mile hike, sleep and get out in the morning, another 5 mile. Besides, I don't think parents will understand trapping and eating Thumper. I was a cub scout in S. Korea. Everything was S. Korean made x)

 

[bullet08]

@bullet08,
I hope you got a sackful of badges for your dedication.

The only time I attended a scouts jamboree, my mother showed up with my nanny because I forgot to pack my pillow and tin of Milo (no, she didn’t bring Teddy). Then supervised and instructed my nanny to cook dinner for my troop.

Needless to say that was my very short lived stint as a Boy Scout
Seared indelibly into my psyche

Nope. My cub master was my 6th grade teacher, and meanest teacher in school. He was fresh from military service, and enjoyed beating the crap out of the kids.

Cooking was usually done by mothers. S. Korean style.

In US, at cub level, kids help out, but one of the adult is a grub master. And all the adults chip in.

At boy scout level, boys do the cooking x) Nobody goes hungry, but not much to talk about as far as the taste is concerned.

 

[mawnansmiff]

You will understand the logic of an ice cold beer if you’re ever in Australia during the summer

Us Brits have forgotten what a summer looks like it being so long since we had one.

On the rare occasion we did actually have something resembling a summer, I have to agree a chilled beer could be enjoyed.......but not that 'orrible Fosters pee water you seem to adore over there

Jay.

 

[MisterBadger]

Us Brits have forgotten what a summer looks like it being so long since we had one.

On the rare occasion we did actually have something resembling a summer, I have to agree a chilled beer could be enjoyed.......but not that 'orrible Fosters pee water you seem to adore over there

Jay.

Amen to that. The only way to drink Foster's, Toohey's, XXXX etc is not to allow any of it to touch the sides when it goes down. You don't want to taste it.

 

[warren]

But, but, but ... Foster's is Australian. I'm not a fan, my taste run to Guinness, the "black stuff."

 

[Brendan]

As far as I know, Foster's is export only?
Never seen it, nor had it anywhere.
I may be an Australian but my taste in beer is strictly German, owing to genetics I'm guessing. Thank God I have an Aldi, I can at least get Paulaner.

Yeah, that Foster's is all yours UK members

 

[mawnansmiff]

Britain and America - two countries divided by a language!

Now language is an interesting difference betwixt the US and Britain.

The epitome of English lexicographic endeavour (in printed form) would be the magisterial OED Second Edition. Twenty large, beautifully bound quarto volumes, 59 million words spread over no fewer than 21,730 pages. It took over 70 years to compile, and it would take a single person 120 years to key in the dictionary onto a computer and 60 years to proof read it. Just the word ‘set’ took over 60,000 words to describe the 580 senses of the word

The pinnacle of American lexicographic endeavour however is Webster’s Third Edition, a skinny 3 volume affair containing a miserable 2,816 pages, a lot of which is taken up by drawings to describe some of the more difficult words like cat, bridge, house etc. We do that in dictionaries made for children

I own both of these dictionaries, for the OED I had the village carpenter make me a bespoke bookcase just to house these beauties, the Webster’s Third Edition however just sits on a shelf.





I rest my case, over to you professor Michael.....

Jay.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

The pinnacle of American lexicographic endeavour however is Webster’s Third Edition

We have several dictionaries, and we have no one authority on the English language in the US. Even grammar has no one authority, but just several style manuals, to be used depending on the function of the writing.

Websters is probably the most hated dictionary. I used to have a professor that said that it was easier to use the Sears catalog to find the meaning of words than Websters.

Dictionaries were never meant to govern the language, but to reflect the way words are used in contemporary times. And, words change meaning quickly sometimes. Check out the word "literally" and "thru". The way we use the word, changes it's meaning and sometimes spelling over time.

For example, the antiquated notion that you cannot end a sentence with a preposition, if enforced in some way would have us sounding really dumb, in which it does. In modern conversation we end sentences with prepositions all the time. Otherwise, we sound really dumb.

This is why the entirety of the universe hates an anal retentive grammar nazi.

 

[Hillcrest]

Now language is an interesting difference betwixt the US and Britain.

The epitome of English lexicographic endeavour (in printed form) would be the magisterial OED Second Edition. Twenty large, beautifully bound quarto volumes, 59 million words spread over no fewer than 21,730 pages. It took over 70 years to compile, and it would take a single person 120 years to key in the dictionary onto a computer and 60 years to proof read it. Just the word ‘set’ took over 60,000 words to describe the 580 senses of the word

The pinnacle of American lexicographic endeavour however is Webster’s Third Edition, a skinny 3 volume affair containing a miserable 2,816 pages, a lot of which is taken up by drawings to describe some of the more difficult words like cat, bridge, house etc. We do that in dictionaries made for children

I own both of these dictionaries, for the OED I had the village carpenter make me a bespoke bookcase just to house these beauties, the Webster’s Third Edition however just sits on a shelf.

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View attachment 353681

I rest my case, over to you professor Michael.....

Jay.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I don't think that this is just the US. Most of your colonies decided to rebel against the authoritarian way the British popped knuckles over words.

 

[mawnansmiff]

Dictionaries were never meant to govern the language, but to reflect the way words are used in contemporary times.

The OED is exactly that, a descriptive dictionary and not a proscriptive dictionary. It tells you the current usage of words and their usage over the life of any given word. It does not (as some folk believe) tell you how a word is to be spoken.

Jay.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

The OED is exactly that, a descriptive dictionary and not a proscriptive dictionary. It tells you the current usage of words and their usage over the life of any given word. It does not (as some folk believe) tell you how a word is to be spoken.

Jay.

Then I fail to see your point. But... it is widely known that long and thick dictionaries are made to compensate for teeny tiny other things. :::cough cough:::

The dickshunary I carry is a mere pamphlet, because....

 

[fireground_piper]

The OED is exactly that, a descriptive dictionary and not a proscriptive dictionary. It tells you the current usage of words and their usage over the life of any given word. It does not (as some folk believe) tell you how a word is to be spoken.

Jay.

The slow loss of reference libraries is definitely felt in certain professions. It's not as apparent to general day to day life and likely may never be (or at least not for a long time). At a time when we have better capabilities than ever for archive and reference, we're losing so much woefully fast in the background.

I spent the first couple of years in my industry working for a company with very specific phonetic requirements and they had a really nice reference material area. It centered around the Lippincott Gazetteer of the World.....what a tome! You just don't see stuff like that anymore, nor really the need or desire for it.

 

[mawnansmiff]

You just don't see stuff like that anymore, nor really the need or desire for it.

That is very true.....and also very sad.

Nowadays everything is searched for online (the quality of the results being very questionable in many instances). I personally much prefer the tactility of a physical book though I do also use online resources for my sins.

I remember well the huge reference library in Sheffield which I visited often as a kid. Seemingly acres and acres of fine English oak & Cuban mahogany bookcases & shelves filled with everything and anything you ever wanted to find out. I doubt it's even there now.

Jay.

 

[mawnansmiff]

The dickshunary I carry is a mere pamphlet, because....

...because I already know everything".

There you go professor, I finished your sentence for you

Jay.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

...because I already know everything".

There you go professor, I finished your sentence for you

Jay.

Not everything... just the things I need to know.
So, as the language changes, even faster with increased communications, do you have to keep buying updated versions of that 100 book set?

 

[mawnansmiff]

do you have to keep buying updated versions of that 100 book set?

Nah, OED 3 (which is still being worked on) will never be printed. They say it would be at least 30 maybe 40 volumes so impractical for anyone other than institutions. I am by the way a contributor to OED3 but so are many hundreds of others.

It's available online for a fee but if your local library subscribes to it (as mine does) you get free access which to me is a huge blessing.

Jay.