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I just finished "The Devil In The White City" by Erik Larson about the Chicago's World Fair and a serial killer that was operating around the area at the same time. Also there's a fascinating book "Waking The Tempests" by Eleanor Randolph about ordinary Russians after the fall of the Soviet...

Fleur Wood has an outlet store at Birkenhead. Got a GORGEOUS feather dress there about six months ago, $120. It has a slip that if worn naughtily is my favorite LBD :p

Or that the US is so overzealous that they're catching people too early and that's fairly good :) Also, in regards to racial profiling I (a short blonde haired, blue eyed American) am always pulled aside to be searched more when I go through security. The last three times I've gone, I get...

So anyways, in 36 hours I'll be at JFK.

maps.google.com

Then I went on a lower dose of estrogen and lost it all in a week. So really, it depends.

Depends on the person. Yasmin made me put like five kilos on.

What the fuck? That is whipped to the ninth degree. How fucked are you two?

Most modern fantasy is fairly rubbish. There's a lot less cohesion and I think most of the writers are getting sloppy as they try to make more money out of the bandwagon. The only fantasy I've ever enjoyed that was written within the past twenty or so years is Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials...

Eh. I heard them a few years ago and the lead singer had a really whiny voice. He still does.

Agreed. You don't need a gimmick or a twist ending, which can seem pretty crappy but at the same time it has to have a "point", something that the reader can take away. No matter how insignificant, we need to be rewarded for reading it.

Examples of other short stories? Read Hemingway.

What's your measure of intelligence? I would think that knowing two languages fluently would be a sign of intelligence would it not? If it's not then what exactly could they be doing to make themselves more intelligent?

Pretty much, there's a woman who lives down the street who is from Peru and they have full blown conversations over coffee that I don't understand at all. She doesn't have a problem slipping back into it. Fluency perhaps may not even be the issue. Understanding another language and having a...

Actually you've very wrong about that. My mother learned Spanish when she was a teenager, lived in Spain for a year about twenty years ago and is still fluent in it. She only spent two years really doing Spanish comprehensively. After that, it was easy. Once you get it down, you can be fluent...

Langauge is integral to culture. There are words in other languages to describe events for example that simply don't translate to English. It's a shame that we are losing other languages because it isn't a means to an end, it's a feature. Then again perhaps I'm just too attached to being...

You're an arrogant, centrally minded, backward thinking idiot aren't you? Other countries do learn English. If you ever want to work in a global market, learn an Asian language or French. Don't be so arrogant as to declare English as the only language to learn. By doing that you lose other...

So why don't we make them abolish compulsory English first? In a world that is shrinking in terms of business and travel, it makes more sense to know more than one language. Like Kami and Circusmind have pointed out, there are a number of countries that do it. To be so arrogant as to say that...

Again they force you to learn English, they can force you to learn another language. I'm repeating this because even though you've acknowledged it, the "They're not giving us freedom of choice!" when they already aren't.

I don't agree with the reward system per se. Doing a language is difficult but your UAI should be marks based as opposed to anything else. It's not a crisis though either but I think there is merit in knowing another language, especially in a country that purports to be multicultural. I know...