Copula, aka copulative verb, aka linking verb: a verb form that is a part of 'to be'.
Don't confuse a spelling that is a copula standing alone with the same spelling used as an auxiliary verb. Don't confuse a gerund ('ing' form used as a noun) with a present participle. Don't confuse either with the present continuing tense.
Oh, and you should see how I just ripped up Amy_s's recent chapter in Dictates of Faith. And after she took what I suggested, I did it again! My excuse is that I was telling her how I read the story: not as it was written, but as it lay latent in her first version.
Regarding blanket advice about copulas, 'ing'-uffixed words, and such: it is important to understand the grammar they represent. Ignorance leads to 'English teachers' marking down auxiliary verb constructions and copulas with predicate adjectives as passive constructions. Such people do great harm. Knowing the words that describe the grammar lets you discuss it, but first you must learn to see the 'logic' that it follows.
I'm a big fan of semicolons, colons, and em dashes. I use them heavily and like to think I use them well. My advice is not to fear them, but to use them so well they pass by unnoticed, doing their jobs. That same advice applies to copulas, repetition of words, and many other things that the Quik-Fix purveyors advise you to banish.
I urge you to hunt up a copy of the 1970's edition of Strunk and White and read and re-read it diligently. It will be costly in dollars and cheap at the price.
But something does happen. Alda shrinks away from the question and tries to turn away from it.
Yeah, the Seahawks blew the Superbowl. (Don't say 'final'. Finals are for basketball and hockey.)
Amy, I thought vitamin K could be administered intravenously?
Anyhow, someone asked how the flasher project is doing. Here's the mods I'm working on with the detector circuit. This isn't final yet.
If you go up the page from the drain ('D' terminal) of Q5, the first shorthand outline is "Shogran's" (or "Shograns").
More to the point, rat poison must take more than about 8 hours to kill, because other rats will smell what the rats ate recently and avoid it.
Rats in cities have become resistant to warfarin and rat control has had to go back using zinc chloride, which is an irreversable liver poison. There's also the mitochondrial poison that Tomcat uses. Nasty stuff.
Coumadin taken regularly is scary. Patients on it ought to be informed of which varieties of clotting bandages will work in spite of it and which won't. The good part is that Coumadin's effects can be reversed rapidly with vitamin K.
Second only to getting skunked in second person, or having your dog skunked, is driving by skunk roadkill.
Cleveland and Toledo ... those are on opposite side of the state! That's gotta' be, what, 300 miles?
As to Seattle, I don't expect you have rattlesnakes in the city or close suburbs, but outside of that, the Pacific Coast area is major rattlesnake habitat right up into BC. (Note that we have a baseball team named for a rattler: the Arizona Diamondbacks, who play in Pheonix.)
And don't tell me Aus doesn't have venemous critters! The platypus has venemous hindclaws.
Oh, baseball season is starting. Pitchers and catchers are reporting for spring training. The regular season is six months long (162 games!) and only November, December, and January are clear of it--except for 'hot stove league', the winter meetings, contract signings, reports on rehab after Tommy John surgery ... .
You might as well go to a few games and get it over with. Safeco Field looks like a pretty good stadium. Ticket bargains (from sports to opera) can be found on StubHub.
Cats aren't fully domesticated either. They've only been living around us for four thousand years or so, since we started domesticating grains. The New World was ahead of the old here; it took over 10,000 years to domesticate maize to the point where it cannot survive without cultivation, but the house cat came out of Eurasia. What did grain have to do with it? Grain stores attract mice and rats in a way that gourds and roots do not.
It's not finding words that I'm stuck on. It's thinking through outcomes.
Not allergic to wine, but my palate is not well educated. That's a pity, since I probably have the talent for it.
Over 10,000 years, the visitors will add up.
Janet:
There are only two critters in North America that can face the grizzly bear without firearms. One of them is the polar bear. The other is the cat-sized, malodorous, chemical-weapon-equipped skunk.
In case you--or a household animal--should become the recipient of this nocturnal rodent's hindside blessings, you should know the remedy: bathe in fresh, cold tomato juice. I'm not kidding. You can look it up.
njc wrote:I''m allergic to Wixxel Grease, I'm afraid.
Latest groundbreaking research has shown that initial exposure to small quantity with a gradual increase over time to allergic substances is the best way to overcome said allergy .... So all hope is not lost yet njc!
'fraid not. Like poison ivy, this one is self-sensitizing.
Amy, does the Pacific Northwest have skunks, or are they an eastern air-freshener?
I''m allergic to Wixxel Grease, I'm afraid.
Nah. See the photos. Pendulums and Geneva wheels.
Vegemite: the Aussie verion of Poiled Slurgs.
Whimsey on a geological time scale.
Yeah ... but it was funny.
Aside: what sort of project could put Brian Eno and Jeff Bezos on one team? Google 'clock long now'.
But in any case, I think it's time for a photo or two again? Or is it way too soon so be asking?
I have a passable photo of the circuit drawing. (The Pitman outline for "Shogran's" is visible just above it!) As soon as I get home and get my photobucket password I'll put it up.
You have really wicked bugs in Australia, don't you?
I've heard the bugs aren't bad so long as you don't try to order a drink in their bars.
Sigh. Another thing I overlooked in my circuit change. I can try to shoehorn another resistor in, but instead I'm looking at yet another topology change, which might sharpen the low-level ON transition. It means trying a source follower configuration as a current source and taking the output from the mosfet drain. I've never used that before, so I expect I'll have to play with it a bit. OTOH it will get some troublesome things out of the way and reduce the congestion at the edge of the board where the power rails are.
Janet's characters would think a tutu was an oversized neck ruff.
So an under-layer is showing through. Read Fishing in the Catacombs. It's a hoot--a hoot an' a holler.
(Hoot-and-holler is phone tech jargon for a line without a dial that rings the other end as soon as it is taken off hook.)
WAIT! Where is Fishing? I can't find it anywhere. Amy, did you withdraw it?
Again, it was Amy who set this up ... though if Jaylene is dressed the way Alda is in the catacombs, there are at least a couple layers of clothing there. Step along now, nothing to see.
Raindrop tracks and guttering: the tracks/trails give the apppearance of gutterring ... and that foreshadows the wear and tear that Conduicy will take on Alda. Unless it's doing so already?
