Regardless of how often I encounter them, there are a bunch of commonly used French words that I can never quite manage to remember. Every time I hear them or read them I’ve got to look them up in a dictionary. They’re all in one place here.
Prepositions and Conjuctions
Check out the Les Conjonctions lesson on french.about.com.
- autant : en même quantité, au même degré, egalement, as much, as many, in proportion (d’autant)
- cependant : pendant ce temps, il signifie plus fréquemment néanmoins ou toutefois, while, meanwhile,
… read on »
Each year, History Alive (June 12-13, 2010) gathers re-enactor groups from around Brisbane to one place at one time to show off. The groups involved span pretty close to the entire timeline of human history from the Near East of about 2000 BC to the very recent past. As well as being loud, colourful and a great day out, it gives a very clear snapshot of the state of living history groups in Queensland.
The first people I encountered on the day was Contact Front, the Vietnam re-enactment group, walking through around the … read on »
Title: Zombie Myths of Australian Military History
Author: Craig Stockings (editor)
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: University of New South Wales Press (2010)
Language: English
A fascinating look at the difference between received ideas and facts. It covers ten major historical myths across 200 years from the original settlement of the country by Europeans to our recent involvements in Southeast Asia and East Timor. It strives to show the reasons or circumstances which created and have sustained each zombie myth until it gained a life of it own and needs no more prompting. In many cases, the purpose … read on »
English has definitely become the lingua franca of the world. I was appalled at the ability of the participants at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest to speak not only very good English but current everyday, infomal, even colloquial English. (Unlike like my still formal and rather stilted French.)
Gone was the dual English/French repetition of every statement by the the hosts (although the scoring remains bilingual). Most countries sang in English and those who did not sang in their native lingo. The only real clanger was … read on »
My blog has a considerable number of pages of static HTML pages which were migrated from a previous version of the site. As these pages have their own distinct style per topic, I didn’t want to import them into my blog proper but aimed to maintain them on their own.
Since they sit outside of WordPress, how then to use WordPress.com Stats to track visits to them? In this post, I’ll explain what I did to achieve this goal in two simple steps.
I’m pretty much going to re-hash Jeffrey D Allen‘s post on the same subject. His post … read on »
All conflict management theory makes two fatal assumptions, that the other party is:
- rational,
- willing to solve the problem.
There’s a lot of really good information about on how to handle interpersonal or organisational conflict. You should learn at least the fundamentals in order to better succeed at whatever you turn your hand to. But there are certain triggers which should warn you that the other party won’t come to the party, as it were, whether due to entrenched belief, sheer bloody-mindedness or some manner of brain dysfunction, whether organic or drug-induced. In these cases, you will not be able … read on »
Title: The World of the Troubadours: Medieval Occitan Society, c.1100-c.1300
Author: Linda M Paterson
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1995
Language: English
This is a book of lists which concentrates on the topics of:
- the nature of feudalism and vasslage in Languedoc and Provence
- medieval medicine and surgery and their Arabic influences
- the place and role of women in society which contrasts sharply to the north of France
- religion and heresy, especially the reasonably well-known Albigensian Crusade and the Gregorian Reforms
Scholarship in … read on »
This may come as a surprise to you but I’m kind of a nerd. No, really. I’m a nerd.
One of the ways in which this manifests itself is roleplaying games which I’ve been playing fairly constantly since a friend introduced me to playing Dungeons and Dragons outside the school library in 1981. I soon ditched this gateway drug for the hard stuff: Traveller, Call of Cthulhu and more recently Conspiracy X.
Why am I telling you this?
To remind you that … read on »
HP Lovecraft and the Myth of the Golden Age
I started reading H.P. Lovecraft again after a break from his work of far too many years. Specifically, I re-read Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, one of the Randolph Carter cycle. The story itself was published posthumously and HPL intended it as nothing more than a writing exercise. It was never a finished work. Regardless – or perhaps because – of this, it highlights the central themes in all of Lovecraft’s writing, read on »
This the fourth part of my series looking at the rapier teaching Camillo Agrippa outlined in his 1553 text Trattato Di Scientia d’ Arme. In this port, I want to look at the last of the primary guard, Stance A. I’m not entirely sure that this is a guard position that one would adopt in preparation for a duel but rather a position one falls into during the fight in order to make an attack.
Again, I’d like to acknowledge that I’m a beginner and make no claim to the accuracy or utility of what … read on »
