Interesting Links for 06-08-2013

[andrewducker]

• You can now get security flaws...in toilets.
  (tags: toilets security )
• Why the Law Society of Scotland is wrong to demand publication of legal advice over Independence
  (tags: law scotland independence )
• Yes, there's an Air Force class flying with My Little Pony patches
  (tags: flying mylittlepony usa military )
• Lump of fat the size of a bus removed

Comments

[bart_calendar]

I would honestly pay any amount of money for the ability to make people think their toilets were possessed by demons.

[alitheapipkin]

...food fat mixed with wet wipes

Gah, I wish people wouldn't flush those ruddy things - the ground floor tenants in our building have broken the waste pipe under the back garden with them and i don't know when it's going to get fixed because their letting agents want everyone to pay for it.

[del_c]

Have a check with your local (waste)water company to see if they now own the obligation to repair. The law was changed a couple of years ago because people were squabbling about private sewers they owned that their neighbours needed to use, so the government transferred ownership en masse, because who was ever happy to be the personal owner of a sewer?

(you still own your own sewer if it's on your land and nobody who isn't you uses it, the transfer was intended to stop neighbours-from-hell style fights)

[alitheapipkin]

Unfortunately I live in a tenement building and the bit of sewer only serves the flats within it and is on the property so under the terms of our freehold we are all technically jointly liable. I've had both Scottish Water and the local Environmental Health people come and sort it out when there was raw sewage flowing across the garden but I think that was more because it was flowing out on to a public pavement than because the entire thing is their responsibility. I'd say I assume the council office who have been involved in helping us organise mutual repairs would know except they can't even manage to send emails with attachments or the forms they want me to sign in the same envelop as the request to sign them...

[del_c]

Yes, apologies for not thinking it through, I realised after a bit that e.g. one piece of freehold land with multiple leasehold properties in a building isn't the sort of situation the legislation can help with. Unfortunately by the time I got back here you'd already read it and put me straight :-) Sometimes there's just no alternative to making your neighbours' landlords meet their legal obligations.

Yes, there's an Air Force class flying with My Little Pony patches

[cartesiandaemon]

Oh, that's awesome.

Although I still have very mixed feelings about pluralising originally-greek words (or latin words of a different declension) with "-i". I think it's because many (but not all) people do it with a sense of smugness "I know a fact about Latin and I'm going to USE it", and I feel defensive that I am very happy with "-s" plurals and I don't know much about latin (but I feel I know more than that :)).

Whereas if we just adopt it into English as "you can pluralise with -i if you like how it sounds" then it would be ok. I certainly don't mind people applying specific pluralising rules when they think it's funny or expressive, but don't pretend it's "correct".

Re: Yes, there's an Air Force class flying with My Little Pony patches

[woodpijn]

I agree (but I had to click through to the article, which I wouldn't otherwise have read, to find out what word you meant).

Re: Yes, there's an Air Force class flying with My Little Pony patches

[cartesiandaemon]

Oops, yes, I didn't mean to be cryptic :)

I also subconsciously worried that if I admitted which word sparked the thought I would be inundated with people saying "this particular word was loaned from greek via latin therefore I'm going to belittle you and ignore the general trend to -i pluralisation", though in retrospect I should have checked that myself and gone one way or the other, not hedged.

Re: Yes, there's an Air Force class flying with My Little Pony patches

[andrewducker]

There are also people who pluralise Vax computers as "Vaxen".

And then extended this so that the plural of "box" was "boxen":

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boxen

[a_pawson]

It strikes me that the whole EU membership legal advice thing is meaningless anyway. The EU is like a private members club - there are no hard and fast rules on who can join. Scotland would most likely have to apply to join the EU, but considering the EU has recently admitted Romania & Bulgaria and looks set to welcome Albania into the fold shortly, there is next to no chance that an independent Scotland would not be permitted to join.

[gonzo21]

The question becomes would Scotland want to join under the terms of membership that have been offered to Romania/Bulgaria, where they agreed to give up a lot of their sovereign rights to Brussels in exchange for membership.

I doubt an independent Scotland would get the same incredibly good deal that Thatcher negotiated for British membership.

[a_pawson]

I've not heard anyone suggesting they wouldn't join were independence to happen. It would of course depend who gains power in the 2-3 years after the referendum. I agree it is unlikely that Scotland would retain the budget rebate Thatcher negotiated - the terms of Scotland joining would have to be negotiated.

[ashfae]

As a collector of the weird, you may find this...hmmm. Amusing? Flabbergasting? Of momentary interest. ;) http://www.marcensign.com/memarketing-and-the-worst-it-was-nice-meeting-you-e-mail-you-will-ever-read/