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Post by onlyMark on Apr 2, 2021 7:05:55 GMT
I would have watched it had I some interest in it. Football that is. World Cup, ok, rest of it not bothered. Too many drama queens.
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Post by mickthecactus on Apr 4, 2021 11:57:56 GMT
Alabama bans yoga in schools in case it makes students convert to Hinduism.
You couldn’t make it up.
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Post by tod2 on Apr 4, 2021 12:58:25 GMT
Mick are you talking about Alabama USA? The land of the Brave and the land of the FREE? Surely not!
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Post by questa on Apr 4, 2021 13:40:29 GMT
Do the elected officers of such places have to pass a stupidity test to qualify for positions? Do they feel that learning French will make them become ballet dancers.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 4, 2021 14:06:03 GMT
Don't forget that in the United States they also vote to elect judges and district attorneys and police chiefs. That is because all of the citizens of the United States have law degrees and are qualified to choose the best ones.
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Post by questa on Apr 4, 2021 23:25:53 GMT
Of course, how could I have thought otherwise? And all the people with old wives tales are fully qualified medical advisors. Not to forget that the creme de la creme of citizens can become President.
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Post by Kimby on Apr 8, 2021 1:42:21 GMT
Is it possible there’s no posts on Iceland on this venerable and venerated forum? I’m heading right over to Europe to start one.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 8, 2021 2:25:32 GMT
Well, there are the five threads that I found by simply typing "iceland" into the search engine in the slot that says "where the thread title contains".
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 14, 2021 20:57:41 GMT
My question of the day ~
How are the designations of populated areas determined? I know what I mean when I say "large town" or "hamlet" or "city", etc., but I believe there are official meanings which I don't understand. For instance, I just looked up a place that was identified as a city, but its population is only a little over 1,000. I've seen this quite a few times on Wikipedia, which I guess isn't entirely accurate anyway.
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Post by questa on Apr 14, 2021 23:19:38 GMT
I heard but can't remember where, that it came from church stats. A few people formed a parish which may have shared a priest. Then a village had 1 or 2 priests and became a town with maybe a couple of extra churches and parishes as it grew. Then comes the cathedral which declares it is a city. I don't know where it goes next. Probably sits there waiting for a new roof and more tourists to visit.
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Post by bjd on Apr 15, 2021 6:29:12 GMT
In France the designation village, ville are made by population. The cut-off for many localities (communes) is 10,000 people which is considered "urban".
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 15, 2021 6:40:59 GMT
The official designation of village is a place with fewer than 2000 inhabitants in France. Non population based descriptions are that a village is a group of houses big enough to have a local life (as opposed to a hamlet) while a city is a place big anough for the inhabitants to have "diversified activities." But nobody ever said that France sets the rules of course, and Switzerland calls a city like La-Chaux-de-Fonds (pop. 38,000) a village because no stream or river runs through it.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Apr 15, 2021 7:50:42 GMT
I heard but can't remember where, that it came from church stats. A few people formed a parish which may have shared a priest. Then a village had 1 or 2 priests and became a town with maybe a couple of extra churches and parishes as it grew. Then comes the cathedral which declares it is a city. I don't know where it goes next. Probably sits there waiting for a new roof and more tourists to visit. That's what I thought.
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Post by patricklondon on Apr 15, 2021 10:44:58 GMT
I think another factor might be when there's a charter establishing a market: that says "town" to me. In historical terms, that is. These days in the UK there's not much legally defined significant governmental status to any of these terms, local government having been re-organised so much over the years. "City" is just an honorific title these days, and every few years a number of local councils get in a froth about applying for it. On the other hand, there are means by which smaller communities can set up smaller town/parish/community councils with limited powers over some facilities and services delegated from the primary local government body. There's some talk of trying it where I live. My blog | My photos | My video clips | My Librivox recordings"too literate to be spam"
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Post by Kimby on Apr 15, 2021 13:00:38 GMT
In the US I think it’s determined by the form of local government. My home town was a village of 1600 and is still a village at 9000. A city is a different form of government.
And a “town” technically is a township, a one-mile square piece of land, with the town government serving the rural portions of that township, exempting incorporated villages and cities.
But everyone uses “town” to mean any cluster of homes and businesses.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 15, 2021 22:02:20 GMT
The form of local government seems as though it's the most likely reason for the various designations in the US, whereas it looks as though different countries have different criteria. Many times when you look up a US place, the Wikipedia entry says it is a "census-designated place". Those are defined as: statistical geographic entities representing closely settled, unincorporated communities that are locally recognized and identified by name.
It seems as though what we call a place, whether town or city, might be more accurate than it's official designation.
Patrick, those "councils within councils" with some powers seem like a good idea for the kind of area where you live. How do you feel about it?
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Post by casimira on Apr 15, 2021 23:04:12 GMT
In the US much of the designated villages, towns, hamlets are determined by regions. In New England for instance, villages and hamlets are synonymous and generally fall into a town or township. Further South, one never hears of a place referred to as a hamlet and even less likely a village. Clusters of towns fall under a designated county, the exception being Louisiana which uses Parishes as opposed to Counties.
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Post by questa on Apr 15, 2021 23:53:18 GMT
In a very amateur way, I love I tracing names back to possible beginnings. I have learnt that Vikings used "ing" to denote a family cluster and "ton" was the beginning of what became a town. (A "ton" was a wooden fort around the group of dwellings) Thus people knew that the chap called 'Was' led the group that have a fort, which became a town.
Washington.
When the Normans took over, the language took on De Ville and other French endings. Some crossed back to ancient usage so we get Tess Derbyfield from Tess of the D'Urbevilles. (A book that had me crying so much at the ending I couldn't read through the tears)
Chatting with a woman once, I said her surname, Whitaker, possibly meant white acre i.e. chalky soil. She laughed and said her husband's family had lived near Dover in UK for many generations, but the earth was too chalky to grow crops.
I'm no scholar but is fun to link up names.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 16, 2021 5:21:35 GMT
I lived for a while in a place called Huthwaite - "Before 1907 the village was known as Hucknall-under-Huthwaite and also Dirty Hucknall. The name Huthwaite is derived from Old English plus Norse elements — hoh is from haugr an Old Norse word for a hill and thwaite means a clearing - so, literally, a clearing on a hill spur. The former Hucknall element refers to Hucca's heath or angle of land ...... "
Lots of Norse influence in place names in that area.
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Post by questa on Apr 16, 2021 7:27:46 GMT
Braithwaite is a common name here. A lee or leigh was a sheltered field...very valued so the name has many combinations...Ashley, Bentley, Harley.
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Post by bjd on Apr 16, 2021 9:26:30 GMT
"Lea" often turns up in crossword puzzles for a field or meadow.
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Post by questa on Apr 16, 2021 11:24:52 GMT
That's right, Harley is hares meadow, Bentley is plants bent and broken in that field. A lot can be found in the "names for baby" entries.
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Post by tod2 on Apr 16, 2021 12:19:56 GMT
Some years ago I was planning a trip to the UK and bought a huge Collins Road Atlas of Britain. Whilst researching where we wanted to travel in our hired motorhome I nearly fainted when I saw there was a tiny place with our surname. Not only one place but two. One in Wales and the other in Devon. Well that sealed it for me - we were off to find our roots! Here is some history of the small Hamlet of Soar in Wales. I've been there and it looks just the same as the photos. I will carry on with the other Hamlet in Devon shortly but I think you will find reading about Wales will be interesting for the time being. History: First Known Use of soar 14th century, 1596, History and Etymology for soar Verb Middle English soren, from Middle French essorer, from Old French, from Vulgar Latin *exaurare, from Latin ex- + aura air — more at AURA www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/remote-welsh-chapel-theres-only-14506732
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Post by patricklondon on Apr 18, 2021 15:30:30 GMT
Patrick, those "councils within councils" with some powers seem like a good idea for the kind of area where you live. How do you feel about it? There isn't a definite proposal yet, but AIUI it would be a statutory version of the kind of things the various "Friends of.." organisations for local parks and the like, with some power to raise money and actually do things about rubbish bins and signposts and so on. At the moment we have a residents-formed Neighbourhood Planning Forum, which has power to write amendments into the Council's standing plan, provided they're approved in a local referendum. (The plan is the legal basis for what developers may and should do: the NPF amendments are about tightening up requirements on developers of big schemes to commit themselves in detail on how their plans will deal with their impact on local infrastructure and services, public spaces, temporary uses for sites held empty, and disruption during construction - all hot issues round our way). The referendum is coming up with the local elections next month, so maybe they're waiting to see how people react to that before going ahead with anything more ambitious.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 18, 2021 15:59:03 GMT
In Paris we have a participatory budget by which 25% of the municipal investment budget is decided by Parisians. Anybody can make proposals during a certain time frame and then we vote for 3 projects in our arrondissement and 3 projects concerning the city as a whole. These things range from renovating squares and gardens, changing the direction of one way streets, adding or removing traffic lights, creating a skatepark, etc, etc, etc,
The concept of this was invented in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1989 and has spread to more than 2000 cities around the world.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 18, 2021 16:48:27 GMT
There isn't a definite proposal yet, but AIUI it would be a statutory version of the kind of things the various "Friends of.." organisations for local parks and the like, with some power to raise money and actually do things about rubbish bins and signposts and so on. Obviously this could lead to lots of wrangling. But the fact that residents of your area undoubtedly feel the hot greedy eyes of developers zeroing in on you all the time means that it's imperative to protect the character and ambience of where you live. budget by which 25% of the municipal investment budget is decided by Parisians It seems so logical to allow people who daily observe traffic flow, community needs, etc. to have a voice in deciding how their tax money is best used.
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Post by bjd on Apr 19, 2021 18:03:49 GMT
We have two nests of blackbirds in the garden. Last week a young bird with almost no feathers fell out of the nest. My husband picked it up with a trowel (is it true that parents reject them if they smell humans on their chicks?) and managed to put it back in the nest, which is in a big bush.
Just now, I looked outside where I scatter breadcrumbs for birds and a parent blackbird was picking up the crumbs and putting them into the mouth of its demanding chick. The chick was nearly as big as the father, rounder but with very short tail feathers still and looking rather fluffy.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 26, 2021 7:18:04 GMT
Name the film/play -
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Post by mossie on Apr 26, 2021 8:48:11 GMT
That roof looks very cold
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Post by patricklondon on Apr 26, 2021 10:21:31 GMT
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