What have been the worst home handyman accidents you've had,or seen so far ?

[Just Wondering]

Here ya go:

're welcome.

[cavelamb himself]

"My heros have always killed cowboys".

Comanche

But not enough to count anywhere but my oen heart...

Richard

[Michael A. Terrell]

OT isn't allowed on RCM. Our resident net Nazi gets upset about OT posts.

[clifto]

Actually, I'd love that. I saw these constructs so often in my early reading that they became ingrained; if I've missed something I wanna know.

[Bruce L. Bergman]

Do the Ojibwa have any casinos?

I know the Pechangas are tossing people out of the tribe left and right - even with impeccable lineage research that goes back a few hundred years - just because they didn't vote the right way on casino related tribal elections. Cutting off casino profit participation checks, throwing them out of schools and hospitals, out of houses on tribal land, canceling health insurance...

-->--

[Morris Dovey]

Bummer. You have my condolances. The folks here on rec.woodworking have decided that putting up with net nannies/control freaks is worse than the occasional off-topic thread - and one of our regulars maintains a filtering package for those who'd prefer not to see the OT threads (or the occasionally really nasty garbage posts) at all.

Normally (but obviously not always) we add "OT" to the subject to facilitate filtering, and it works fairly well. RW (the "wreck") is a fairly convivial group - and occasionally the people who've gotten to know each other here do enjoy OT side discussions. The antisocial types who pop in and object are generally held in low regard - the wreck values right answers, but not people who're all about _being_ right.

I'll gladly trim RCM from my future responses. :-)

-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA

[Gunner]

German, Finn and Black Irish.

Gunner

[Gunner]

brought to your shore. Was it

made to it over the years.

Really? I thought she had fallen though a storm drain grill and had washed out to sea?

Gunner

[Ed Huntress]

Yeah, they used to set fire to the Irish around here, too.

-- Ed Huntress

[willshak]

on 9/15/2007 5:21 AM Gunner said the following:

I have two of yours, but I don't know what Black Irish is. Mine is N Ireland Catholic. The other German.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Seems to be some question as to what it is

years ago my grandmother told me that her grandfather's ethnicity was "Black Irish." Recently I've heard three different explanations concerning the origin of the term:

(1) It refers to a mixture of Irish and Spanish blood dating from the time of the Spanish Armada, when many shipwrecked Spanish sailors were washed up on the Irish coastline and wound up staying.

(2) It refers to a mixture of Irish and eastern European blood.

(3) It refers to a mixture of Irish and Italian blood from the time of the Roman Empire.

[larry]

All newsgroup discussions are off topic by the 30th post ;-)

That's also about when the mud slinging and flaming takes over and there are only a few posters left.

Sortta like being in a bar ;-)

But still much better than the spam bots and the idiots that think cancel message is actually enabled on a public newsgroup server.

-larry / dallas

[clifto]

Oh yeah?

[Kurt Ullman]

Nope. The first part of the amendment is a well regulated militia. It is mentioned first, not as an add on, not as an afterthought, but as the introductory clause of the piece. It sets out HOW and WHY it must not be infringed. The context of when infringement takes place. It sets limits. If you want to include the last part, you can't pretend that the first doesn't exist.

[Ed Huntress]

Hokay. As I said, the construction is uncommon but you'll recognize these familiar examples:

(From The American Heritage Book of English Usage, "Absolute Construction"):

"No other business arising, the meeting was adjourned." "The paint now dry, we brought the furniture out on the deck." "The truck finally loaded, they said goodbye to their neighbors and drove off." "The horse loped across the yard, her foal trailing behind her." "The picnic is scheduled for Saturday, weather permitting." "Barring bad weather, we plan to go to the beach tomorrow." "All things considered, it's not a bad idea."

Note that in some of these, the ones about the horse and her foal and the one about the picnic, the absolute phrase is almost, but not quite, incidental. The foal did not restrict the horse from loping across the yard, so far as we can tell. The weather may decide if we have the picnic, but it doesn't change the fact that the picnic is scheduled for Saturday.

We brought the furniture out on the deck at least partly because the paint was dry. We would not have done so if it wasn't, probably, so the dryness of the paint in this case is logically (but not grammatically) restrictive. The good idea is logically, but not grammatically, connected to the idea that we have considered all things. It still would have been a good idea if we had not considered all things, in all likelihood, but the sentence is ambiguous on this point.

Is it clearing up? The nominative absolute allows a variety of logical connections between the phrase and the clause.

(Here's one I picked up online):

"High heels clattering on the pavement, the angry women marched toward the mayor's office."

The women were marching regardless of whether their heels were clattering.

I hope this is enough to satisfy what you're looking for. I should point out that the nominative absolute is a slightly controversial issue to grammarians, but it may appear that way because some don't like the fact that it's derived from Latin, in which the parallel to the English nominative absolute is the "ablative absolute," and it really works better in Latin than in English.

In English, the construction has always been rare. Linguists say it started when early literary writers tried to adopt Latin constructions. John Milton used in heavily in _Paradise Lost_. But it has never, otherwise, been common.

Why the FFs used it is a good question. It's a literary device whose meaning depends on context. But the 2nd has no context. My guess, after years of studying it, is that it was an intentional ambiguity.

You probably noticed that Gunner made a point of the commas, which many writers have done over the years. The commas would be an issue if the grammatical question was whether the phrase is restrictive or not. But that's not the issue. Absolute constructions -- the nominative absolute, in this case -- have no grammatical relationship to the rest of their sentences. They have various logical connections but "absolute" means they are grammatically self-contained, or not connected. Once it's absolute, there is no "restrictive" or "unrestrictive."

The point is that the commas don't matter. If the sentence of the 2nd Amendment were written today, we would not use the first comma, but the meaning would be identical to the original. The use of such "ear-based" commas has declined but the meaning remains the same.

I have some definitions of nominative absolute that may help but I hope the examples clear it up.

-- Ed Huntress

[Ed Huntress]

It's not a clause. No predicate. It's a nominative absolute phrase.

See my message to clifto. You can make no such assumptions.

It could just as well set a sufficient but not necessary condition, which, after decades of studying it, is exactly what I think was intended.

Neither can you draw any conclusions about what relationship it has to the clause just from the sentence itself.

Pure guesswork. You can make no such assumption with a nominative absolute construction. You need to know the context, and there is no context.

-- Ed Huntress

[Gunner Asch]

Also to prevent major lice infestations.

Cops used to wear uniform shirts with those nifty epaulets on the shoulders. Great hand holds for the bad guys.

I cut mine loose and put velcro on the shirt and epaulets. First bad ass to grab one as he had so many before, stood there staring at it with a surprised and stupid look on his face, long enough for me to chop him down like an oak with my baton.

Gunner

[willshak]

How times have changed. When I started, I wore a Sam Browne belt with the leather shoulder strap over a dress blouse. It wasn't until the 70's when the strap became a hazard, and we became pigs, that it was removed.

[Bob]

I can hear the sound of splintering wood and breaking glass now! And the wan and pitiful sound of someone who is about to disappear forever screaming that they have rights.

[Richard The Dreaded Libertaria]

The way I read it is, "Since it is necessary that the militia be well-regulated, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

What this means that it is the duty of the well-armed citizenry to keep the militia from turning itself into a police state. In other words, it's the duty of the citizens to do the actual regulating.

For example, when the militia man shows up with his squad and says, "We're going to confiscate all of your guns and burn all of your subversive books", you can lock and load, aim, look him in the eye, and say, "Guess again, bucko!"

Unfortunately, these days it seems that too many people are willing to throw away their Liberty in exchange for the illusion of security.

Thanks, Rich