Showing posts with label Column 8. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Column 8. Show all posts

Wednesday 23 September 2009

How did your pet get its name?




























Contributors to The Sydney Morning Herald's Column 8 provide insights on naming family pets.

John Barselaar, of Coffs Harbour, ''My local vet is a man of fine humour and a pundit like myself, but I have to take my hat off to his recent repartee in the surgery. A woman came in with two dogs feeling poorly. When asked the dogs' names she replied Beethoven and Bach. Immediately he saw the problem, and advised her they were feeling Lisztless!'' (Monday 21/9)

''Naming family pets after famous composers is not all that unusual,'' writes Steve Zervos of Abbotsford (Column 8, yesterday). ''We named our kitten Beethoven because just after we picked him up and brought him home, he made his first movement on the piano.'' (Tuesday 22/9)

''Beethoven the cat,'' writes Michael Morton-Evans (Column 8, Monday), ''puts me in mind of Tyson the dog. A friend many years ago bought a dachshund and named him Tyson, after the Lancashire-born fast bowler Frank 'Typhoon' Tyson. When asked why, he explained: 'Because he has four short legs and his balls swing both ways.'' (Wednesday 23/9)

Thursday 17 September 2009

Column 8 is back online - finally, Fairfax sees sense



Fairfax has restored online access to The Sydney Morning Herald's Column 8.

Read it online at the Herald's site here.

Fairfax's archived copies of the column are here. However, the Wednesday 18 September 2009 column is not there. North Coast Voice's presentation of it is here.

Column 8's email address is column8@smh.com.au

Thursday's Column 8 - you'd reckon Fairfax could afford to put this online


Kevin Ryan, of Wahroonga, was in Penrith South a few days ago, and reports driving past a car wrecker's yard. The name of the business? "Khartoum."

"Koel alert! Koel alert!" we are warned by Anne Moore, of Waverley. "Heard on Monday at 6.45am. I think this is even earlier than my reported first koel in Column 8 a couple of years back, Soon there will be no first report we'll have koels permanently in residence."

More on affect/effect, from Anton Crouch, of Glebe (Column 8, Tuesday): "A simple rule is to use 'affect' as a verb and 'effect' as a noun. Then you'll be right 99 per cent of the time in conversation and 90 per cent of the time in writing. If you want real pedantry (as opposed to Keith Binns's partial attempt), both 'affect' and 'effect' can be used as a verb and a noun. There's also a use of 'affect' where it means something like 'to pretend to'. But all this gets too hard - the simple rule given above will suit for most of us." Yes indeed, Anton. Most effective.

"Tuesday's headline 'Vet on receiving end as whipping becomes frenzied', writes Duccio Cocquio, of Hunters Hill, "reminds me of an old one from the Wellington Dominion that read 'Drive to ban horse whipping mushrooms'. Very evocative: was it a mad horse whipping the poor mushrooms or a cluster of cruel fungi hitting the innocent horse?" Hard to say but wouldn't the second interpretation require a hyphen?

"I did particularly enjoy the back page of the Sport section in Tuesday's Herald," writes Allan Roberts, of Marrickville, "where the article on Kim Clijsters wining the US Open stated that 'She scrambled with the agility of a gymnast to her players' box to find her husband, Brian Lynch, a professional basketball'." What does a professional basketball earn, we wonder? It'd be hard work.

Richard Sewell theorises that the birds circling pylons of the Anzac Bridge at night are attracted to insects, which in turn are attracted by the bright lights. We now recall that we raised this subject two or three years back, when birds were going crazy around the Harbour Bridge during a bogong moth plague. And lo and behold, a bogong flew out of our wardrobe this morning. What are we in for?

"I was brought up in Blackburn, Lancashire, UK," writes Robert Heathcote, of Newcastle, "a cotton- weaving town. All the older members of my family were weavers and used the term 'cotton on' a lot to mean 'Do you get the idea?'. (Column 8, Saturday). "But they all acknowledged that it derived from the process in weaving where a thread breaks, and they had to 'cotton on' to resume the job. I think also it could mean to start work, or a new job, but it definitely comes from cotton weaving."

"My wife bought a litre of orange juice from Harris Farm Markets at Bridgepoint, Spit Junction," reports Peter Schramko, of Artarmon. "The label reads '100% SQUIZEED ORANGE JUICE'. Does that mean that someone has had a good look at it?"

Column8@smh.com.au(no attachments please).Phone 9282 2207 fax 9282 2772. (include name, suburb, daytime phone)

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, 17/9/09

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Here's what Fairfax doesn't want its SMH online readers to see





Herald's Column8 is no longer online.

While Fairfax was shouting from its roof top about its new online National Times, elsewhere in the building The Sydney Morning Herald was being detoured through another route.

Fairfax powers-that-be decreed that as of yesterday (Monday 14 September) the Herald's very popular Column 8 would no longer be available online.

What's next? Will Fairfax start charging its Herald readers for the privilege of reading it online.?

Sounds suspiciously like Fairfax is out to out-do News Ltd with its Murdoch view of the world that online content should have a price tag attached.

Here are a couple of pars from today's Column8.