HossC

Dragons

That's not a problem that we have here. The unleaded I bought last week was about €1.38/liter, which converts to just under $6.50/US gallon. It looks like US prices are less than half of that figure.

Ireland (Titanic's last port of call was Queenstown, County Cork. The town was once called Cove, but was renamed Queenstown when Queen Victoria visited. After Ireland became independent, the name was changed to Cobh, a name which means nothing in Irish, but it's still pronounced "Cove" ("bh" is pronounced "v" in Irish, as in names like "Siobhan"))

ship

George Bernard Shaw once said: "England and America are two countries divided by a common language", so can you match the food items in British and American English? Can you match the British food names with the American ones? Boy, are the Americans going to be embarrassed when they find out that they've been using the wrong words all these years ?

Danica is 35 (36 in March). I don't think you're losing your mind, Hobie, she's an attractive woman. A quick look through the female racing drivers who've competed at the top level of their sport (NASCAR, Indycar, F1, WRC etc.) over the years seems to suggest that good looks certainly aren't a hindrance. They're definitely a better looking bunch than some of their male counterparts .

shell

The old INDIAN caves

Got to just over 20 minutes in. I hope you're not disappointed when you find out the real connection .

I like to watch a high-brow UK quiz show called Only Connect, which involves trying to find the connections between groups of often seemingly unrelated things. In the third round of the show (the Connecting Wall), the contestants have to find the four groups of four from a grid of 16, with overlaps between the possible groups. In this week's episode (below), the first square on the board of the third round said "Appleby", so I immediately thought that there must me a group of TV doctors. It took me a few seconds to realize that Doc Appleby was a little too obscure even for Only Connect. I guess I've been watching too much Dukes again . BTW. For anyone who watches the video below, this isn't stereotypical of British quiz shows, but it is an example of the wide range we enjoy!

"Listen, you FLIMFLAMMING FOX..." - (Boss to Slick in "Coltrane vs. Duke")

DENNIS Haskins

garbage

Dit is geweldig .

We certainly use the terms strike, spare and split. I've never had three strikes in a row, so I don't know about turkeys . Metric bowling obviously uses 10 pins - how many do you use?

Wow, that's a lot of snow. In the last 24 hours, I went bowling for the first time in over two years. The bowling alley is only across town, but I just never think to go there. Today I was part of a group of 10, and came second overall (none of us were great bowlers, so that's not saying much).

Hey, Roger, you obviously didn't get an electricity bill for $284bn like one of your neighbors . Full story here.

"Please Come to Boston" by Dave Loggins The Wikipedia page suggests that the "man from Tennessee" was Dave himself.

No snow here (we had some a couple of weeks ago), but there's a frost on my shed roof this morning. I had Christmas dinner with friends yesterday, and hope to be seeing different friends for dinner today. Most shops won't re-open until tomorrow, so it's likely to be a quiet day otherwise. Happy Christmas to all on HNet, and a belated Happy Birthday to MeadowMufn.

Great job (again). I don't think I've ever seen color comparisons done with models.

"And you can just start by ticketing that illegal snaZZy car..." - (Boss to Rosco in "To Catch a Duke")

You'd better hope that your service provider doesn't block access to HNet. I can't think of any reason why they would, but the new law means that they could if they wanted to. Before the law change, they weren't allowed to do things like that. Right from its inception, the Internet was supposed to be a level playing field, hence the reason why some of its founders cared enough to add their names to that letter. An unrestricted online experience has become a given freedom in the West. Countries that control what their citizens can see are generally frowned upon. This law isn't about the government controlling what you can see, but your ISP can. Admittedly, there's going to be a lot of scaremongering until the dust settles. None of that would be happening if they'd just left the original law alone.

I doubt that it will have any impact on HNet, but today's decision isn't the one I'd have wanted if I lived in the US. At present, all internet traffic is treated equally, so it doesn't matter if you're streaming a movie, shopping online with a multi-national company, looking up your local church group or reading HNet - it all has to be treated the same by your internet service provider (ISP). If today's changes go through, ISPs could provide a better/faster service for companies that paid them, or charge you more to use certain parts of the internet. The FCC was obviously quite happy to ignore a letter asking it to maintain net neutrality, despite signatories including “father of the internet”, Vint Cerf, the inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. So far, the Democrats plan to overturn the proposal, and Washington's governor says his state will protect net neutrality. From the ISPs, a statement from Comcast says "our internet service is not going to change."

The West Country accent may work well in Lord of the Rings, but here's a behind-the-scenes clip from the original Star Wars. It would have been a very different movie if they'd used Dave Prowse's own voice.

I get the feeling that some Americans expect everyone British to speak like Gaylord Duke or Iggins. The UK may be much smaller than the US, but there are a huge range of accents. I wonder how many are known in the US. Here's a video I found with some examples. They're not all spot on, but they'll give you an idea. I'm afraid that Americans also have a reputation for struggling with geography. I think you might like this example, Roger.