Some bands are like Trigger (from Only Fools and Horses, for non-UK readers). Trigger, who was a street-sweeper by trade, proudly boasted that he'd had the same broom for many years. Of course he'd replaced the brush many times, and also the broom-handle several times, but overall it had lasted well! There are quite a few bands soldiering on with (it appears) only the name left from the original lineup!

It's probably curious. Cats are like that. If you let it come and go as it pleases it will soon let you know if it wants to move in and adopt you. If it keeps disappearing for long periods, it probably has a home to go to. Just hope it's not an un-neutered tom!

I have a book, a collection called "Great Short Stories of the English Speaking World" (or something like that) whose foreword explains that writing a great short story is far harder than writing a great novel. Perhaps the principle is more widely applicable than I thought!

I remember being taught that price is a balancing factor - it moves to balance supply with demand. You can think of it as the pivot of a see-saw, with supply at one end of the see-saw and demand at the other; as supply or demand change price will always move one way or the other to ensure the see-saw stays horizontal. I'm no economist but the idea seems to capture market behaviour quite nicely.

I think you should take your own advice. You seem to be remarkably intolerant of anyone not conforming to your world view.

I would hope that entry standards to college or university are these days still sufficiently high that anyone so admitted would know the meaning, given that matriculation is what has just happened to them!🙄

"A little learning is a dangerous thing." I forget which historic figure said that, but it certainly holds true even today!

"Matriculate: to be formally admitted to study at a university or college." Cambridge English Dictionary. Hard to see what the word has to do with eliciting sales! The only useful thing about Marketing is it keeps useless people off the streets.

I didn't say you did. I was making an observation, that's all. Maybe you need to consider that opinions that differ from yours are just as valid?

Well, watching a game from a seat in the stadium and watching the same game on TV are most definitely not equivalent. Watching on TV shows you what is happening but you just don't have anything like the experience that the whole immersion in the stadium atmosphere brings. So going to space and seeing it through a telescope are quite different things - ask any astronaut!

This kind of behaviour is why outside work I haven't touched MS software for decades now. If I could find a convenient way to avoid Apple & Google I would too, but by the time I twigged what they are up to I was too far in; what they don't know about me isn't worth knowing, and adverts go right over my head anyway. 😉

If a decent source control system is in use (surely one will be), the first thing he would stumble on is who created the bug, and when. Good luck with talking your way out of that!😂

Leadership and management are two distinct and different skills. Only a very few exhibit both in equal measure.

People are generally promoted until they reach their own level of incompetence. No point in bitching about this because it applies universally, including to oneself; and we all want to be promoted to as high up the ladder as we can get.

It all sounds a bit desperate to me. If you're not enjoying your coffee, why not drink something else instead? Coffee's pretty overrated anyway, IMHO.

I sometimes think the media should form the next government; they clearly have all the answers....

I stick to the speed limit at all times, and it's noticable that I almost always build a queue of vehicles behind me, which makes it clear that they would all willfully break the speed limit if I wasn't in the way. It's a shocking indictment of motorists in my country, if you think about it. The attitude appears to be that it's ok to break the law (unless they're the victim, of course, that's different); the crime is getting caught.

Isn't "verbing" itself a good example of exactly the same abomination?🙄

Comes the revolution, Marketing/Advertising folk should be first up against the wall, "for the cold blooded murder of the English tongue". I'm half-joking, but only half. Professor Higgins captured it nicely : "Why can't the English teach their children how to speak? Norwegians learn Norwegian, the Greeks are taught their Greek....."

I wouldn't bet on that!