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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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fredmoore - 07:58pm Nov 7, 2003 EST (# 16805 of 16832)

A rich vocabulary can often be a good defence. Australians are famous for their vocabulary and indeed for making up words. This from today's Sydney Morning Herald.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/07/1068013393539.html

They are our etymological equivalents of the native bilby; not quite as extinct as the thylacine but sadly on their way out. After all, how many of us still know the meaning of a "brasco" or a "drack"? The Canberra-based Australian National Dictionary Centre, which compiles The Australian National Dictionary and The Australian Oxford Dictionary, has released its first annual list of what it considers to be the nation's most endangered words and expressions. Bruce Moore, its director, said the list is not necessarily an attempt to revive the words, but more of an effort to trace usage, if any, of the terms and phrases so that they can documented for posterity before they completely slip from our lips and texts. "These are the words that have been worrying me for a while," he said. "It's important to us at the centre because we are a place that has a function to maintain a historical record of Australian English. It's interesting for us to see when these words start disappearing.

Australia's endangered words and expressions

1. bogey A swim or bathe; a bath. Also a verb to swim, to bathe. Some parts of Australia still have a bogey hole meaning a swimming hole. The word is a borrowing from the Dharuk Aboriginal language, and was first recorded in 1788.

2. brasco A toilet. In 1967 the Kins Cross Whisper claimed this was a play on words, meaning where the brass nobs go. Perhaps not entirely dead, since the popular writer Robert G. Barrett still uses it occasionally, but it is a rare bird.

3. cobber This probably ultimately goes back to a Yiddish word meaning friend, comrade. It first appeared in Australian English in the 1890s. It is still widely known, but often used self-consciously. It is not used by the young.

4. drack This means unattractive, unprepossessing, as in she looks a bit drack. It appeared in the 1940s, and probably derives from the film Draculas Daughter. Certainly not used by young people.

5. full up to dolly's wax So full that you could eat no more. It derives from the time when dolls had wax heads.

6. like the cocky on the biscuit tin Someone left out of things, denied inside knowledge. Goes back to the days when Arnotts biscuits were sold in a round tin with a picture of a parrot on the lid. The cocky was on the tin and not in it.

7. Mark Foy Rhyming slang (probably Sydney based) for boy. From the name of the department store.

8. more hide than Jessie Jessie was an elephant at the Taronga Park zoo. She died in 1938.

9. poke borack at To make fun of a person, to ridicule a person. The word borack comes from a Victorian Aboriginal language where it meant nonsense. At a later date people tried to remodel the phrase as to poke borax at, but even this variant seems to have largely disappeared.

10. scone-hot Especially in the phrase to go a person scone-hot meaning to attack someone, esp. verbally to become angry with someone. Almost completely disappeared I think.

Source: The Australian National Dictionary Centre

Any criticisms of this post will be rightly dismissed with the following:

Why that's a hipocratical, cantabbelian, nonsensical, biggoted preposterosity!

To Rshow:

Don't sit around like a cocky on a biscuit tin, cobber, stick their drack heads down the brasco and put your boot up their bogeys.

cantabb - 08:04pm Nov 7, 2003 EST (# 16806 of 16832)

fredmoore - 07:58pm Nov 7, 2003 EST (# 16805 of 16805)

This just in from the veld-barnyard !

Any criticisms of this post will be rightly dismissed with the following:

Why that's a hipocratical, cantabbelian, nonsensical, biggoted preposterosity!

Still hurting, eh ?

Still trying to cover up your deficiencies (CYAD), fred "Irregardless" moore ?

fredmoore - 08:31pm Nov 7, 2003 EST (# 16807 of 16832)

cantabb - 08:04pm Nov 7, 2003 EST (# 16806 of 16806)

SP15939FMR (See post 15939 for my reply) IDYOT!

Oh BTW, just to remind everyone of your commanding, egalitarian prescence (NOT):

cantabb - 09:08pm Nov 5, 2003 EST (# 16596 of 16806)

"YOUR Ignorance about US shows -- just as your overt hostility." the penultimate sence in my last post.

That was supposed to be a correction of his previous post?

Let's see you lose it again ...

Watch him step out of his barnyard and into his gutter for this one kiddies! PS don't try this at home.

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