Excuses, excuses, excuses!

If he is really such a cool dude, he would have an Amex Centurion, whose Home Concierge would have sorted the mess in the blink of an eye. They can get the car MOT-ed and road-taxed, and congestion charges can be paid in advance or ex-post on-line.

But then again, ah the joys of appearing in the Daily Mail, the worst of all those tabloids!

Excuses, excuses, excuses!

If he is really such a cool dude, he would have an Amex Centurion, whose Home Concierge would have sorted the mess in the blink of an eye. They can get the car MOT-ed and road-taxed, and congestion charges can be paid in advance or ex-post on-line.

But then again, ah the joys of appearing in the Daily Mail, the worst of all those tabloids!

Sounds exactly like a hand-crafted Taleb anecdote sprung to life.

I expect to read about this guy making tomato soup from ketchup packets in "Black Swan II: I Told You So."

Sounds exactly like a hand-crafted Taleb anecdote sprung to life.

I expect to read about this guy making tomato soup from ketchup packets in "Black Swan II: I Told You So."

"Truth [is] stranger, then fiction".

So you are effectively saying "Truth is stranger, and after that, truth is fiction."

WTF is that supposed to mean?

I think he lifted his clever parking expense comment from an old joke recounted in a book called Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes. A rich man walks into a bank asks to take out a loan for $200, he accepts the 10% interest rate and leaves his exotic luxury auto for collateral. 6 months later he returns from overseas, pays his $10 in interest, and takes back his keys, remarking along the lines of "nowhere else could I safely store my auto for 6 months at the cost of $10 while traveling." As an aside, if this guy almost loses his OWN Maserati because of required paperwork repeatedly falling through the cracks for months on end, how is he to be trusted with YOUR money in his fund in an industry that seems to required a fair amount of paperwork to be kept up with?

>>> WTF is that supposed to mean?

It means you're in the wrong nazi army, that's not a grammatical error it's a typographical error. A grammatical error is one made due to a misunderstanding of grammar, typo's are just carelessness. Maybe you should call yourself an "editorial nazi." Definitely a Colonel Klink.

Oh look, a peeveblogger! I am referring to "grammar nazi", of course, not to Andi. Although if grammar nazi were truly clued-in, he/ she would know that the word 'nazi' was short for 'nazionalist' and as far as I know, grammar is not a nation at all. I do however understand that his/ her name stands for the metaphor of an ethnic extremist, which, um, lands grammar nazi in even hotter water than Andi's correction to his/ her comment does.

(For context on peeveblogging, see languagelog.com)

Andi: I hate to say this but that apostrophe in "typo's" is redundant and it is a grammatical error, not a typographical one, no? :-)

Is punctuation grammar? There is an erroneous notion that plural abbreviations or words ending in a vowel require an apostrophe.

My use of that apostrophe was pure carelessness, much like Paul's use of 'then.' I am unrepentant and unmoved by nazis.

A blatant, careless disregard for rules and a dagger plunged deep into the hearts of nazis everywhere.

Andi: Actually a lot of grammar is focused on punctuation. How else do you think people learn about the use of semi-colons, for instance?

That notion is erroneous indeed. But without your note above, it was hard to know whether to attribute that superfluous apostrophe to carelessness or to the said erroneous notion :-)

I pity grammar nazi, although Mr K is a self-confessed card-carrying grammar nag himself...

Grammar is indeed important, as important as communication itself.

OTOH one can communicate well while breaking some rules. Breaking rules that don't actually impair communication and won't get me jailed is just part of who I am, deal with it.

Aren't semi-colons misnamed? If a colon consists of 2 dots placed vertically with respect to one another, I would think a semi-colon would be perhaps only 1 hovering dot, so as not to confuse itself with a period. It could also be represented as 2 half dots. It clearly should not be represented as a dot and a comma and still, in good conscience, refer to itself as a semi-colon. I am now picturing a semi-colon as the internal body part that's leftover after one has a portion of one's colon removed. Needless to say, that organ has no commas or periods associated with it.

my guess if he had a Amex Centurion, he likely would have been late on the payment... and they would not have helped him.

oh ya, not cool to make fun of ones vocabulary on a news group. not cool.

FAG!