DCFOLK

the word is, there will be no preliminary round for the men's worlds the week i'm there -- which, in terms that will be useful to the non-curlers, means i will not be called upon to officiate and will therefore be bound to the curling club for less time than i might otherwise have been.

i will want to get a couple of games, natch, but my thursday (december 15, evening)* and saturday (december 17, daytime) appear to be unscheduled and not likely to get scheduled anytime soon.  i'll only be auto-mobile to the extent that datlowen lets me borrow his car, but hey!  wer möchte aushangen?  (hmm.  i'd better do a quick google and make sure aushangen isn't a genuine and totally obscene word in german.)  (extra-parenthetical remark:  how is it okay that wer means 'who' and wo means 'where'?  who decided that was a good idea?  [wanders off grumbling about false cognates])

*actually wednesday 14th in the daytime, thursday 15th all day, and friday 16th in the daytime as well, now that i think about it.  and, sunday 18th, who wants to have brunch someplace lovely and brunchie?  [bats eyelashes at fox-is-in-town brunch crowd]

language geekery wins again!

the other -- when was it?  last week, i guess, last thursday.  walking back toward civilization after seeing college friend in the sorcerer.  someone said something, and for some reason the word "sure" led the boys off on a tangent about roots.  in german the word is sicher, one said, and the english word "sure" must come from the same root, mustn't it?  and in dutch it's zeker, says another.  sicher and zeker -- and, i said, big deal, in english we have secure.

the day before yesterday, sicher told me he'd looked it up and sure enough sicher and secure both come from the latin root securus.  "you were right," he said.

"yes, i know," i said.

baby steps toward -- tezamenheid?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/01/AR2005120100583.html

South African Court Rules for Same-Sex Marriage

By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 1, 2005; 1:48 PM

JOHANNESBURG
Dec. 1 -- South Africa's highest court ruled on Thursday that gays and lesbians have a right to marry, and it gave the national parliament one year to change the words "husband" and "wife" to "spouse" in its marital laws.

Under the ruling, which was greeted by jubilation by gays and lesbians and frustration by some church leaders, South Africa will become the first African nation and the fifth in the world to extend full marital rights to same-sex couples.

( as usual, reproduced here because the link requires registration. )