[Mark McDonnell]

I do think Kevin's first post which he addressed to Aaron (#13) was a bit rude, given that the topic up to then had been lighthearted banter about a technical issue — the strange phenomenon of being able to change your own thread titles. It was basically the sound of a man saying "and another thing", hours after an argument has ended. In this case the argument being the whole sonnet/non sonnet, modern/traditional poetry hoo-ha from a few weeks back. S'what I reckon anyways.

Of course, at the root of all this is the fact that Kevin is a Trump supporter. That's the Big Capitalised Elephant in the room. Opinions about such beings among non-Trump supporters range from 'more to be pitied than scolded' to 'unredeemable fascist'. I'm staying out of it.

I agree this isn't a flame war, Jayne. It's barely even a hoo-ha.

[Aaron Novick]

Kevin's first reply to me was of course intended as an attempt to get back at me for my persistent rudeness to Kevin in other threads, and Kevin's suggestion to the contrary is a flimsy lie. As far as I am concerned, Kevin is well within his rights to be rude to me, since I think he is a terrible human being and let few opportunities pass to remind him of this (including this very post). For my part, I shall try to let this post be my last statement on the matter, since I expect my and Kevin's mutual distaste is more tiresome than amusing to the rest of the Sphere. But for all I know I shall be no more successful in this than Mark is at staying away from political threads in general (). Ah, we Sphereans are a sorry bunch, and I love us. Except Kevin, of course. Fucking hate that guy.

[Brian Allgar]

People who omit upper-case letters where required should be severely chastised. Bring back non-capital punishment!

[Matt Q]

Hi Jayne,

One thing that's puzzling me is why you'd need a plural form of the University of the Third Age. Is there more than one? And if so, wouldn't each one be a "university of the third age", and in lower case? I'm trying to think of parallels. There isn't a plural of "the University of Sussex", say, albeit, there are two universities in Sussex.

-Matt

[Jayne Osborn]

Hi Matt. There are over a thousand U3As in the UK.
We have fourteen U3As in our county.
The "university" part is a bit of a misnomer and puts some people off. The U3A (I just can't bring myself to write u3a) is basically a club for retired people. No qualifications are needed and none given.

Jayne

[Julie Steiner]

OBVIOUSLY, AARON IS THE ANTI-TRUMP. BECAUSE TRUMP HAS A WELL-DOCUMENTED FONDNESS FOR ALL CAPS. SAD!

In other news...well, it's not really news anymore, since I've been gritting my teeth about it for seven years now...apparently if you donate $30 million to fund a new public library, you can put whatever typographical tomfoolery you want into its name, and people who gave much less (including my husband and myself) will just have to put up with it:

San Diego Central Library @ Joan Λ Irwin Jacobs Common

The first time I saw it, I assumed that someone had made a typographical error by hitting Shift-6 (^) instead of Shift-7 (&). But then I saw that typo happening enough times that I realized it must not be a typo at all, but intentional.

Also, it's not ^ (which is at least findable on a standard keyboard). It's Λ. The mathematical symbol for "and," apparently.

Every time I have to type this combination of @ and Λ, I think @Λ*#$!

With emphasis on the $.