Autumn Part II

Autumn Part II March 2004 | Filed under Melbourne, Photos | Comments (1)

Last night, disappointed by my team for the umpteenth time, I came home, downed the dregs of a bottle of wine, and went to bed. But all night, my brain churned through Geelong's mistakes and weaknesses; and so it was that I was awake just before seven, and heard the intermittent roar of burning air balloon fuel, and smelt its dizzying smell.

I pulled on my dressing-gown and went outside with my camera (I may yet end up added to this gallery) to get some shots, and although the balloons were a little too high for my 3x zoom, I felt the need to record the scene anyway. Another of the joys of Autumn in Melbourne.

Views from the Floor

Bec says:

Wow! I thought this was Jeffery Smart painting at first. :-)

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This sentence is not modelled on a luxury yacht

11 January 2008
Filed under Language, Text, The Media

People paid up to $US100,000 ($A115,000) for the inaugural Singapore Airlines A380 flight last year, in which first class suites with real beds were modelled on luxury yachts, after wiring glitches caused the plane’s delivery to be delayed by two years, causing EADS billions of dollars in losses.

This sentence was already too long when they decided to add the bit about the beds. Why on earth is it relevant, when reporting on an airport mishap, to note that the beds on the plane involved were modelled on luxury yachts?*

It’s a really common construction in stories coming straight off the wires and into the paper: you have the story, which is usually two or three short paragraphs, followed by a gargantuan sentence into which somebody has packed the entire history of the subject, with no regard to whether the clauses in the sentence relate to each other or to the story at large.

* Update: I can’t read.

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