On my local neighborhood website, someone asked for recommendations for someone to clean their house on a ‘biweekly’ schedule.

That is a word that I avoid using because it has never been clear to me whether the user means once every two weeks or twice a week. I looked up Merriam-Webster’s dictionary and it gives both definitions. The Cambridge dictionary says that it means every two weeks in American English and “every two weeks or twice a week” for just English, which is not much help.

Clearly people who use it think it means only one or the other and have never encountered it being used with the alternative meaning. The less common word ‘fortnightly’ clearly means every two weeks and so perhaps that should be used when we want to say that and reserve ‘biweekly’ for twice a week.

But perhaps the best option is to simply say ‘twice a week’ or ‘once every two weeks’ and avoid any confusion.

I am not a fan of practical jokes in general because they tend to have an underlying mean streak that finds humor in unsettling, upsetting, or even frightening the targeted person. Perhaps among close friends practical jokes are marginally acceptable though if I had a friend who was a regular practical joker, they would not be my friend for long. I like to take people at face value and having to always second-guess the actions of someone else would get old very soon.
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The national parks in the US are truly wonderful, a tribute to many generations of the public that have seen the value in protecting lands for their beauty and historical value and have supported government attempts to preserve their pristine nature. Hence it is sad that some people are trashing the parks simply because there are few or no rangers on duty due to the Trump shutdown of the federal government.
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When I was young, we would as a family go to church at 11:00 pm on New Year’s Eve. The minister Rev. Arnold Cooper had an excellent sense of timing and the service would reach a climax right at midnight and he would pause while fireworks went off all over town and then briefly resume to give us an uplifting final blessing and send us on our way. During that pause, my father would slip a large denomination currency note into my hand, a tradition that I continued with my own children until they grew up and moved away. Then all the parishioners would mingle outside for awhile wishing each other all the best for the coming year. (This was Sri Lanka so it was warm and we could hang out outside indefinitely.) The family would then go home and eat and drink something before going to bed. It was low-key but nice.
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And that goes for this baby Hippo Fiona at the Cincinnati zoo.

Yesterday’s issue of the Plain Dealer had this tragic news item.

Deputy kills man holding gun to head

Authorities are investigating after a Wayne County Sheriff ‘s deputy shot and killed a man during a confrontation Sunday morning in the downtown area of Apple Creek. Deputies responded about 10:50 a.m. Sunday after receiving a call for assistance from the Apple Creek Police Department, the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office said in a post on Facebook. Deputies learned that a man armed with a handgun was behind a downtown business and threatening to shoot himself, the sheriff’s office said. Over the course of 34 minutes, law enforcement tried to de-escalate the situation. The man continued to hold a gun to his head and told authorities they were going to have to ”shoot him.” The man approached a deputy who told him multiple times to stop and drop the gun, the sheriff’s office said. The deputy fired one round from his rifle, hitting the man.

The man was holding a gun to his own head and threatening to shoot himself so the police shot him? I understand that a man advancing towards you with a gun is dangerous even if he is pointing it at his own head, since he could suddenly point it at you. But is shooting to kill the only option in such a situation?

This illustrates how the police in the US are poorly trained when it comes to dealing with deeply troubled people, treating them as if they are indistinguishable from violent and dangerous criminals.

Whenever I rail against unethical and rude behavior in sports, fans of curling have pointed out to me that that game exhibits the highest standards of sportsmanship and it did seem to be the case and I became a convert. Hence I was saddened to read about bad behavior in curling. In one case, a Russian curler was stripped of his Winter Olympics bronze medal after he admitted to doping

Krushelnitsky had initially protested his innocence after testing positive for the banned heart drug meldonium, claiming his drink had been spiked. However on Thursday he dropped his appeal before he was officially banned by the court of arbitration for sport.
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It means that the medal won by Krushelnitsky and his wife Anastasia Bryzgalova will be awarded to the Norway pair of Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten, who had originally finished fourth.

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As you may have noticed, the entire FreethoughtBlogs network was down for most of yesterday, but now seems to be up and running normally.

It was due to a technical issue and we are confident that neither Goerge Soros nor the Illuminatti were behind it.