Causing Racism...........?

So why the fuss about a *bird* with avian flu then? Scaremongering, nothing less.

To me. :-) It's such an obvious conclusion. It may not have been the reason behind its origin, but it must have helped the idea catch on.

Nice story.

In Germany the "Sparschwein" existed as early as the 13th century.

What you think is irrelevant when we're discussing the meaning of a word.

It's relevant if we're trying to decide if something is racist or not.

If by `power base` you mean `in their branches and advertising` then they have the right (indeed responsibility, to their shareholders) to do all that they can, legally, to make as much money as possible. I don't care if their advertising features piggy banks or not, but if they've calculated that they'll lose out from potential sales to Muslims by showing piggy banks then they're making the right decision by not featuring them. I mean, this is mickey mouse logic.

To read your original post it's as if I couldn't start my own bank called the `bank of pig` and give away free piggy banks to all new members!

Perhaps you'd be better off plying your irrational hatred of muslims on another usenet group populated by less stupid posters - uk.misc, for instance?

If by `power base` you mean `in their branches and advertising` then they have the right (indeed responsibility, to their shareholders) to do all that they can, legally, to make as much money as possible. I don't care if their advertising features piggy banks or not, but if they've calculated that they'll lose out from potential sales to Muslims by showing piggy banks then they're making the right decision by not featuring them. I mean, this is mickey mouse logic.

To read your original post it's as if I couldn't start my own bank called the `bank of pig` and give away free piggy banks to all new members!

Perhaps you'd be better off plying your irrational hatred of muslims on another usenet group populated by less intelligent posters - uk.misc, for instance?

One Virus Two Virii Three Viriii Four Viriv Five Virv Ten Virx Fifty Virl One Hundred Virc Five Hundred Vird One Thousand Virm

HTH, Alan

Indeed. One of the most disgraceful media "tricks" I read about recently was hyping up the MRSA superbug. Apparently tabloid journalists have been sending their hospital swabs to a particular, rather dodgy lab which virtually guarantees to give a positive MRSA result; curiously other labs get negative results with the same samples. See Ben Goldacre's excellent Bad Science website -

Good stuff, but why isn't the first one "One Viri"?

'cos then it would be plural, and you can't have one of a plural-thing.

rgds, Alan

No it wouldn't, because Roman "i" is singular. Oh, and, er, "us" is plural. :-)

Can't I? You stingey so-and-so! If only you'd asked nicely, you could have had one of my chips.

Biscit wrote

We looked for a Piggy-bank when our first grandchild was born, but could we find one? There were some ridiculously expensive silver ones, but that kind of missed the point. In the end we bought him a Piggy dog.

Close, Star and Express. Although the only source I found online was from an Australian paper:

Please go and study the second declension of Latin nouns. Then compare it with the fourth declension.

Sigh. That's "us" as in "jokes R us". Sorry, but the smiley *was* there, I don't know how I could have made it more obvious.

Yes, I'm well aware of those declensions, thank you very much, but the point is moot since, strictly speaking, virus has no plural at all in Latin, and even if it had had, it certainly wouldn't have been virii (which is nothing more than nerd-speak), or else the singular would have to have been virius (cf radius/radii). We don't know whether it would have been viri or virus (do we?), nor whether the fact that viri is also the plural of vir would have made virus a stronger candidate.