I'm reading it as two separate things. If she means the rising cost of both things, then "has" would be correct, and she might recast the sentence a bit for clarity. But I'm not sure how you get a rising "cost" of spending.
And don't you ever stand for that sort of thing. Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back! ... You got the right same as anyone to live and try to kill people.
Mal ,'Our Mrs. Reynolds'
Natter 66: Get Your Kicks.
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, pandas, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
Amy - Jul 06, 2010 9:50:51 am PDT #10677 of 30001
Because books.
Jesse - Jul 06, 2010 9:51:28 am PDT #10678 of 30001
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.
Oh, I was reading it the way Jesse was: the rising cost of [healthcare and healthcare spending]. But I guess that doesn't make sense.
Exactly the train of thought I was just heading down... Is it the cost of healthcare spending? Hmmm.
I say re-write the sentence! (I know it's too late...)
Sophia Brooks - Jul 06, 2010 9:51:45 am PDT #10679 of 30001
Cats to become a rabbit should gather immediately now here
Oh- I think they were reading it like Jesse, and I was reading it like Amy! The whole sentence is a bit of a mess grammatically.
Sophia Brooks - Jul 06, 2010 9:52:27 am PDT #10680 of 30001
Cats to become a rabbit should gather immediately now here
I say re-write the sentence! (I know it's too late...)
I think she should, to, and she did ask me to read it, but it is her opening sentence and I am sure she has slaved over it!
Daisy Jane - Jul 06, 2010 9:58:27 am PDT #10681 of 30001
"This bar smells like kerosene and stripper tears."
But slaving over it sometimes means you don't see the problems. If she gave it to you to read, I would let her know.
Atropa - Jul 06, 2010 9:58:47 am PDT #10682 of 30001
The artist formerly associated with cupcakes.
Fizzy water, the new fire!
Cass, may I pleeeeeeeeease tag this?
§ ita § - Jul 06, 2010 9:59:27 am PDT #10683 of 30001
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.
It is apparently 61° where I work. Gnarrgh. All I know is it ain't right.
Burrell - Jul 06, 2010 10:01:53 am PDT #10684 of 30001
Why did Darth Vader cross the road? To get to the Dark Side!
Sophia, if she asked you to look it over, you should make the suggestion. She is always free to not follow your advice, right?
tommyrot - Jul 06, 2010 10:05:18 am PDT #10685 of 30001
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.
ION, what is up with the Huffington Post?
Huffington Post descends into creationist madness
Even in my more cynical moments I didn't think a premium progressive site like Huffington Post would give voice to a creationist nutbag. And not just any nutbag, a nutbag spewing the evolution-inspired-the-Nazi-holocaust garbage. Here's some of what my old buddy PZ, an actual evolutionary biologist, had to say:
I'll mention just one paragraph of this dishonest bunk.
Hitler's ideas, Dr. Berlinski carefully notes, "came from many different sources but no honest account will omit Darwin." A reading of Mein Kampf makes that clear. Certainly, Berlinski says, the men who formulated Nazi ideology "weren't reading the Gospels."
Here you go, a link to Mein Kampf on Project Gutenberg. Go to town. Search for Darwin — nothing. Or evolution — that is there, but only used in the sense of "higher" and "lower" organisms, and some bizarre notion that nature abhors crossbreeding.
It's one of the oldest and ugliest lies in the creationist bag of tricks: blame Darwin for the Holocaust. It's been debunked countless times. But waiting for creationist shills to tell the truth about anything is as foolish as waiting for a farm subsidies lobbyists to post objective nutritional data on corn syrup.
Tom Scola - Jul 06, 2010 10:08:41 am PDT #10686 of 30001
hwæt
HuffPo has been a home for crackpots for quite a while now: [link]