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LONDON (Reuters) - More than 200 years after they went out of fashion in Britain, professional hermits are back in the job market A newspaper advertisement seeking a resident hermit for the stately Shugborough Home in Staffordshire, central England, has prompted a flood of replies from men eager to ditch stressed-out modern life for a spot of peaceful cave-dwelling. "There have been a few hermits in Britain since their heyday but they've usually just been recluses and loners. This is the first time the job of a resident hermit has been advertised in more than 250 years," organizer Corinne Caddy told the Daily Express.
"(We) have been stunned by the number of applications we have received. It seems there are lots of people out there who just want to be a professional hermit," she said.
The successful applicant will be expected to live in a cave on the grounds of the estate and abandon human contact, except for scaring visitors -- and will probably have to give up shaving and bathing as well.
Artist Anna Douglas, who came up with the idea to highlight National Heritage Week, told the paper that it had been very fashionable in the 18th century to have a hermit living in a remote corner of an estate.
Hermits were always men and were paid handsomely in return for being tied to a five-year contract.
"We are keen to see whether we can recreate this fashion and whether people are equally eager to escape from the pressures of everyday life as they were in the 18th century," Douglas said.
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OK UKrs. Here's your chance.
TEd
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Pooh-Bah
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This is all very well, TEd, but I need more information before I apply:
First, about the cave - is it hermitically sealed?
The advert also begs the question of whether or not I provide my own bowl.
Will my shirt be hair conditioned?
If I get the sack, what happens to my sack-cloth?
If I'm to live in solitude, who is to sign my time-sheet?
Which Union negotiates my pay and conditioning?
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>Which Union negotiates my pay and conditioning?
wouldn't that be The Union, Jack?!
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Carpal Tunnel
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You guys are a barrel of laughs.  What I wanna know is, who's gonna complete the limerick? And thanks, TEd, for validating this news in black and white. We heard it on the radio (NPR, of course [ahem]) this morning but it was too early to take in fully....
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Pooh-Bah
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I think they only negotiate for the hermits who sit at the top of flag poles.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Who had a dead whore in his cave
She was rotten as hell
And beginning to smell,
but think of the money he'd save.
TEd
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I'd give you a styli(t)zed response, but I don't want you kept up in the air. You'll just have to sleep without a pillar.
I think you get the essenes of where this is going.
TEd
PS
"begs the question"???
Ahem!
TR
TEd
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"begs the question"???
Ahem!
Arright. Let's hear a definition of beg that fits what you want it to mean in the phrase begging the question and then show another common use of that definition.
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veteran
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Hmmm, couldn't find many backup references, TEd - even the BBC let me down. Don't know what I pay my license fee for!  However, Ananova ( http://makeashorterlink.com/?N2BA12971) provides a little further information - notably that hermits are "usually actors", and that the job is advertised in the luvvies' rag, The Stage. I'm sure that "hermit actor" is an oxymoron; but I might be thinking epsilon minus semi-moron.  Have to say I'd enjoy the scaring people bit. Only those pesky kids and their dog would be bound to spoil it.
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Hermits were always men and were paid handsomely
And if the man was ugly?...
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Pooh-Bah
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And if the man was ugly?...
... he'd be given filthy lucre.
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Pooh-Bah
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PS
"begs the question"???
Ahem!
TR
The question is totally avoided in the advert. I just ran the idea up the flag-pole to see who'd salute it.
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veteran
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And if the man was ugly?...
... he'd be given filthy lucre.Hermits often take a vow of silence - presumably they receive hush money.
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Pooh-Bah
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Hermits often take a vow of silence - presumably they receive hush money.
Their employer would get no thanks for it.
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The question is totally avoided in the advert.
TEd was complaining about what he perceived as your misuse of the phrase begging the question which has been used as a translation of the Latin petitio principii. This is a logical fallacy in which the assumption is made, tacitly or otherwise, that what one is trying to prove is a given. I challenged him to provide a definition of the word beg that fits his conception of the meaning of the phrase begging the question and then provide another expample of beg being used with this meaning.
My contention is that the phrase begging the question has spun out of the control of the Defenders of the Language; they should give up on begging the question and come up with a better translation of petitio principii.
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old hand
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Why are only men invited to apply? I think I could make a pretty good hermit... provided a T1 link in some hidden back room!
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Pooh-Bah
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Isn't the term "hermit" gender-free? I'm not aware of a masculine and femine form of the word. If that is so, one could infer that the post is open to applicants of any sex.
So - I see no reason why you should not become Miss Anthrope, 2002.
BTW, I've been wondering: if the hermit keeps a dog, would it be a cave canum?
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old hand
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But Rhuby, look! From TEd's original post: > Hermits were always men and were paid handsomely in return for being tied to a five-year contract.It's pretty bad when even a *cave* has a glass ceiling. 
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Hermits were always men
You gotta remember, Fibes, that was 250 years ago. There were a lot of things that were always done by men. This is the 21st century, ya know. Go ahead and apply.
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This is the 21st century, ya know. Go ahead and apply.Dunno, though - hermits have to be a bit smelly, and it's an established fact that women glow rather than perspire...
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Pooh-Bah
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paid handsomely in return for being tied
- and I'm a bit bothered about you getting involved in all this bondage business.
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TEd
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it's an established fact that women glow rather than perspire...
I dunno, Shona, after a couple years of not bathing or shaving any woman's gonna glow perty dang bright.
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Pooh-Bah
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Luvvies - a term current in UK for actors; I guess to do with their habit of calling each other "darling" or "love" - indeed, quite often using the term, "luvvy." All very camp, but not ever a sound indication of sexual orientation of the actor using the phrase, nor of the one it is used to.
The phrase became well-known generally during Tony Blair's first, successful, bid for return of a Labour government to parliament. A number of well-known actors supported his campaign and the papers were full of discussion about the effect of "the luvvies vote."
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Luvvies?ack-TOREs, TEd (dahling).
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Luvvies?
Interesting. My original (pure USn) reaction was diapers (nappies to y'all Brits) but I guess that's Huggies®.
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Pooh-Bah
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Luvvies?
Interesting. My original (pure USn) reaction was diapers The notion of being hugged by a diaper is not very appealing.
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The notion of being hugged by a diaper
[Shrug] And this is a Brit site.Yep, I can testify that we have Huggies and Pampers over here, and that my wife and I went totally environmentally unfriendly as regards sanitary arrangements for our kids when they were babies [loads of Huggies failing to rot away in a landfill site somewhere...]
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Don't feel bad Fishona, think of all the waste water you failed to polute, flushing away the waste, the chlorine bleach to disinfect, and if you kids got liquid (Sabin) polio vaccine, remember that is made with live, weakended polio virus, which then gets into water waste stream.
you didn't use fossile fuel to heat the water to wash, and the manufactures where all subject to much stricter contols in the amount of polution and waste they made during manufacturing.. but you as an individual could have added more of a load to waste water, with out any controls.
the thing about the environment, is, there are always choices, and there is no "clean" way to dispose of human waste... land fill or toilets, each has a down side.
(and there is also a US brand of disposable diapers called "Luv's")
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there is also a US brand of disposable diapers called "Luv's"
And I conflated them! Eewww!
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Don't feel bad FishonaSo sweet of you to make me feel better about this, Helen.  - and I think you're right, especially in saying: the thing about the environment, is, there are always choicesIt's about doing the best you reasonably can as individuals, but more especially about being intelligent consumers, thereby encouraging companies to subscribe to sound(er) environmental policies. Well, it's a nice idea.
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BTW, I've been wondering: if the hermit keeps a dog, would it be a cave canum?No, Rhuby...it would be a rockhound!
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luvvieWhen I hear this expression my mind automatically leaps to Mr. Howell (Jim Backus) in Gilligan's Island, who always called his wife Luvvie (or was it Lovey?) through his nose with the inimitable phony nasal cadence of the blue-booking "upper crust".
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Contrary to the assertion, "Hermits were always men", one could cite a couple instances to the contrary. Going from the divine to the ridiculous, there was Alibech, the associate of the hermit Rustico, from the Decameron.
More to the point, there was Dame Julian of Norwich, who is generally described as an "anchorite" which is the same thing as a hermit. Her book, Revelations of the Divine Love, had quite a vogue a few years ago. She lived for years in a walled-in cell attached to the outside wall of a church. And they didn't give her Amontillado, either.
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And I suppose they wouldn't take old farts anyway, because then you'd be a hermitage ...
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Dame Julian of Norwich, .... Her book, Revelations of the Divine Love,
Did it reveal that she was a herm-aphrod-ite?
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And, of course, the god of all hermiting would be Hermes.
And their scripture The Corpus Hermeticum!
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HOBOy. Has this thread deteriorated
TEd
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There was a young Hermit named Dave
His friends took him out to a rave
He drank and he danced
But he wasn't entranced
And he gladly returned to his cave
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journeyman
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There was a hermette called Davina
So successful that no one had seen her
Alone in her cave
Unwilling to shave
Davina needs someone to preen her
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Goodness me, lapsus--you really must share more with us. I didn't know you had it in you! I like it!
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