h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That's a great answer, but it's not correct

How do you learn to "con" the son's of ants?

"I also learned that many languages have no issues with syllables starting with sounds like "pt" or "ps" as English does" [Baron Grim]

Engish is somewhat variable with that. Obviously, "
psychology" doesn't pronounce the "p", but when you have syllablesin the middle of a word you can have both the p and s pronounced, as with Peter Rabbits sisters Flopsy and Mopsy, or the name of the river Wapsipinicon. Though arguably you could say the the syllabification in Wapsipinicon has the p in the first syllable and the s in the second.

I absolutely would argue that these Ps and Ss are in separate syllables. It's definitely "Flop-see" and "Mop-see", not "Flah-psee" and "Mah-psee".


Here's a link to the Reddit discussion I read regarding sounds like /pt/ and /ps/ and the concept of "phonotactics".

http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/82jrse/til_the_two_parts_to_the_word_helicopter_are_not/dvaxpsn/

I found that the new MS Windows is highly irritating!
Why they must tweek things!!!

Its much harder than hearding wild cats!

Microsoft enjoyed a near-monopoly for years, thanks to the U.S. gummint. What happens with monopolies is that they don't care much what many of their customers think or want. If they ever did, that is...

TIL

Today I learned that for many years, until fairly recently, the most expensive film ever was _Captain EO_, the Disney/Lucas/Michael Jackson ride/film from 1985. In 1985 it cost a million dollars per minute (17). This cost per minute, adjusted for inflation has only recently been surpassed by newer, regrettable Disney projects.

http://youtu.be/fLous1QfzWk

Michael who?

Yeah, not the beer hunter.

Here's a cute one. Urchin is an archaic word for hedgehog, so sea urchins are really sea hedgehogs.

How about Sea Cucumbers? They seeemed to be very plentiful in the soups I ate in Taiwan when I was there.

OK... You're looking in a full length (flat) mirror. How large is your reflection?


If you're standing 1 meter away from the mirror, your image will appear to be 2 meters away. Let's say you have a dry-erase marker on a stick. You place marks on the mirror to indicate the top of your image's head and the tips of your image's toes.


Now, let's stand 10 meters away from the mirror. Your reflected image will appear 20 meters away. Let's hand someone else the marker and tell them where to mark the mirror.


Guess how large your reflection is...




No matter how close or far from the mirror you stand, your reflection will be half you're actual height.

And this is important....why?

It's not necessarily important, but I learned this today and found it mildly interesting.

http://youtu.be/zRP82omMX0g

That I like.

We could petition to have 2x magnification mirrors only to counter this defect..

Part of the reason I was particularly interested goes back to my days in high school.

I did VERY well in science classes, but my freshman year biology teacher had it in for me. I still believe she purposely "misplaced" my lab project after I turned it in, costing me my A and dooming me to the general "physical sciences" class my sophomore year.

The physical sciences "teacher" was primarily the drill team/color guard/"flags" instructor. She was given a couple of science classes to pad out her schedule. I repeatedly had to correct her on basic science concepts like the direction of an electrical current (while the electrons flow from - to +, the current is considered to flow in the reverse direction). When we looked at the focal points of convex, flat, and concave mirrors she was again confused, placing the focal point of a concave mirror behind it. When I questioned this (correcting her) she took me out of class to scold me, explaining that "while you may be smarter than the other students in this class, I'm just trying to explain it in a way they'll understand." I replied, "OK, but it's completely WRONG!"



That damn wasted year cost me my opportunity to take Physics II in my senior year.

"Authority" figures who are afraid of being wrong and so can't stand to be corrected are the worst.

Baron, I am so sorry that happened to you.