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

Has someone else invented very small smelling salts? Or could I, perhaps, capture this niche market?

though they can be quite startling.

How can you tell whether a fruit fly has fainted?

(Did you know fruit flies like a banana?)

It's quite dramatic, apparently; they all flop to the bottom of their glass jar when the temperature goes above a certain limit. Normal fruit flies can bear the heat, but these ones have a defective enzyme making them heat-sensitive. When the temperature goes back down they wake up and fly about again.

That is one of the best "Murphy's Law"-list items: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana".

Not quite the same without the first part.

Thank you friends for the hour (literally) of entertainment provided by your ramblings in my absence from the end of May.
From the far off days when I studeied the history of English, I have retained the notion that 'skirt' and 'shirt' originally referred to the same garment, that a 'shoal of fish' was the same as a 'school of fish" and that the two pubs in Leeds called the 'Shire Oak' and the 'Syrack' referred to the same tree under which moots of the shire used to be held. The SK pronunciation was from the Vikings and the SH from the Anglo-Saxons. There are one or two other examples, and I have always felt this explained the different ways of saying 'schedule'

"The SK pronunciation was from the Vikings and the SH from the Anglo-Saxons."

No skit?

In German, the word "der Rock" can mean,(apart from a type of music) both a skirt and a jacket.

Oh, and W - welcome back. I have been trying to remember your expression for making a mistake when correcting someone else's - it seemed appropriate on a couple of other threads recently and I was racking my brains trying to remember it. Of course, not knowing what I was looking for, I couldn't search for it.

Why do we say "racking my brains" and is it spelt like that or is it spelt "wracking" and what else can one rack or wrack?

rack a my soul in the bosom of Abraham

>> ..(bearing in mind the reference to Nova Scotia - oops, that's unfair, because ~jwf~ is temporarily incommunicado).. <<

"The actual degree of stiffness may vary widely from goat to goat and is based on a number of factors, including age, species purity, and degree of fright."

That's a goat quote. I didn't say it.
Apparently I'm in some communicado somewhere.
Fear not, they tell me it's only a temporary condition.


~jwf~

>> Why do we say "racking my brains" ..<<

Logic tells me it refers to the medieval torture device called 'the rack' upon which a body was stretched until it spilled the Truth.

It may simply be a visual pun. Or it would be if imagination is allowed to make the perhaps overly-dramatic leap to torture devices from observing an energetic and frustrated head-scratching.

We all put our hands to our heads to remember, some scratch their heads quite vigorously which would necessarily induce some scalp-stretching. Curiously, head scratching, lip biting, humming and other stimulations of the face and cranium often produce effective results in recalling obscure details.

Memory does seem to be coded in the sense of touch, and deeper memories often require the most bizarre stimulating behaviours. A short list would include almost inaudible hums and whistles, teeth grinding, clucking, murmurs, head banging, forehead slapping as well as the aforementioned dandruff raking. Raking, racking.

Did I mention ?
Their brains may be in their racks.


~jwf~

>> ..the same tree under which moots of the shire used to be held. <<

What a lovely phrase, 'moots of the shire'.
Please tell me it means what I think it means. I see the ancient out of doors equivalent of a town-hall-meeting, a forum for public opinion and debate seeking concensus.


~jwf~

TC - pedantic reverberation? and I agree torture racks
jwf - that's exactly what it meant. Two things right in one morning! What is the world coming to?

Sorry - seem to have had a couple of typos in my first back, the important one being that the name of the other pub was SKyr/ack.
And sky and shy mean the same thing if you're throwing a ball in the air, but probably not in other circumstances.
schiff and skiff, TC?
A skip, meaning a rubbish container or a lift in a coal mine, seems to be of Norse origin also.

Do you look up and to the left when you are trying to remember something.I'm beginningnto wonder wether head massage might be a useful tool for clearing the brain.I wonder wether depression might be a clogging of the brainthat needs to be moved on..

According to my dictionary from OE gemot, an assembly.

A moot point - suitable for debate at such an assembly.

Noggin

Where one can go through a gamut of topics, presumeably?

ah but(said the goat) is it not mute point ? quitely stated
as for racking wine and lamb are two examples that spring to mind, i presume derivative of stack as in pileing up, but then again i might be way of the mark.
I better hold my toungue(finger in this case) before i act like a fool that i am.
trillian
a mistake when correcting someone else's - it seemed appropriate on a couple of other threads
pot calling the kettle black

No, sorry. debating points certainly aren't 'mute'. They are 'open to discussion' - hence 'moot' like the mock trial things that law students have.
Common swans, however, are mute. I'm still looking for the collective noun for a plurality of swans, btw.

"A lamentation of swans" is the most poetic although "A wedge of swans (flying)" and "a bevy of swans"(on land) were also found.

Sorry for the detour:
I have just found out that straitlaced as a) spelt 'strait' not 'straight' and b) is one word not two.

I always thought it was straight laced and related to the exacting dress sense of one who is so described, i.e. they go to the level of ensuring that their clothing laces are straight, an exacting attention to detail.

Is it the same 'strait' as one would find in nautical terms? If so, how does that work then?

Oh, and why one word? Does that mean that the 'laced' bit of it does not mean 'laced' as I thought until today?

Ictoan,

It depends on your source, it seems:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=straitlaced

more than a screenful.