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

>>Final [!] note on random. A string of digits is random if the shortest algorithm for reproducing them is the string of digits itself.

This looks good but . . . isn't it always so? 42 is shorter than 2x3x7; does that make it random?

One is always reminded at times like this of the Bumper Sticker that states>>"Practice Random acts of Kindness and Love"<< One usually notices this at about the same time as one smashes into the back of said car with the aforementioned bumper sticker. Leaving one to ponder the earthly ramifications of the term Random!......

I've been away on holidays for two weeks. I started to read the backlog of this normally interesting thread, but was horrified to find an offensive attack on TC by a loud-mouthed bigot by the name of rhynch, merely because she asked whether the original convict population of Australia could have had any effect on the language and attitudes of the country.

Can somebody please tell me when he's gone?

Recumbentman tells me that all those personal issues have been sorted out amicably, so apologies for my outburst in the previous posting. I'll resubscribe but keep my head down for a bit.

>> Actually, extreme fear and stress has the opposite effect. <<

The key word there of course is 'extreme'. I was thinking more the low grade persistent paranoia of drug users and traffickers who are second only to US border guards when it comes to being uptight.

Thanks for explaining 'bottle'. I had always taken 'lost his bottle' as some tangent from the notion of 'dutch courage' in the sense that a loss of one's bottle meant lacking the where-with-all to fortify one's resolve.

See, even after 5 years, the Brit Eng thread is still providing answers.


Here-abouts (Canada) we might describe the extreme letting go of autonomic self controls as being 'scared s**tless'. Or 'scaring the p**s outa someone'.


~jwf~

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As had I... Interesting.

I've had a chance to read through the backlog now and I'm crosser than ever. I see that Rhynch didn't in fact make any attempt to apologise for his insults to Trillian's Child in posting F19585?thread=100569&skip=10665. Everybody else seems to be ignoring this, but I'm not going to.

The British English thread has always been a place where we can politely discuss the language, with occasional forays into discussions of other brands of English. TC's speculations about the origins of Australian English were perfectly reasonable and polite - there was no reason why Rhynch should attack her in this way.

I'll be back when some sort of an apology is forthcoming.

I can't believe I can resurrect a 1970's joke I thought I'd never be able to tell again! And it fits in with the inappropriate use of a word which is currently being discussed.

A hippy finds a magic lamp and rubs it. A genie pops out and says, "You are my master. I will grant you anything you desire!"

"Cool, man! A wish!" says the hippy. "Genie dude, I wanna be uptight, out of sight and in the groove!"



The genie turns him into a tampon.

A nice demonstration of the perils of misunderstanding 'uptight'.

~jwf~: "Here-abouts (Canada) we might describe the extreme letting go of autonomic self controls as being 'scared s**tless'. Or 'scaring the p**s outa someone'."

Also normal in Britain, although the latter phrase tends to suffer from the common practice of substituting one cuss word for another, regardless of actual meaning, hence: "You scared the f**k out of me!"

Exactly the same thing here in Ozland,"you scared the>> insert any and all swear words)out of me!"..All depends on the seriousness of the scare and its location at the time. From mild swear word to extreme.

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I remember that one going around my (girls') high school!

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" I remember that one going around my (girls') high school! "

You had a school genie?

Or just one tampon amongst you?

Tee hee! A school genie, now that would've been ! (I meant the joke, of course, )

Coins new Pope selection joke:
Q What's the difference between a conclave and an autoclave.
A You're likely to get more heat in a conclave.

Resurrects another old joke (From when Pope John Paul died) - Do you think the next pope will take the name George Ringo?

The post Gnomon takes exception to, 10666, ends with a soothing gesture "Peace be layed upon you," which unfortunately is immediately undermined by "even if it is a large weight dropped from a great height"

To show that this is meant in a spirit of banter it is followed by ...... ....

I expect what Gnomon would like to see is a pacific gesture without the humorous withdrawal. Shouldn't be hard.

Nothing on the capital for 'I', and not for 'you'?

I remember asking a similar question quite a while ago now. I did get an answer, but that was in quieter times when this thread was a bit more tied to its subject than currently.
Not that I am sugegsting trawling the backlog though! I'll see if I can recall it.

memory seems to suggest that the capital I came about due to reasons of legibility in early manuscripts. Something to do with the old first person pronoun of ic/ich turning into i and the i being capitalised to identify it as a seperate word and not part of other words.
But then I also seem to recall something about the i being originally without the '.' on top and that it moved from just a line to a line with another line above it, and that line both reduced to a '.' to make the lowercase and extended down to meet the rest of the letter thereby producing a single longer vertical stroke which became the upper case.

Although this is all from my blessed memory so it may well be a load of whatsit.