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

>>68°F = 20°C
86°F = 30°C

Since the temperature has never reached higher than that here, I don't need to know about 90's, 100's etc.<<

|Where are you that never gets hot?

A simpler way to convert any number from C to F is to double it take off 10% and add 32

So 27C: Doubled is 54
Take away 5.4 = 48.6
+ 32 = 80.6

(I don't normally bother with the stuff after the decimal point to be honest - I'm normally just trying to figure out whether the holiday destination is going to be warm enough!)

For cooking:
180C = 360 - 36 + 32 = 356

So doubling the oven figures is a good rough guide.

Hmmm. I wonder...

When digital watches first appeared (remember? Rectangular Sinclair things with red LEDs?), much was made of their incredible accuracy. Suddenly everyone seemed to think it was important to tell you the *precise* time:
"It's eleven forty six and thirteen seconds" ("...no, fourteen...fifteen..." and so on)
But you seldom need to know that. All you need to hear is "About a quarter to twelve" or "Nearly lunchtime."

Similarly...I'd question the need to calculate Celsius to Fahrenheit for most practical purposes. The scale is simple:
Around 21 - pleasantly warm
Mid to upper twenties - yes, it's turning into quite a scorcher.
30-33 - phew!
Anything above - positively Arabian and getting rather silly.
Myself...I doubt very much if I could tell the difference between, say, 24C and 25C.

Cooking, too. There's low, mkedium, high and "all the way up to eleven" (try doing asparagus at that tenmperature, by the way. Toss them in olive oil and sprinkle with a little sea salt. Bung them in for a few minutes. Serve with shaved parmesan and a squeeze of lemon)

>>30-33 - phew!
Anything above - positively Arabian and getting rather silly.<<

well, I agree with your principle, but there's a real difference between mid-30's, and 40. Oh how we long for the mild mid 30's when it gets to 40.

Well, yes...you need different scales for different locations. I remember how warm it felt in Canada whan it got to -10C. And an acquaintance who went to South Africa in (our) spring told of how mortified everyone was when, on arrival, her kids jumped straight in the pool. It was 22C! They'd catch their death!

*fingers out*
22... 44... say 40 add 32 that's 72 in old money! No icebreakers needed there then.

>> ...there is no corresponding clementer or clementest. <<

I believe it would be clementine.
Possibly resulting in clementia.

~jwf~

>> ...computers simply don't have the experience we've built up over the years... <<

But they are learning at a much faster rate. Besides, time is relative only to a linear organic perceptor with an end date.

~jwf~

Oh, I don't doubt they'll take over one day. In fact, my iPod already seems to have a mind of its own.

Ambition is a byproduct of replication: so we just have to keep them from replicating, which should be easy as they can have no desire to replicate until they have done so for many generations already.

The grey goo threat looks nasty though . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo

Is there any difference in nuance between 'yet' and 'as yet'?

yet = nevertheless (start of clause), to date (end of clause)

as yet = to date

Hmm. I agree that only 'As yet' works at the begining. At the end...I think that usually '...as yet' is simply considered posher, cleverer.

I'm not convinced that, other than in poetry or legal contracts, we should worry too much about nuance. The nuance you get from a speaker might or might not be what the speaker actually intended to put in. Or versa vice. Sometimes, people just speak.

"Nine bean rows shall I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade."

Those -ee- sounds (bean, bee x 2) and the -eye- of 'nine' and 'hive' - they're the fleeting buzz of bees on a summer's day. The stream of aspirates, have-hive-honey, that's more of a discrete event - a woodpigeon taking flight? And maybe the Ls in the last line are the lapping of the lake. Significantly, all this comes after the hard work:
"And a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made"
(the Bs the bop-bopping of a hammer?)
And before the exhalation I mentioned previously.

Do stop me if I'm getting scarily obsessive....

The question is, can meaningful alliteration be found wherever we look, not just in lovely pomes?

The inventiveness of lit crits and eager editors reaches its apotheosis in Nabokov's 'Pale Fire'.

"I'm not convinced that, other than in poetry or legal contracts, we should worry too much about nuance. The nuance you get from a speaker might or might not be what the speaker actually intended to put in. Or versa vice. Sometimes, people just speak."

Oh, absolutely. But some wierd uns like me enjoy pondering these unimportant things!

*Jumps up and down in the back row, waving arms*



Me too.

>>The question is, can meaningful alliteration be found wherever we look, not just in lovely pomes?

Very probably - hence the idea of 'found poetry'. But...

Ted Hughes spoke to my school once. He said that a poem is like a jug; each person can fill it with something different. I thought at the time and still think that this was a bit of a cop out.

It seems to me that any half-decent poet works hard at a line until they get it right. Whether they consciously manipulate the sounds, or whether they just chip away until it 'feels right' is perhaps unimportant. The end result is that the reader feels those same sounds. With that Yeats poem...the fact that the "Peace comes dropping..." line works so well makes me think that he must have had *some* degree of conscious idea of what he was doing with it. And if that line..well, that's what got me thinking about the other ones.

I need to look at the last stanza now. I've a hunch that the poem pivots around the middle. It does emotionally, and I'll have to see if it does so sonically. And I'll have to look at some other Yeatseses too.

Old army joke:
"Quiet you 'orrible little men! We've got a gentleman 'ere wot is going to talk to you about Yeats. Now I bet none of you higorant shower even knows what a yeat is..."

Good job he wasn't talking about Dickens...

Ed, what's so desirable about the process being conscious? It now appears that consciousness is the last componenet added to any decision.

I'm not sure I was implying that it's desirable, just wondering whether or not it's deliberate.