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

ppl ought to try it before judging you. It's supposed to be very nice.

As for distribution of birthdays, I know mainly people with B'days in winter.

According to http://www.h2g2.com/A293195 Researchers' birthdays are distributed as follows:

January : 20
february : 23
March: 33
April : 28
May : 27
June : 19
July : 24
August : 23
September : 29
October : 33
November : 27
December : 24

There is a dip in the summer months, I would say.

There seem to be two distinct peaks in Spring and Autumn. This would seem to indicate two peaks of rumpy-pumpy in Winter (for the Autumn birthday peak) and Summer (for the Spring one).

Have a look at the places of birth as well. There's a good reason for most babies being born in the Spring - six months of decent food for their mothers. So both have a reasonable chance of survival.
The problem is not so much finding the cards as that the poor birthday person anywhere between 1st December and 31st January gets joint presents and they're never twice the size of an individual present.

Thanks for the reminder-I'd forgotten my nephew's birthday.

Buy birthday cards in bulk - but with certain people in mind. (I have to anyway, taking back a bagful every time I visit home. I can't send my parents cards written in German can I? And anyway, they're not as nice here. Getting better, though)

I say you should still buy them with specific people in mind, because if you just have a drawer full of nondescript cards you end up never sending them. You could even get a folder and keep them ready, month by month.

Birthday cards, the really nice ones, are sometimes just too good to send to other people. Pin them over your desk or put them in frames on the wall in your hall or loo. In fact, I've just had an idea. You could plaster the loo wall with humorous cards. Why do I have all these good ideas and never put them into practice?

Send your nephew an e-card. I got a sweet "Sorry I forgot" one the other day.(from www2.bluemountain.com)

He never reads his email.

Hey I did ask about the shopping separators but the checkout girl just gave me a blank look.Of course it being a Saturday there were no gents in suits to ask.However the shop had been rearranged(again) leaving me to wander in search of certain items again so I was very rushed at the end in my desire to leave so I didn't try very hard to find one.

This thread made me laugh till I cried. I'm going to miss you guys in my next H2G2 black-out - ie for most of December.

Great graphical description of baby-making btw.

Doesn't this only go to show that you can think without language? We all (apart from those of us with crash-helmets or wives) use these things every week. But we don't know what they are....

I have seen people put their crash helmets on the conveyor belt, but not their wives!!

As for thinking without languages, that's a subject I am always on about. See my alter ego (from my page) if you can be bothered.

LOL!

There is a danish comedian/journalist named Anders Lund Madsen. He has published a dictionary where he has give names to all the things that didn´t have names before. I´ll look it up and see if this thing is in it.

Tata! Finally I found at least the German word for the thingy: 'Kassentrennstab', which translates roughly 'Cash register separator bar'. Found it at a supermarket supplier's site. Note, however, that 'Kassentrennstab' is not to be confused with 'Warentrenner' (product separator), which is used to have the products separated in the shelf.

I will be particularly careful not to mix them up. Could cause chaos!

There was a crazy German who grabbed the new post code book when it came out (after the reunification of Germany the post code system had to be reorganised) and used names of towns for everything that didn't have a name. He chose "Zwischendeich" for the object in question here. But it didn't catch on.

A crazy Englishman did the same thing in England. The book was called "The Meaning of Liff".

Well, after hours and hours of expensive diligent and extremely thorough online research I am able to tell you, quite categorically and without equivocation that, perhaps, the thing of which we speak may well be called a "separator bar". It is mundane, it is ordinary, it is plain and simple, but there you have it.

It may surprise many people to learn that Retailers expend enourmous amounts of resources in instructing checkout operators in the ways of bag-packing. Cashiers undergo thorough and rigorous training in many aspects of this task, from being able to correctly identify the items being purchased (ie, Fruit & Veg), to the ways they should be segregated, to the order in which the separated items are placed in each bag, to the number of ordered, segregated items that should be placed in one bag (which is, of course, dependant on the size of the bag), to moving the packed bags out of the work-area etc etc.

Of both the people that are surprised at all this and also those that are not, none are yet to come up with a satisfactory explaination as to why all of this training bears no relation to what will actually come to pass when it is yourself standing at the checkout wondering whether the scary looking night-shift checkout operator is likely to smile, politely apologise and alter their methods of bag packing or lunge for your throat screaming threats of violence and abuse were you to actually bring your concerns to their attention.

I'm stunned to hear about all this training for packers.I guess that like all lessons what is taught goes in one ear and out the other, hence the inability of said packers NOT to place heavy items on top of fragile ones despite the fact I go to great lengths to put heavy items first on the conveyer belt and fragile last.How they manage to do this defies all explanation and I do watch very,very carefully but I never catch them at the time.I only discover the deed after I get home.Must be some law of quantum physics that they can manipulate at will that only supermarket packers are privy to.

Doh! 9:30 PM AND using the device of unknown name AND STILL the check out girl started on the next lot of shopping. 24 hr shopping is OK if the staff stay awake.

CH

Surely the **insert name here** (also now known as "the kine", "the thingumy" and the "next customer please stick" is rather like the thin moss green line between entries in the guide.

By the way my wife (who is a woman and therefore does the shopping and knows about these things [and knitting and kittens]), says that it is called a "next customer bar". Should have asked her in the first place really.

You know they really ought to have a name.I'm getting sick of knocking them off the conveyor belt and having to crawl under the cb to pick them up.It makes it doubly hard to explain what you are trying to pick up."I'm just picking up the shopping thingy" doesn't quite cover it.