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

Well right now I have an exreemly rare section of "not as quite as busy as it could be" which of course meens that i only have 2 assignments instead of the full blown 3 I could have.
A thesuaurs and a Web page. The web page is easy the Thesuaurs I requires more artials to do but thats about all. So things arnt as busy as I made out but I should be busy by definition of university student. My brillent ablity of not getting a job should be mentioned at this point, I am in the age bracket where the Unions (woderful people that they are thankyou I love the unions, they stope me form getting a job and having to do work!) have decided that pay and conditions change and thus anyone in the braket doesn't get employed straight off, they just employ younger more gullable non-union members.

It's always nice to have a light workload, but it can be the kiss of doom at times because it lulls you into a false sense of security. I do rather enjoy making webpages for class, especially being the only engineer in a liberal arts class, I seemed to be about the only one who worked with computers regularly so I could just sit back and enjoy making it.

I tend to be pretty brilliant at not getting jobs as well. Too bad I can't market that skill. We seem not to have unions as you do. They certainly don't have any great bearing on what happens through my life, the teachers' union is about the only one that I know of personally that does much of anything, and that certainly wouldn't have any effect on whether or not I can find a menial job for the summer.

Well sitting here listing to my mp3ed version of HHGTTG I wonder if Irealy should be complianing about my work load...

Sounds like an amazingly good form of procrastination to me. And if questioned you can claim that you're experiencing fine literature, and look lofty and they will go away chagrined in the face of Douglas Adams.

At the moment its the only thing that gives me any pleasure. The Australian goverment are about to kill the education system and make me one pissed off student.

Oh bah! Government is always being stupid about education. Don't get me started about the New York State Board of Regents. And of course, my school has raised tuition twice in two yeasr, with an apologetic note about how yes, this is going up more than inflation is, but look at all the extra things we're providing for you. Bah again.

Thats the thing, my goverment isent actuly speding any more, they are spending less with the premise that in 2007 there are all these funds that will be pushed back by the goverment if it gets in again! They are actuly spenidng about $1200 less per student! It pisses me off that some people can't see it!

That does stink. We just have so many issues about having a budget at all, since the legislature hasn't had a budget in by the deadline in something like 13 years, so the schools never have enough money since they don't know how much they're going to get by the time they have to make their budgets. And the money goes to the rich suburban schools since they pay the most taxes and to the inner city, New York City schools since everyone knows they're in trouble and the little rural towns tend to get ignored. They've started cutting music programs and non-sporting activities and it just hurts me. Everything I was involved in in high school is bascically not finded in some little districts around, and that's not right at all.
And they want to raise the tuition big time on the colleges, which will send the enrollment way down because money is a big factor in going to state schools and without enough students schools won't get enough money from the states to do much of anything at all.

And they wonder why education is going down hill and why nobody seems to know what the capital of Brizil is any more.

Brasila!

What's sad is that it took me a few hours to be able to come up with that. Granted, I sincerely doubt that that's something I learned in school as versus a purely random factoid that I pick up and fills my brain so I don't remember all the things I'm actually supposed to know.

Well thats always a given. I accumilate all sort of facts which just seem to me like a good idea at the time for example:

There are on aveage 3.14 inches of rainfall on the oil rich coastlands of Venizuela.

The accelearation dur to garvity on earth on avaerage is 9.8118 km/s/s, but this can deviat enouth to be as much as 9.92 or as low as 9.4 some scientist (ones trying to do fast calculations) just use 10 as the number for some caluations.

There are about 28 moons of Jupiter to count, the last moon has been named quite unorginally J-28. (They say they might have found the 29th, but it turened out to be a glitch).

Pluto may not infact be a planet according to NewScientist.

Well that enouth for now.

But the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter possibly may once have been a planet.

And acceleration due to gravity is 9.81 m/s^2 not km. Or you could say 32 feet/s^2 of you wanted to be that way about it.

Also, theoretically it should take about 500 pounds of force to tip a cow.

Yeah your right it is m/s/s not km/s/s.

On avergae there are 30 olive leaves in the Reith that raps arround the world on the UN flag, I have no idea why.

And just so you know there is no messurment of force called a pound, its messured in newtons (for SI units whre 1 newton is probebly 1kg in 1 meter (it might be centimeter)) and in this I havent got the fggiest what force is needed to tip a cow, or what the orginial imperial unit was for force (i have a terrble feeling that this it is pounds per sqaure inch).

This one's good.

There is indeed a measurement of force called a pound. Pounds are a measurement of weight, which is mass times gravity, giving force. The Newton is merely the SI way of measuring it, I think it's 1kg m, I'm sure it's meter not centimeter.

I think what you're thinking of is weight vs mass, because the English system uses weight as the basic whereas SI uses mass. But there is indeed an Imperial measurement for mass. It's called the slug, and is something along the line of 1lb/32ft/s.

Pounds per square inch would be pressure.

Yeah for mechanics courses that I didn't want to take, and I can't believe I used the word "whereas" in cold blood up there.

Possibly, I did do colage physics and somehow got a B average... It obviouly dident make much of a impact, most of the stuff I already knew as far as theory was concernd.

However there is the extreem tougth question "What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?" and the answer is of course 0. An unladen swallow has no mass and thus is not even carring itself, so therefor is dead. If you chose to live by this definition of unlaeded that is.

African or English?

Sorry, couldn't be helped.



This stuff I knew from taking mechanis, which is a full semester course on one of the most boring units of physics, and one of the things about sciencey things in America is that you tend to have to be able to do problems in both English and metric systems. I think the scientific community is trying to make amends for the fact that we stubbornly refuse to even think about switching systems, so they just sneak it in to basic education and most people forget it after school.

Well Metric is all we use here, never even know what a oz is, I have to look it up when I am making old recipies and thats about the only time I bother converting. If somone ask me for Imperial units I usalaly give them the evil eye.

We pretend to teach metric, but no one actually believes it. I can do calculations and problems using either, but in real life the only thing that comes in liters is soda, and even though things are labeled in grams and ounces, people only pay attention to the ounces.

Well we all know the song:

"Who keeps the martians on there tracks?,
Who keeps the metric system back?
We do, We do."

So we know who to blame for all this. However its not all as bad if you don't use the metric system, its not as if its entirely definitive.