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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
In reply to:
water go down the drain, counter-or clockwise
That's why the answer says :
11. Counter (unless you happen to be south of the equator)
Perhaps I am being dense, but the question and answer as phrased in the quiz suggest to me that the author believes that water drains in a counterclockwise direction in the northern hemisphere and a clockwise direction in the southern hemisphere. That is not true; water will drain in either direction in either hemisphere.
[Quixotic-quest-to-kill-old-wives-tales emoticon]
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
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Sparteye sputters: As to question #11, "Which way does water go down the drain, counter-or clockwise?" the correct answer is "either, regardless of the hemisphere you are in."
And well she might. Read the link she posted if you disagree with her. Coriolois Effect only holds true for large scale phenomena. Even tornadoes will violate it. Bathroom sinks ain't got a snowball's chance of being that predictable.
Also 20 depends. Most smaller cars these days have only four
I'm going to check my NYS license plate later. I suspect it may have moved on y'all.
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addict
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addict
Joined: Feb 2001
Posts: 609 |
And the telephone on my desk (which is the one I stare at all day) has the letters QZ on the Zero button. (And on at least one mobile I have since looked at, the Q is in with PRS and the Z with WXY) So that was another two questions I got "wrong"! Does any one know why the letters Q and Z were omitted first time around? UK phones lost their letters for a while (1975-ish?) after the London exchanges lost their alphabetic designations I think, and many households still don't have them. That is one of the reasons why the 0800-BET-ON-A-HORSE type numbers have never made it big in UK. Which leads us to a new game. Since each number is shared by 3 letters (in general) you can change the letters in alphabetic telephone numbers (and what is the correct word for that??) to make another phrase. Any good examples out there?
Rod
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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
Why were Q and Z left off? just speculation, but in US (and UK-- but I don't know about rest of the world) phone numbers originally had "3 + X" format-- where the first 3 digits named the "exchange" and the next 3 or 4 digits the actual household. to make things easy, exchanges where given names, and the numbers matched. Since Q always take U-- it was a limiting factor. One reason for switching to all numbers was to increase exchanges. While 5 of the 8 button do have vowels-- it was getting harder and harder.. and some combo's just couldn't be used if you wanted to have "words" 9, 7, 5--combos .
Major cities "ran out" of numbers-- and continue to do so. NYC used to all be 212--now Manhattan has 212 (and something else i always forget) the boro's share 718, cell phones and beepers are all 917. (and didn't i read a story about every phone exchange in London being changed a few years ago? –numbers went from 6 digits to 7?)
And my phones have Q and Z on keys 7 and 9.
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I seem to remember a story a few years ago about the Girl Scouts of America changing their national phone number to one that either had been owned recently by or was very similar to the number of a phone sex line. Anyone remember the details?
Flatlander
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
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Re: More than you ever wanted to know about North American Telephone ExchangesThe whole kit and kaboodle can be found at the below url. In the meantime, did you ever think you'd get an etymology for "555?" "It was considered difficult to form words/names easy to pronounce from the letters JKL, PRS, WXY. However, San Francisco had their KLondike exchange (55x), and in the later 1950's and early 1960's, fictitious exchange namesin radio/TV/print entertainment and advertisements used KL-5 or KLondike-5." http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/history/exchange.names.recommended
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771 |
Yeah, well the phone on my desk has the letters "OPER" next to the 0 key... And as for alphabetic translations for phone numbers, there are several sites that I googled up, the most straightforward of which is: http://phonespell.org/ My work number ends up being "61-an-ass-pup", among other similarly surreal possibilities. Fun toy. 
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I think Ms O'Ftroy (a contraction of the Irish Fitzroy perhaps) is correct with her supposition. The letters were there to help with named exchanges, were dropped when they limited the expansion, and have been revived to cater for text entry for various applications.
UK has had two major changes in recent years; London and a few other places changed twice. Some of the changes helped ("08" means a reduced charge of some kind, "09" a premium rate) and new numbers are of the format 012-3456-7890. And for some obscure reason the first digit on all numbers is always "0" which is dropped when calling from abroad.
Rod
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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
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In US- most long distance (or really other "area"codes) require a 1 first -- so inside of queens, i have a seven digit #, say 123-4567. but if calling home from Manhattan, its 1-718-123-4567.
for international calls (a misnomer, since i can call Canada, parts of Caribean, and Mexico "Locally" --1 + area code and number) you first dial 011 (US internationall Access code-- might even be world standard) then the country codes (2 or 3 digit) and then the city code (area code) and the number. (and yes, if i were calling my sister inside of Japan her number requires a 1 +Area (city)code +7 digit number but when i call internationally, i drop the 1.)
The London Museum of Science and Industry has (had?) a great exhibit on an old fashioned telephone switching box-- You could dial a number and what the switches "switch". great fun!
Of course, electronic (tone switching) is infinately faster-- but the first computer were slow. the keyboard of a phone was intentional laid out opposite from a calculator-- since many professionals could punch in numbers faster that the phone system could first handle them.
US phone companies charged more for "Tone" service, even though it saved them $$$$$. to keep a phone "alive" only takes 5 volts. but to ring or generate a dial tone takes 40 volts. those 40 volts of usage are "not charged for" charges start once you "connect" so the faster you can connect, the faster phone companies start making money. Tones are faster than "pulses"-- so cheaper for phone companies to operate.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Yellow: Someone you will never forget. Orange: Someone you could consider a good friend. Red: Someone you really love. If the Dalai Lama said this, I wonder how one says "what a load of yak's turd" in Tibetan? When I read that question, the three colours in question all brought to mind people I am not particularly fond of. Yellow and Orange both made me think of people who have a (for me) rather fulsome exuberance about them, and Red made me think of someone who has an unhappy, angrily aggressive disposition. I could not even manage to think of someone I would associate with the other two colours. Maybe it was actually the Dalai's llama who came up with this quiz?
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