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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Dec 2001
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I'm a writer. A character in the book I'm writing now is a scientist who studies fossil fish - he studies paleoichthyology. I put that into Google and got the expected results - lots of stuff about fossil fish. Then for fun I put ichthyopaleontology into Google and got some really weird results. Most of the hits were for porn sites. Can somebody tell me what's going on here?
thanks
Phillip
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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No, I can't tell you what's going on, Phillip, but I can and do wish you a hearty welcome aBoard. I've gotten some mystifying results on Google, too. My guess is that, of all of us, tsuwm may be your best bet for an explanation of how Google works.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Phillip,
Hello and welcome. We've had discussions here about ichthyophallic, and, curiously enough, I've just started a thread about the threat of being cornobbled, but ichthyopaleontology makes me chuckle--the possibilities are endless. No surprise that you came upon the sites you did. I would expect that there would be a branch of paleontology that deals this topic... Now, Jackie's theories on pipestone ("Rocks in Our Heads" thread?) may provide a missing link.
Best regards,
WW
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There is more money in porn than in science, alas. Here is a link about Agassiz, the founder of study of fossils. http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~alroy/lefa/LAgassiz.html and links to other sites that might be of interest.
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Carpal Tunnel
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We've had discussions here about ichthyophallic
dr. bill, do you want to correct Dub-Dub (purely in the interest of linguistic precision), or shall we quietly leave the matter untouched?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Keiva: I remember Fred Allen saying somebodys handshake was like taking hold of a frozen mackerel. But there aren't too many jokes about finny phalli. I assume you made the typo intentionally.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Oh, c'mon, guys...make the bloody correction. My spelling's become dependably fishy these days!
Gone fishin',
WordWeir
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as a matter of fact, I can explain the reason for all of those seemingly unwarranted(!) search hits. as a web publisher you can put a list of words in your page headers which will show up on web searches; e.g., as a word site publisher you might use "vocabulary, word site, logophile, etc." then on a search for such a word your site would turn up.
now, there are lists of words available that are meant to be spelling lists or whatnot, which have a reasonable approach to exhaustivity. the OneLook spelling/lookup feature uses such a list. a site which just wants to get hits, not caring what folks are searching for at all, will use the whole spelling list as keywords. these hits will usually be at the very bottom of a google hit list, but for rare words that appear almost nowhere else, there you are.
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Carpal Tunnel
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No Dub-dub, surely you realize the prefixual difference is of particular import here. For this root in particular, distinction between the ithy- and ichthy- configuations goes to the very root* of the matter. If unclear, Dub-Dub, discuss further with the Dub-Dub Hub-Hub.
Accordingly, a man would not so misspeak, for as has been previously well-noted, "men are so sensitive about their anatomies".
___
* in the Ozian sense
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Carpal Tunnel
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Keiva: "*in the Ozian sense"--gotcha! Radical!
I realized my spelling error driving to school.
But back to paleontology and fish: Do we know the oldest fish, that is something that swam with fins? When did fins come about?
I read about a kind of eel called "the pride"--but it had another name that was by far more interesting and I've forgotten its more interesting name. Drat.
Hooked on this topic,
BubblingDub
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