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#7374 10/12/00 01:55 PM
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I wonder how transatlantic airlines cope?

Badly.

I remember this prompted one of my favourite bits of creative graffiti, when The World's Favourite Airline ran a major ad campaign stressing the merits of rapid transatlantic Concorde, with the tagline
Lunch in London
Dinner in New York

to which a witty wag added:

Luggage in Bermuda!


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what is it about the letter Z that elicits such alternatives as 'zed' and 'izzard' and 'uzzard'?


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Funny that you mention that Bingley. In Canada the English write their dates as Month, day, year, whereas the French write it as Day, month, year. I guess this is one of those cases where Canadian English does not follow British English.

One thing I have noticed, in electronic communications here the date is often noted as Year, month, day.



#7377 10/12/00 08:33 PM
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I wonder how transatlantic airlines cope?

I don't know whether this expression suffers from transatlantic misinterpretation as well as trans-equatorial, but in this part of the world the word "momentarily" means "for a moment" rather than the US usage of "in a moment", so there is much consternation when a US pilot announces that your plane will be in the air "momentarily".


#7378 10/12/00 10:00 PM
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Yes if you have a few hours to spare you could search on the word momentarily to find rather clear dividing lines on the subject. I would never use the word "YART".

Myself, I vary from cross to highly amused by the term. It always seems strange to land "for a moment" or stop at a train station "for a moment", it hardly seems worth the effort.


#7379 10/12/00 10:10 PM
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>I would never use the word "YART".

yes, isn't it gusting how these abstruse acronyms are bandied about by those in the know?


#7380 10/12/00 10:19 PM
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yes, isn't it gusting how these abstruse acronyms are bandied about by those in the know?

Only momentarily, in my experience.


#7381 10/13/00 12:34 AM
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you could search on the word momentarily to find rather clear dividing lines on the subject. I would never use the word "YART".

Oops, I see what you mean, Jo. I guess it's a perennial problem for bulletin boards like this with new contributors joining constantly. I don't have a solution, I'm afraid. I'll be buggered (excuse the French) if I'm going to search all postings for keywords before I start typing a response, or wade through them all as a one-off familiarization, so I guess we'll all have to just sigh, think YART to ourselves, and be patient.


#7382 10/13/00 05:02 AM
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"Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter" as one of our distinguished predecessors put it.

Enigma prefers Zeffirelli to zed. Does it know something about reactions from the other side to "Romeo and Juliet"?

Bingley


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#7383 10/13/00 05:10 AM
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Having reflected on this problem, which is likely to grow exponentially with the size and age of the Board, only one (radical) solution occurred to me: Make the program delete the posts once they have reached a certain age. This would - however coarsely - simulate the behaviour of human memory..
Since we are interested in contributions from new subscribers, we should not raise the threshold by constant cries of YART. A schoolteacher is also obliged to repeat many things in a yearly rhythm.


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