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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

hunck said:
What are the chances..As I was reading this, QI was on & the topic of navigating by starlight came up. Polaris was mentioned in connection with navigating in the southern hemisphere.
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Can you amplify this statement? Polaris is never visible in the southern hemisphere, as it's too close to the North celestial pole.
 
rynner2 said:
Can you amplify this statement? Polaris is never visible in the southern hemisphere, as it's too close to the North celestial pole.
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Sorry, silly mistake - Polaris is of course northern hemisphere. The question on QI was 'how would you tell where north is' One method for daylight involved having a watch, leading on to how you'd tell at night, which led on to the Big Dipper pointing to Polaris if you're in the northern hemisphere, which then led on to the the southern hemisphere. They didn't have a definitive answer for this oddly but assumed you'd use the Southern Cross. I'm relying on you to put me straight if any of this is wrong.

Anyway, this is all off the point, which was smokehead's rarest word Polaris cropping up almost instantaneously for me.
 
There you go, a bit of minor strangeness on the minor strangeness thread.
I wish I could say I was reading about something intelligent like astronomy, but it's the name of a range of fishing floats.
 
Yesterday I was driving (sloowly) behind a learner driver: not a driving school 'nice car', more of a father's unofficial family lesson.

Pinned to the back was a UK Learner Driver "L" plate. Located Like this...
2017-02-26 12.29.02.jpg


And (of course, since good things come in threes) the next two Learner cars I passed, within the following quarter-of-an-hour, had an identical "Lazy L" brand (if you don't know your cowboy stories, that reference will've gone right over the top of your stetson).

When I got home, I had to check a newspaper to check that I hadn't been misscribing the letter "L" for the last half-century...
 
smokehead said:
my banker, learner signs from Poundland that don't stick properly.
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I'm going to stick with that. It's an 'L' of an idea.

If the cars had been driving, tilted, just on two wheels (offside low, nearside high) the L-plates would've been perfectly-legible, and I'd've had much less reason to contact my elected representatives.

Nothing back from them so far (this music-on-hold is actually quite catchy, after a while....)
 
Up until now, I'd thought all the posters and publicity for the upcoming epic film "Viceroy's House" were referring to a production actually named "The Last Viceroy".

But they're not....or are they?
 
Ulalume said:
Couple of minorly strange things to report -

Son, 15, was outside his school yesterday when he saw a line of ants carrying a coin into their nest. Figuring the coin wouldn't do them much good, he snagged it away. It turned out to be a Canadian quarter. Quite unusual to see these here. Can't imagine what the ants were planning to do with it, either. Tunnel all the way to the border, perhaps. ;)

Also, in a moment of "eek, the computer is reading my mind" strangeness, I was searching for some trace of a old friend, last name Rivera. Not an unusual name around here at all. Said friend had a quirk of pronouncing it as Riviera, though. This was just a personal quirk, the rest of her family pronounced it as usual.

Anyway, while searching, the browser kept trying to autocorrect the name to Riviera. This might make sense if this were a common surname, but it's not, and I don't think there's a single person in the area with that name at all. I know I didn't type it or speak it aloud, so it wasn't Cortana or some other app listening in.

Don't know why that happened, but it was a wee bit peculiar.
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Maybe they carried it all the way from Canada, then they are going to be pretty pissed off.

To be fair I read it as riviera at first too. I suppose I did what the computer did and likened it to something I knew.
 
Ulalume said:
Couple of minorly strange things to report -

Son, 15, was outside his school yesterday when he saw a line of ants carrying a coin into their nest. Figuring the coin wouldn't do them much good, he snagged it away. It turned out to be a Canadian quarter. Quite unusual to see these here. Can't imagine what the ants were planning to do with it, either. Tunnel all the way to the border, perhaps. ;)

Also, in a moment of "eek, the computer is reading my mind" strangeness, I was searching for some trace of a old friend, last name Rivera. Not an unusual name around here at all. Said friend had a quirk of pronouncing it as Riviera, though. This was just a personal quirk, the rest of her family pronounced it as usual.

Anyway, while searching, the browser kept trying to autocorrect the name to Riviera. This might make sense if this were a common surname, but it's not, and I don't think there's a single person in the area with that name at all. I know I didn't type it or speak it aloud, so it wasn't Cortana or some other app listening in.

Don't know why that happened, but it was a wee bit peculiar.
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If your old friend has used "Riviera" as his last name on the internet, perhaps it was picked up by Google.
 
I was in work early today, an hour before we open. Doing all the bits and bobs that need doing. I went up to the stockroom and heard movement that sounded like the cleaner going about her business. However when I went down again she was still working away downstairs (which I had suspected) and the only other person in was the manager and she was in the office. Still it's not unusual for our place.

Have I told you about the time said manager saw feet in the basement? She thought it was the other manager (she was looking down the stairs hence only seeing the feet/legs) only to find her somewhere completely different and they were the only two in at that time.
 
MorningAngel said:
Maybe they carried it all the way from Canada, then they are going to be pretty pissed off.
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Let's hope they don't decide to take their revenge on us!
To be fair I read it as riviera at first too. I suppose I did what the computer did and likened it to something I knew.
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Perhaps, but if you type a common first name (say, Ann, Laura, Mary) and "Rivera" in to any search engine, a bunch of entries will come up without autocorrecting to Riviera. It was just odd, considering.
Vardoger said:
If your old friend has used "Riviera" as his last name on the internet, perhaps it was picked up by Google.
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I did consider that maybe other people had been searching the name - I've heard it takes 35 searches or so for Google to offer something as a suggestion, so maybe that was the culprit, rather than my computer developing creepy mind-reading skills!
 
This morning I was packing a top I'd bought that was too small and thinking that I would ring my friend to see if she would like it as I hadn't heard from her for awhile, when the phone rang.
It was her and she told me about her daily visits to her sick mother.
 
escargot1 said:
Tonight, we keep hearing very quiet tapping on the front door. Three knocks at a time. It's not kids. I'm thinking someone's died...
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I wouldn't have understood that reference until yesterday, catching up on my reading.
It may have been in one of the IHTM collections.
Wouldn't happen to me, I would get a card through the door saying I had to go to my local post office depot to hear them.
 
escargot1 said:
Tonight, we keep hearing very quiet tapping on the front door. Three knocks at a time. It's not kids. I'm thinking someone's died...
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I am not saying this is what you heard as it is not likely in the dark,
A few years back I was looking out the window and noticed a magpie pulling at
a very shiny door knocker across the road, a few secs later the lady comes to
the door looks round goes back in, this goes on a few times so I go over and
explain what is going on, she looked at me funny and I think she thought I
was taking the mick but It was a magpie.
 
It's a thing in my family. We hear three quiet taps at the door and there's bad news. :oops:

Haven't heard anything yet though, apart from my usual failed Lotto numbers! :D
 
escargot1 said:
It's a thing in my family. We hear three quiet taps at the door and there's bad news. :oops:

Haven't heard anything yet though, apart from my usual failed Lotto numbers! :D
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May things stay that way.
And I hope that pesky magpie leaves your door knocker alone too.
 
No magpies, no door knocker. Bad news travels fast though so if I'd've heard by now. Or not, if my old dear is supposed to tell me, as she has a habit of 'forgetting' to ring me about important things.
 
They say bad luck comes in threes. A woman I worked with said deaths also happen in threes.
Iirc, followers of Judaism have a superstition that involves turning around three times and spitting. I've forgotten why though.
I'm puzzled why documentary makers always say "This, this, and even this"
It's beginning to bug me.
 
smokehead said:
I'm puzzled why documentary makers always say "This, this, and even this"
It's beginning to bug me.
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Politicians also frequently use lists of threes. Blair famously referenced this rhetorical device with his "Education, Education, Education". It probably goes all the way back to Aristotle.
 
Whilst setting-up an indoor 'film show' of some classics (including Laurel & Hardie) I played a few excellent shorts of 'Tom & Jerry' (the unforgettable Fred Quimby originals, such as "Night Before Xmas" and "Dog Trouble").

This was on DVD (a recently-bought disk) and possibly what gets described as a being remastered version. But the images weren't what surprised me, in all their 1950s soft glory.

It was the voice of the unidentified black 'Mamma' housekeeper/owner.

She's been digitally replaced. Unless my ears are going faulty (which they're not). She now sounds to have been re-voiced by a much-younger person, with a 'thinner' voice (ie spoken by an unfat speaker) in far-too-good (obtrusively-so) quality.

The voice, to me, sounded like a stereotypical post-2000 African American tv accent, and nothing like the deep throaty growl of the lady we've all known+loved, forever. So, "Táaahmuss!!?!" has now become "Thômmaş(!)".

Hopefully I'm wrong about this. Or it was some (identifiable) technical effect??

And not some weird marginal political correctness. Anyway, for now, this goes in Minor Strangeness. But it might have to go major, later. And awaits further investigations (nb I do not have the disk- currently)
 
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