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FT342

XEPER_

XEPER_

Death to all but metal
Joined
Mar 3, 2013
Messages
845
Get in, subscription is back on track and I'm first to get the new issue! :)
Not even looked at it yet, I only just got last months during the week.
 
Mine came today, too. Apart from Mythconceptions and Simon Young's folklore column, always my first stops, I've only flicked through it. Stands outs for me from this issue include SD Tucker's article The Haunted Hearth, a Hand of Glory in Paul Sieveking's Archeology column and an article about a supposedly haunted Huntingdonshire pub (I went there during my removal days; the owners at the time said they'd experienced nothing unusual).

Synchronicity (I assume) in the title of the Strange Days piece Fallen Angel reminds us of a sad loss to the fortean community.:(
 
The small article on the Large Hadron Collider caught my eye. When in 2009 it was closed down, apparently by a bird, the story went that a bird had dropped a baguette down an unprotected ventilation shaft and blocked it. This caused a quench, where the magnets overheat dangerously. The LHC has its own little fire brigade dedicated to such uncommon but potentially catastrophic incidents.

The baguette story intrigues me. How does anyone really know what happened? As is mentioned in the article, no trace was found. I have long suspected this to be an apocryphal explanation, with the baguette being a clue to a certain anti-French sentiment. A bit like the ham sandwich that Mama Cass is supposed to have choked on, with the insulting piggy implication.

When the 2009 incident happened our Escet was working on at SLAC in California. I spoke to him on MSM or something and he said 'Heh, they quenched!' Within the year, of course, he was at CERN.
 
Re Greg Mays Spooky Tailgater IHTM ... almost certainly a car with a defective alternator ... i say this because in 1992 i drove from san francisco to chicago in a 76 plymouth volare (straight six), with a dead alternator ... once started and on a full battery the vehicle will run happily for hours so long as you dont use your ancillaries ... you then need to park somewhere you can charge up the battery overnight ... if however you need to drive in the dark you get as close as you can to another vehicle going your way, let them know youre there (quick flash) and then basically drive using the light from their vehicle ... very dangerous, i cant imagine the number of cars and trucks i put the fear of god into this way ... not recommended ! especially in a fifty dollar car !
 
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Hey, it wasn't all bad news today, well, OK it was all bad news today, but my FT arrived on time for the first time in three months. Very ghost-based issue, nice background on each story that brought them into sharper relief. Must admit I can't see the phantom girl in Andrew Green's photo, can anyone else?
 
It's OK, by the light of dusk I was able to make her out. Does look a bit like the tree in the way making patterns, though.

Ooh, now we have Peter Brookesmith and Jenny Randles doing UFO columns, fancy. Maybe they could take on the Chinese letter writer who has put a lot of thought into their theory.
 
escargot1 said:
The small article on the Large Hadron Collider caught my eye. When in 2009 it was closed down, apparently by a bird, the story went that a bird had dropped a baguette down an unprotected ventilation shaft and blocked it. This caused a quench, where the magnets overheat dangerously. The LHC has its own little fire brigade dedicated to such uncommon but potentially catastrophic incidents.

The baguette story intrigues me. How does anyone really know what happened? As is mentioned in the article, no trace was found. I have long suspected this to be an apocryphal explanation, with the baguette being a clue to a certain anti-French sentiment. A bit like the ham sandwich that Mama Cass is supposed to have choked on, with the insulting piggy implication.

When the 2009 incident happened our Escet was working on at SLAC in California. I spoke to him on MSM or something and he said 'Heh, they quenched!' Within the year, of course, he was at CERN.
Click to expand...

Actually, it was me who dropped the baguette - too embarrassed to admit to it, so the blame went to the bird...
 
escargot1 said:
I have long suspected this to be an apocryphal explanation, with the baguette being a clue to a certain anti-French sentiment. A bit like the ham sandwich that Mama Cass is supposed to have choked on, with the insulting piggy implication..
Click to expand...

Not just Piggy: Mama Cass was born Naomi Klein. If you look at it this way, the joke is telling you that " the fat greedy JEWISH girl died choking on a sandwich that she didn't even care wasn't kosher" - which adds a bit of anti-semitism to the joke... and as the autopsy indicated, she didn't die of sandwich at all. It was heart failure.
 
Actually just got 342. It finally arrived in Stockport.
 
First thoughts. Page 10 and page 25 both have photos of bespectacled middle-aged guys in glasses wearing broad-brimmed black hats. Both of them, one American and one Australian, have just enough of a resemblence to deceased author Sir Terry Pratchett (but without the beard) to have made me blink. Could it be that we might start seeing bereaved fans in a state of denial start an "Elvis Is Not Dead!" type movement about Terry? It's the sort of nutty thing that could happen...
 
loved this issue, lots of interesting ghostie stuff and the origin of the chinese letter gave me a good chuckle, i found the power to the king article silly and pointless but all the rest was excellent.
 
The Chinese Letter. From "Hei Sing Tso". I think so too. A very methodically constructed argument but there was something about it... Fuxi getting utterly fuxed by the footprint of the Thunder God...
 
My copy was delivered today, a week before it normally arrives! But I haven't read any of it yet, as I am waiting for a new lounge suite to be delivered - if I start reading it, the lounge will arrive, thus ruining my reading pleasure!
 
I've been sitting up in bed for the last three hours, reading FT and stuffing my face with chocolate for three reasons - I love chocolate, Fortean Times is always worth a read (even back issues from fifteen years ago!) and due to election coverage on Australian TV, there's nowt worth watching! Quiet enjoyed the ghost story from the Ostrich Pub, and the sneery-ish article on shows like Most Haunted made me laugh.
 
Tigerhawk said:
I am waiting for a new lounge suite to be delivered - if I start reading it....
Click to expand...

Apologies, this is just a personal pedantic observation from me, regarding the pronounciation of the word "suite", even when I'm silently reading it.

In my phonology, I just can't cope with it being spoken as a homophone for sweet. To my ears and brain, "suite" must be pronounced as in 'soo-êet'....never as sweet.

For me, it grates nearly as badly as when people say 'pacific' rather than "specific".

(But I'm just a pain in the butt....)

ps apologies, I know that I heard the word pronounced correctly in my head whilst I was reading your post @Tigerhawk , and I just have to simply accept that only a tiny percentage of crazy purists will agree with me. But that doesn't make the phonyphonetic majority right......

We now return you to your regular programming....

pps
AgProv said:
bespectacled middle-aged guys in glasses wearing broad-brimmed black hats
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"Middle-aged"?? Surely old or elderly is a more chrononomically-competent label for these guys? Sorry, maybe you were being polite to them, I get that wrong sometimes...
 
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Dinobot said:
...enjoyed the ghost story from the Ostrich Pub...
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I've only ever encountered one pub called the Ostrich, in Ipswich. Was it that one, by any chance? (But I never heard of it having a ghost before.)

The derivation of the name is interesting, because it's a corruption of 'Oyster Reach' - it's by the side of a small creek which was once home to oysters, apparently. (But now it's part of a boatyard and Marina.)
 
No it's in Colnbrook, Berkshire. But that derivation of The Ostrich in Ipswich is interesting.
 
When I was a kid in Ipswich the pub was the Ostrich - it's since been returned to the original Oyster Reach.
I was disappointed that the story wasn't the "right" Ostrich pub. My mum worked there as a waitress and said there were odd "things" about it - mostly cold bits in the kitchen and a feeling of being watched late at night, if you were cleaning up after the shift. One night the chef stayed behind alone for a stocktake - he wouldn't say what had happened but after that he refused to be in the building alone again. She says.
 
Welcome to the forum, loreleilee!

I suppose any old pub will have a slightly spooky feel which may cause people to read something supernatural into relatively mundane things. But the other pub covered in this issue, the Ferry Boat, even though it's an old, low ceilinged place, I remember as being very warm and inviting. That was on a hot summer day, though. It was no surprise to see its resident phantom comprehensively dismissed.
 
loreleilee said:
When I was a kid in Ipswich the pub was the Ostrich - it's since been returned to the original Oyster Reach. .
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Interesting. when I first came across the German name for the country of Austria - Osterreich - I was ten or eleven and totally innocent of the derivation being German for "Eastern Kingdom". I immediately thought "Oh, must be in Africa where ostriches come from".
 
Ermintrude said:
Apologies, this is just a personal pedantic observation from me, regarding the pronounciation of the word "suite", even when I'm silently reading it.

In my phonology, I just can't cope with it being spoken as a homophone for sweet. To my ears and brain, "suite" must be pronounced as in 'soo-êet'....never as sweet.

For me, it grates nearly as badly as when people say 'pacific' rather than "specific".

(But I'm just a pain in the butt....)

ps apologies, I know that I heard the word pronounced correctly in my head whilst I was reading your post @Tigerhawk , and I just have to simply accept that only a tiny percentage of crazy purists will agree with me. But that doesn't make the phonyphonetic majority right......

We now return you to your regular programming....

pps
"Middle-aged"?? Surely old or elderly is a more chrononomically-competent label for these guys? Sorry, maybe you were being polite to them, I get that wrong sometimes...
Click to expand...

So glad I could annoy someone from the other side of the world with the pronunciation of Suite as sweet! Ermintrude, does this failure to cope also include the ensuite?
 
escargot1 said:
I like the cut of your jib.
Click to expand...
As do I!

And, please, @Tigerhawk , I was indeed already giving you the benefit of the doubt, that you were properly-pronouncing 'suite', as "soô-eet"...

You can always lie to me, if necessary, just to keep me happy (fervant fictional assurances are fractionally better than nothing).

In any case, I may have succeeded in planting a seed of eternal doubt, now, in your mind. A post-hypnotic hiccup, conditioning you to comply. And, you raise an excellent point regarding the term 'en suite'...for sure, it should similarly be vocalised as "õņ-soô-eet".

My work here, for now, is done, and I must fly before the rays of the full morning light turn me into more of a pedantic phonetic fanatic than I already am.
 
loreleilee said:
When I was a kid in Ipswich the pub was the Ostrich - it's since been returned to the original Oyster Reach.
Click to expand...

How time flies! I realise now I haven't been to Ipswich for over a quarter of a century! Back then I lived on a boat in the Marina, and I often ate in the Ostrich in the evenings. Perhaps I knew your mum!

And I didn't know the pub name had been changed since then. Times change....
 
There's a mid-18th century Ostrich pub in Bristol too, quayside, not far from St Mary Redcliffe. It used to have a door leading into the caves that run under the area (they used them as a colossal cellar, as did all the wine and sherry merchants as the ambient temperature and low humidity are utterly stable. They put on tours, festivals and plays in them now.) The Ostrich had a very chequered reputation until WWII, after which the whole area changed massively in the post-blitz regeneration - loads of tight winding streets replaced by brutalist blocks and dual carriageways. The pub itself though remains intact and very popular.
 
rynner2 said:
How time flies! I realise now I haven't been to Ipswich for over a quarter of a century! Back then I lived on a boat in the Marina, and I often ate in the Ostrich in the evenings. Perhaps I knew your mum!
Click to expand...

We moved away in the late 80s so it's very possible!
 
AgProv said:
Interesting. when I first came across the German name for the country of Austria - Osterreich - I was ten or eleven and totally innocent of the derivation being German for "Eastern Kingdom". I immediately thought "Oh, must be in Africa where ostriches come from".
Click to expand...
I just came here to make a related observation, having just watched and read about today's Austrian Grand Prix - "Grosser Preis von Osterreich"!

Anyway, Lewis Hamilton won, which was clearly a Good Thing! :D

(No flightless birds or marine bivalves were harmed in the making of this post! :p )
 
Ermintrude said:
As do I!

And, please, @Tigerhawk , I was indeed already giving you the benefit of the doubt, that you were properly-pronouncing 'suite', as "soô-eet"...

You can always lie to me, if necessary, just to keep me happy (fervant fictional assurances are fractionally better than nothing).

In any case, I may have succeeded in planting a seed of eternal doubt, now, in your mind. A post-hypnotic hiccup, conditioning you to comply. And, you raise an excellent point regarding the term 'en suite'...for sure, it should similarly be vocalised as "õņ-soô-eet".

My work here, for now, is done, and I must fly before the rays of the full morning light turn me into more of a pedantic phonetic fanatic than I already am.
Click to expand...

No, I pronounce suite as "sweet", like any normal person does...
 
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