WEEKENDER 14th -15th of may 2016 all welcome
Member
Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: Midwest
Posts: 4,860
Good morning, W'enders,
Oh, I like vacation. Another day in my jammies sipping coffee watching a "Perry Mason" rerun at the time I would be pulling into the parking lot at work. Ahhhhhh.
England-y things:
- I loved driving on the left side of the road there. I felt soooo sophisticated. Sao, it sounds like you need a passenger in a scarf and swank sunglasses to ride shotgun to get ready for France. I'm there! Oh, wait. Time. Money. Ah well. I guess my sophistication will have to be memories of driving alongside the Gulf of Mexico with the windows down. Which was pretty fun, even if it was on the right side of the road.
- Not sure why I was having problems posting to SR while I was in Florida. Marty was kind enough to say it was my ninny phone but it may well have been ninny me. But during that timeframe, there were multiple references to hedgehogs two threads ago. Funky timing as the villain in the book I was reading at the time donated his ill-gotten wealth to hedgehog preservation.
Which leads me to book recommendations. I went through two on vacation. The aforementioned was "The Girl Next Door," by Ruth Rendell, the best mystery writer ever. She died last year; "TGND" was her second-to-the-last book. She was in top form. The other was "The Round House," by Louise Erdrich. She is a Minnesota jewel, writing about Native American life. This was the first time I'd read one of her books and today's stay-cation includes a visit to her bookstore in south Minneapolis, as well as the previously scheduled trek to Norway House.
Oh, I like vacation. Another day in my jammies sipping coffee watching a "Perry Mason" rerun at the time I would be pulling into the parking lot at work. Ahhhhhh.
England-y things:
- I loved driving on the left side of the road there. I felt soooo sophisticated. Sao, it sounds like you need a passenger in a scarf and swank sunglasses to ride shotgun to get ready for France. I'm there! Oh, wait. Time. Money. Ah well. I guess my sophistication will have to be memories of driving alongside the Gulf of Mexico with the windows down. Which was pretty fun, even if it was on the right side of the road.
- Not sure why I was having problems posting to SR while I was in Florida. Marty was kind enough to say it was my ninny phone but it may well have been ninny me. But during that timeframe, there were multiple references to hedgehogs two threads ago. Funky timing as the villain in the book I was reading at the time donated his ill-gotten wealth to hedgehog preservation.
Which leads me to book recommendations. I went through two on vacation. The aforementioned was "The Girl Next Door," by Ruth Rendell, the best mystery writer ever. She died last year; "TGND" was her second-to-the-last book. She was in top form. The other was "The Round House," by Louise Erdrich. She is a Minnesota jewel, writing about Native American life. This was the first time I'd read one of her books and today's stay-cation includes a visit to her bookstore in south Minneapolis, as well as the previously scheduled trek to Norway House.
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Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: PA
Posts: 12,000
Welp, I lost a post in all of that nonsense. I had to post so we got to page three so I could actually read the posts.
As I was ‘editing’ my time expired and I lost…
Anywho… first morning the sun has been out in over two weeks when I woke up.
Thanks for resuming the Chief duty Mex.
Shotgun! Shotgun is a term used by Americans. It actually originated in a western movie. Many thought this term originated during stage coach times – not true. A screenwriter invented the term. It evolved over time and was used primarily by teenagers when a group would hop in a car to joy ride or go ‘cruising’. The person calling ‘shotgun’ got the coveted seat in the front next to the driver – the front passenger window seat. I recall as a teenager calling shotgun and having arguments over it. I mean truly heated arguments over who got shotgun. But whoever called it first usually got it.
So it has evolved in a sense here and has become an expression for the first poster to claim after the original post has opened the thread…
Time zones? It was brought up and Mex explained why the ‘weekender’ thread starts on Thursday for most but already Friday for some.
It got me to wondering how many time zones are in the world. Theoretically there would be 24 separated by an hour each. That is not the case. Anyway, the prime meridian ( zero degrees longitude) goes from pole to pole through London (the assumed capital of the world at one time). So London would be GMT +1 and GMT -1. GMT was replaced by UTC. With advent of atomic clocks and more precise time measurement GMT was abandoned. The reality is that there are not exactly 24 hours in a day – earth’s rotation one time. GMT was the ‘average’ or ‘mean’ time of this event – another discussion.
Anyway, because longitude is a straight line, time zones are arbitrarily set and the lines of demarcation are not straight lines. A couple countries do not observe them as most do having more than one time zone. The international date line is not a straight ‘line’. It is “halfway” around the world from the prime meridian, 180 degrees. But again it would ‘split’ some locations so it is a derived ‘line’. So depending on which side of the 'international date line' you are, you are either a day ahead or a day behind the rest of the world. I actually crossed it a few times at sea...
The question of the day. Since the prime meridian separates ‘east’ from ‘west’, how many countries are in both the eastern and western hemispheres?
Hint: It’s a trick question
As I was ‘editing’ my time expired and I lost…
Anywho… first morning the sun has been out in over two weeks when I woke up.
Thanks for resuming the Chief duty Mex.
Shotgun! Shotgun is a term used by Americans. It actually originated in a western movie. Many thought this term originated during stage coach times – not true. A screenwriter invented the term. It evolved over time and was used primarily by teenagers when a group would hop in a car to joy ride or go ‘cruising’. The person calling ‘shotgun’ got the coveted seat in the front next to the driver – the front passenger window seat. I recall as a teenager calling shotgun and having arguments over it. I mean truly heated arguments over who got shotgun. But whoever called it first usually got it.
So it has evolved in a sense here and has become an expression for the first poster to claim after the original post has opened the thread…
Time zones? It was brought up and Mex explained why the ‘weekender’ thread starts on Thursday for most but already Friday for some.
It got me to wondering how many time zones are in the world. Theoretically there would be 24 separated by an hour each. That is not the case. Anyway, the prime meridian ( zero degrees longitude) goes from pole to pole through London (the assumed capital of the world at one time). So London would be GMT +1 and GMT -1. GMT was replaced by UTC. With advent of atomic clocks and more precise time measurement GMT was abandoned. The reality is that there are not exactly 24 hours in a day – earth’s rotation one time. GMT was the ‘average’ or ‘mean’ time of this event – another discussion.
Anyway, because longitude is a straight line, time zones are arbitrarily set and the lines of demarcation are not straight lines. A couple countries do not observe them as most do having more than one time zone. The international date line is not a straight ‘line’. It is “halfway” around the world from the prime meridian, 180 degrees. But again it would ‘split’ some locations so it is a derived ‘line’. So depending on which side of the 'international date line' you are, you are either a day ahead or a day behind the rest of the world. I actually crossed it a few times at sea...
The question of the day. Since the prime meridian separates ‘east’ from ‘west’, how many countries are in both the eastern and western hemispheres?
Hint: It’s a trick question
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