interesting

here is a startling fact for you to ponder :



China, a country without trees, is now the largest exporter of wood products in the world.



anyone care to discuss?





btw - the image above is my current "desktop picture". like most of the images on this pathetic little blog thing, it was captured by my phone. click on it to "biggify" it.

i had too much to dream last night....

this is a very strange one! i dreamed that i was late getting to the airport to fly out to quebec city. i was driving a truck of some sort, and realised that the lawnmower in the truck was out of gas. so i pull over, and proceed to march over to somebody's front yard, and grab the gas cannister that is conveniently sitting there. it turns out that the container is filled with banana-scented gasoline. i took the cap off of the gas tank of the lawnmower, and there were a few frogs swimming around inside. i filled the tank up, and then realised that i had lost the cap fro the lawnmower and spent some time wondering how i was going to get the lawnmower back inside the truck without spilling the banana-scented gas or the frogs. double you tee eff? anyone have any suggestions?

it's all in the timing

my friend richard posted a piece on his blog recently, about the definition of time, and he managed to get some excellent responses, aside from the usual "it's the fourth dimension". and i had posted a video last week, which was "time lapse" so, in keeping with this whole "time theme" that seems to be happening, my brain started thinking about the phrase : "time flies like an arrow". this sentence is one of my favourite examples of how the english language is not only complicated, but also how different words can have more than one meaning, yet maintain the same spelling. (homographs). (which SOUNDS like a concept that my friend rich should be familiar with). in the original interpretation of this statement, we are comparing how the passing of time is similar to the movement of an arrow. but there are other ways for this sentence to be understood...... 1. measure time for flies as you would for arrows 2. there is a kind of fly, (called a "time fly"), and it is fond of arrows 3. there are flies that resemble arrows. measure their speed 4. measure time for flies as an arrow would obviously, a couple of these interpretations are not really possible, but i am still fascinated by the different way to read this. what are some phrases that YOU find don't make a lot of sense, or can be interpreted in more than one way?

just because

. i haven't posted in over a week. why? well the last video i posted, i made while i had a fever. and the fever got worse, so i spent the next few days lying in bed, trying to get better. and then work happened. (as well as a bit of laziness in between, where i wasn't feeling very inspired). so where does that leave you and i? well that leaves you with nothing very exciting to read, and me trying desperately to find something to post here, that people will actually want to read. and now i am suffering from writers' block. it sucks. and this post is all that there is to show you. how sad.

something to declare

i was on a plane today, (in fact, i am on the plane right now, flying from calagry to montreal, as i write this), and i was listening to the safety announcements about emergency exits, and how the floor lights up along the aisle in a situation of emergency. i was watching the flight attendants go through the motions of amazingly coordinated hand gestures, and thinking to myself how similar they looked like synchronized swimmers, (without the nose plugs and bathing cap). and it occured to me that not only is this something that they are legally required to do before each gtake off, but they must have to go and take a course on very specific hand movements that are universally understood. sort of like how you can tell which washroom is for men, and which one is for women, or how you are not allowed to smoke in certain areas, no matter what language you speak. anyway, they get to the part in the presentation where they explain, that in certain situations, parts of the ceiling will open up, and oxygen masks will drop out. if this occurs, you are meant to place the mask over your own head first, (before worrying about assisting those around you), make sure it fits tightly, and breathe normally. this made me giggle. i turned to the person beside me, and pointed out, that if we were in an emergency situation, and the oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling, the LAST thing we would be doing after we put them over our faces, would be breathing normally! we continue to taxi down the runway, get into out final position, and the captain comes over the speaker system, and tells the flight crew to sit down and prepare for take off. this element of the flight, is always my favourite, since the plane has to be travelling somwhere in the neighbourhood of 300 km/h in order to get off the ground. in fact, the larger planes have to reach a speed of about 340 km/h in order to get the necessary lift. so, we are hurtling down the runway, and just as we are about to start our ascent, the pilot hits the brakes. HARD. he activated the brakes so hard, that some of the people on the plane smacked their faces on the seat in front of them. but surprisingly, no one made any noises of surprise or pain. everyone was surprisingly quiet. perhaps they were all expecting to be told that something very bad had happened the captain then comes over the speaker system, and announces that he had to abort the take-off, because someone was on the runway in front of the plane, that the authorities have been called, and that they are on their way to intercept this man. after about a minute or so, i see the guy on the right side of the plane just casually strolling along another runway. then a truck shows up, and stops in front of him. the guy gets down on the ground, and another truck shows up, and the drivers of both vehicles get out, while pointing shotguns at him. (that is what you can see in the picture, although it isn't very clear, since i had taken the photo with my phone, and had to rely on the poor quality digital zoom). i guess that is pretty well the end of the story, apart from the fact that we had to go back to the gate that we left from in order for the brakes to cool down from the stress they just went through. and we also needed to re-fuel, since the pilot had to put the engines in such a heavy reverse thrust, in order to get the plane to stop in time. strangely, the only information i was able to find to prove that this actually happened, (and to follow up on what happened with this poor guy who was on the runway), was this little story.

"Not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good"

A synonym is a word that means the same as another. "Necessary" and "required" are synonyms. An antonym is a word that means the opposite of another. "Wet" and "dry" are antonyms. While synonyms and antonyms are not in themselves interesting, the complexities and irregularities of the English language sometimes makes synonyms and antonyms interesting to explore. Many complexities result from words having multiple definitions. A trivial example is a word with synonyms that aren't synonyms of each other, the word "beam," for example, having the synonyms "bar" and "shine." Similarly, some words have antonyms that are neither synonyms nor antonyms of each other but completely unrelated: the word "right," for example, having the antonyms "wrong" and "left." A more interesting paradox occurs with the word groom, which does not really have an antonym in the strictest sense but has an opposite of sorts in the word bride, which can be used as a prefix to create a synonym, bridegroom. The word contronym (also the synonym antagonym) is used to refer to words that, by some freak of language evolution, are their own antonyms. Both contronym and antagonym are neologisms; however, there is no alternative term that is more established in the English language. Contronyms are special cases of homographs (two words with the same spelling). Some examples: * anabasis - military advance, military retreat * apology - admission of fault in what you think, say, or do; formal defense of what you think, say, or do * aught - all, nothing * bolt - secure, run away * by - multiplication (e.g., a three by five matrix), division (e.g., dividing eight by four) * chuffed - pleased, annoyed * cleave - separate, adhere * clip - fasten, detach * consult - ask for advice, give advice * copemate - partner, antagonist * custom - usual, special * deceptively smart - smarter than one appears, dumber than one appears * dike - wall, ditch * discursive - proceeding coherently from topic to topic, moving aimlessly from topic to topic * dollop - a large amount, a small amount * dust - add fine particles, remove fine particles * enjoin - prescribe, prohibit * fast - quick, unmoving * first degree - most severe (e.g., murder), least severe (e.g., burn) * fix - restore, castrate * flog - criticize harshly, promote aggressively * garnish - enhance (e.g., food), curtail (e.g., wages) * give out - produce, stop production * grade - incline, level * handicap - advantage, disadvantage * help - assist, prevent (e.g., "I can't help it if...") * left - remaining, departed from * liege - sovereign lord, loyal subject * mean - average, excellent (e.g., "plays a mean game") * off - off, on (e.g., "the alarm went off") * out - visible (e.g., stars), invisible (e.g., lights) * out of - outside, inside (e.g., "work out of one's home") * oversight - error, care * pitted - with the pit in, with the pit removed * put out - extinguish, generate (e.g., something putting out light) * quiddity - essence, trifling point * quite - rather, completely * ravel - tangle, disentangle * rent - buy use of, sell use of * sanction - approve, boycott * sanguine - hopeful, murderous (obsolete synonym for "sanguinary") * screen - show, hide * seed - add seeds (e.g., "to seed a field"), remove seeds (e.g., "to seed a tomato") * skinned - with the skin on, with the skin removed * strike - hit, miss (in baseball) * table - propose (in the United Kingdom), set aside (in the United States) * transparent - invisible, obvious * unbending - rigid, relaxing * variety - one type (e.g., "this variety"), many types (e.g., "a variety") * wear - endure through use, decay through use * weather - withstand, wear away * wind up - end, start up (e.g., a watch) * with - alongside, against

verbs before nouns

so today while doing some reading, i came across the phrase "verbs before nouns", (it was actually the title of a song), and it got me to wondering why the word "noun" is actually a noun, but the word "verb" is not a verb, but is in fact also a noun. my mind then started to wander a bit more and i began pondering over the accuracy of the statement. if there was a verb in the sentence, and it followed the word verb, it would make the sentence factually incorrect, kind of like as if i was to say "i am a liar, and therefore i always lie". this is a classic philosophical paradox. if i am always a liar, then by TELLING you that i am always a liar, means that i am telling you the truth, and therefore i am not always a liar, making the accuracy of the statement come into question. but at the same time, i could also be lying by telling you that i always lie, when in fact i am telling you truth, which would mean i am NOT telling you the truth, which would make the statement a lie. kind of circular, no? does any of this make sense? i am starting to think that i may have just confused myself........... anyway, if you want to check out more philosophical paradoxes, you can find them here.

random thought #1

not sure what made me think of this just now, but......... why is it that over here (in canada and the US), we say that we are going to the gas station, when we are actually going to the liquid station? in many other places in the world, people say that they are going to the "petrol" station. that makes mores sense, since they are supposedly going to buy petroleum. we obviously must be shortening the word "gasoline", so in THIS case it actually makes more sense, since it is a product DERIVED from petroleum. this would make the rest of the world wrong, because they are actually not filling up with petroleum, but gasoline. i just think it sounds odd that people say "put gas in the car", since that is obviously not the case.........