Grumpy old men

Not a new thing. Magnus Pyke used to do that, so did David Bellamy and they are both dead.

Martin

Just to make everyone really grumpy...

Would anybody be interested in a 'virtual' gathering of forum members using Zoom?

Just a 30-40 minute chat to say hello and see both familiar and unfamiliar faces.

Maybe everyone gets an opportunity to wave an example of what they have been making at the camera and describe it?

Neil

So long as you don't mind observers without webcam/microphones
Bill

Using acronyms without first explaining what they mean ...

George.

I would be very keen for a virtual meeting.

Sounds good. Depends on how many you get whether 30-40 minutes is enough?

Can't see a problem, although it would be polite to type a 'hello' into the chat section.

I will start a dedicated thread, everyone can all go back to being grumpy now 🤣🤣

Neil

I haven't managed to set up a suitably provocative bookcase to use as a background yet.

Bill

I have just had a 'phone call from the hospital:

"Is that Mr. Shaw"

"Yes"

"Hi, this is xxxxx at yyyyyyyyyy. Are you all right?"

"No."

"Oh dear, what's wrong?"

"Well my right side is right, but my left side is left!"

Think about it.

Grumpy? Or just plain daft?

Acronyms. Some of them eventually enter the language as fully fledged words, think radar. But I was always taught that the use of acronyms was acceptable provided you used the full word or words first before stating what the acronym, or more accurately, the (usually three letter) abbreviation was.

Peter G. Shaw

Peter, it's a good thing they didn't ask if you were "tip top".

NIWYM about acronyms......

Just kidding. Years ago I worked at Xerox, the people there used so many acronyms a lot of conversations sounded more like machine code than English!

Another contributor has mentioned people calling a 'locomotive' a 'train' - I concur entirely; but it seems to me that the more our society depends on science and engineering, the lower its overall understanding of the basics of either discipline even at a fair lay-level.

I wish too that musicians and music presenters could be forced to learn the difference between acoustic (adj.) and acoustics (n); and between the reverberation and resonance of a building!

While we're on reverberation, please tell the dewy-eyed that yes, marine mammals are wonderful creatures deserving respect and protection.... but they whistle, squawk and grunt - they do not "sing"!

As for suddenly having to call that which is contained, the content (the mood adjective) just to suit Microsoft; groups of friends and relations bubbles instead of the long-established circles, and the lowest in a range of values the medium...

Nigel's mistook makes me smile rather than grumpy. Always fun when strong opinions turn out to be wrong - it's one of the foundations of comedy. We are all Captain Mainwaring!

Of course marine mammals sing. So do kettles, missiles, birds, toads and crickets. And in another sense so do poets.

pgkpgk is in the same boat. His daughter is declared wrong to describe English as organic, yet the Shorter Oxford Dictionary confirms her usage has been in the language since 1796.

All too often the strict laws we remember from school are only rules of thumb or gross simplifications. I before E except after C? Believe that and you'll believe anything. Weigh in if you disagree neighbour, you've been wrong since ancient times.

Dave

Not acronyms but Telex speak. Years ago, when eldest joined HMSMs, only communication while at sea was the "Familygram", One sent at start of patrol and t'other on return. Now trying to get over the daily events in a maximum of twenty words is a bit difficult, Soooooooooooooooooo I reverted to telex speak, U instead of you etc. and even restricting the number of letters to fill a rectangular box means lots of info could be passed. The return gram was always the best and copies of it used to be passed to the crew to translate, Captain was in this one too.

Grumpy part. Got a phone call one morning from a sub/ltnt in Portsmouth. " We are not sending your F/G as it's written in code" and despite telling him exactly what I'd rote, "You're allowed twenty full words only". Had to explain to lad when he got back that the Captain and crews homecoming highlight had been crushed by stupidity.

Wonder if Sub/com had tried Enigma?

Oh yes, killer com was 56 words.

Regards Ian.

Edited By Circlip on 16/10/2020 11:41:37

Dave -

No mistake at all.

Although I do have a sense of aesthetic romance and accept we do use the word "sing" and its relations loosely, whale calls would hardly be thought of as "song" if made in the open air. It would be simply the whale's "call" and a lot of it would sound pretty harsh to our ears. It would be more farm-yard than dawn-chorus.

We call it a "song" only because it sounds to us as if singing; but the effect is not produced by the animal. My objection is less to the loose use of the word "song" than to the assumption based on ignorance that credits the whale entirely.

The plangency that has what our Mam would have called "soppy dates" going all romantic and giving birth in paddling-pools, is due solely to the ocean being highly reverberant between its surface and density boundaries below. These are part of its acoustic properties that also allow whales to hear each other over considerable distances; but let's not credit the animals with being some sort of sub-aquatic opera stars. They just wild animals doing what wild animals do - announcing territories, foraging for food and finding herds or mates.

'

And toads? I have a frog colony in my garden, and can assure you that though I like hearing their bubbling little croaks, a "song" it is not!

'

Once had a guinea-pig. They make all sorts of little chirps and squeaks, and the nearest human-made comparison I can think of, is not Gotterdammerung but an injector with a tiny air-leak!

Not me you're at odds with Nigel, it's the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary! More meanings listed for 'sing' than 'She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah...' and one of them covers whales.

Dave

SOD

At my school the full expression was "i before e except after c when the sound of ie or ei is that of ee. The only exception is weird" Of course that does depend on correct enunciation.

I believe that in 1796 all produce was 'organic'.

pgk

My pet hate is deliberate bastardisation of the language e.g. the practice of calling one partner in a homosexual relationship the husband and the other the wife. Previously the meaning of these words was plain and unambiguous .

Given that people of homosexual inclination are often intelligent, sensitive people surely they could do better than this? The feminists did a bit better when they succeeded in introducing the (phonetically ugly) term Ms.

Other than that, the repeated and unnecessary use of "like" and "you know" by the young irritates as does the practice by many young people of speaking very, and unnecessarily fast. A real curse for us oldies whose hearing is not as good as it once was.

Chas

A queer side effect of the proscritpion of many words used to describe those of non binary sexual orientation and non caucasion races wil in time allow us to recover the true meaning of those words.
Meanwhile I am curating my fasteners to improve the optics of my mancave.

Precious space in my local store taken up by 6 different sorts of water.

What's that all about?

People who don't know how to say the letter "aitch"