Thread: Points to ponder

Originally Posted by OhOh

"He picked a book off the shelf and handed it to Sally",

"book" is the antecedent of the "it" usage."

Book is the first noun in the sentence, shelf is the second noun. "It" refers to the "book", not the "shelf".

So same as i said in my post you didn't read.....

Originally Posted by uncle junior

The antecedent should refer back to the closest noun.......unless a different noun is somehow obvious....

e.g. Catch the ball in your hand and hold it.

Originally Posted by OhOh

Due to the "corner piece of paper" being created/cut from the "original piece of paper", it now has three sides and it has three corners - (in this sentence the "it" refers to the "corner piece of paper" phrase.

There is no "corner piece of paper" in the sentence, numpty:
If you snip a corner off a piece of paper, it has more corners than before.

Ok you both win,happy.

Insects are in the Animal kingdom. They belong to the Arthropoda phylum, and the class Insecta. To compare, humans are also animals.

https://www.quora.com/Are-insects-animals

More people in Australia are killed by horses and any other animal.

Originally Posted by VocalNeal

More people in Australia are killed by horses and any other animal.

I'll have to say that to the kid. She's scared witless of the place due to me graphic descriptions of red backs, vipers, jellyfish, and about a thousand other fookin' things that pack enough venom to drop a herd of elephants.

This bell, at the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford has been ringing non stop for 179 years. It's hardly heard, shielded by quite thick layers of glass, but nobody knows what type of battery is powering it. A note on the glass dates itself to 1840, but some accounts say it was set up and started in 1825.

Originally Posted by jabir

nobody knows what type of battery is powering it

i doubt it

Originally Posted by uncle junior

i doubt it

Without cutting it open its going to be difficult to know for sure. Current best guess is it is a Zamboni pile:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamboni_pile

Originally Posted by Luigi

I'll have to say that to the kid. She's scared witless of the place due to me graphic descriptions of red backs, vipers, jellyfish, and about a thousand other fookin' things that pack enough venom to drop a herd of elephants.

So make her scared of the horses too.

The first person who pulled an egg from a chicken's butt and ate it must have been really hungry.

Must confess I screwed up when asked by kids how much a cloud weighs and why it floats.

Actually they're quite heavy. Researchers have calculated that the average cumulus cloud, the white fluffy kind you see on a sunny day, weighs around 500 tons!

Clouds are composed primarily of small water droplets and ice crystals, if it's cold enough, but they float because the water and ice particles are too small to feel the effects of gravity.

Now I need to brush up on the number of stars in the universe, grains of sand on Earth, and the colour of thunder.

Blimey, screwed up again and will be thoroughly humbled tonight!

I always thought the largest number is a googolplex, but it's dwarfed by a googolplexianth. A googolplexianth metres is hundreds of thousands times bigger than the span of the universe.

To simplify, a googol is a 1 followed with a hundred zeros; quite big but easy enough to write: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0 00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

But that's like comparing an ant to the size of the solar system to a googolplex, which is a 1 followed by a googol of zeros.

And a googolplexianth is a 1 followed by a googolplex of zeros.

Also quite big, but minuscule compared against Graham's Number which is so large there isn't enough stuff in the universe to write it.

Originally Posted by Luigi

Brilliant!

A lot of their video are really good and definitely worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Vsauce/v...lf_id=2&sort=p

If a short psychic breaks out of jail would there be a small medium at large?

Originally Posted by jabir

You foker.

No feeling nicer than when you're in a room full of people and the dog chooses to come and sit next to you.