Fortunately, my daughter never really got into any of the Disney series shows much. Which is good, because if she insisted on watching Hannah Montana, I’d have to puncture my own eardrums with a screwdriver or something. . .
She seems more drawn to the Nick and Teen Nick shows.
Sky T.V. news has incredibly loud music at the start so that the news reader has to raise his voice so that the audience has some chance of hearing him announce the headlines.
On documentaries there seems to be a fashion for the director/camera man to play around with the shots, extreme closeups of someone so that you only can see their earlobe, shots zooming in and out at speed for no reason.
Sudden jerky/stop go shots of something or someone in motion.
The film suddenly turning to black and white or green for a short period, again for no reason.
Silly wooshing noises or fart sounds when the camera changes its shot.
I could go on but I’m liable to kick my T.V. screen in.
My daughter loved Hannah Montana too! You don’t know how lucky you are.
It’s always weird to me when people complain about the toddler shows. I always found most of those shows cute, and even the annoying ones couldn’t dream of being half as annoying as the tween shows.
Okay, the Barney episodes from the early-mid '90s were enough to make you want to punch someone, but those were before my daughter’s time. My little sister used to watch them nonstop though, and when my daughter was a toddler my mom tried to give me the videos. I politely declined (something about how I’d rather die).
TV ads that consist entirely of a man or woman staring at the camera, making facial expressions but not saying anything, while a voiceover does the talking for them. Seriously, what the hell is that about?
Previously, the ads that annoyed me most were the ones that were obviously American ads brought over to Australia and then re-dubbed (badly) with Australian accents, but the ‘weird humans who emote while someone else speaks’ ads are definitely worse.
Will it be a whole box, or will it be not quite a whole box of Ju-Jubees?
Here’s the arithmetic as I see it.
Starting with the number of miles from LA to Miami (since I don’t know where Pacific Bay is) 2735. Dividing by 6 to get the number of seconds it would take to travel 2735 miles(1 mile per second) we get 455.8333333333333. Dividing by 60 to get the number of minutes (60 seconds in a minute) we get 7.597222222222222.
I think you missed something somewhere in your calculations, if it is 2735 miles and she moves 600 mph it would take 4.5 hours to travel that distance/ you should have multiplied the miles by 6 not divided.
Great idea for a thread!
Empty cups/mugs that we are supposed to believe are filled with a beverage. It’s so glaringly obvious, and annoys me greatly. I just hate being pulled out of the show/movie for something so easily avoided – just put some water in the damn cup!!!
I’ve been watching Castle lately and Beckett’s vigorous gestures with her morning coffee (just received from Castle, of course) are agonizing. The only thing keeping me sane is that sometimes it’s so bad it’s almost hilarious. sigh…
I can’t stand actualers- people who use actually or actual in nearly every sentence.
You are mistaken. Take an easy calculation. 12 miles. How many seconds does it take her to travel 12 miles? First we’ll go second-by-second and do addition.
6 miles in 1 second.
Another 6 in another second.
6+6 = 12
and
1 + 1 = 2. 2 Seconds. It takes her two seconds to travel 12 miles.
Now we’ll do it with division.
The calculation is: 12 miles divided by 6. 2 seconds.
The correct calculation: 2735 divided by 6.
To put it another way: If you go 60 miles at 60 miles per hour, does it take you 60/60 = 1 hour, or does it take you 60*60 = 3600 hours?
When I was a kid, my sister would file her nails with an emery board, and it used to really set my teeth on edge. One day I got the notion I’d try some aversion therapy by raking one across my teeth. So I did. To my surprise it felt just like a potato chip.
At least now we know exactly how and why the writers came up with 7.5 minutes. Think about it for a second: 600 miles an hour, travelling >600 miles, means you’re travelling for more than an hour.
Where you went wrong mathematically is that you’re calculating for 6 miles per second (21,600mph) instead of 6 seconds per mile (600mph). Big difference. (From 4.5 hours to 7.5 minutes, in fact.)
Then again, at this point I’m thinking Saltire may have mistakenly thought they said 6 seconds per mile when they actually said 6 miles per second. If so, are there sonic booms as she hits mach 3?
Is there any truth in the idea I heard that the talking over on the radio was also to discourage recording of complete tracks by listeners ?
For me, it’s the closed coinages slipped–make that stabbed–into prose by copy-editors (and it is copy-editors who do this, not authors; I think it’s taught in college as a way to make it look as though you use bigger words than you do) who have a deathly fear of hyphens or something. I can’t count the number of times I’ve tripped over such abominations as (and these are all real examples collected during my proofreading career) semireal, miniriot, quasiscene, pronative, preufology, coastronaut … When I figure out that a book (one I’m not being paid to work on) has been edited that way, I just stop reading.
(Interestingly, the copy-editor who was worst about that also made a punctilious change that had someone “out the door in fewer than two seconds.” The author had correctly made it “less,” as it’s an amount of time, and not a quantity of seconds.)
When Pringles potato chips came out with a reduced calorie version, they blared out in large print on the container that they now had “50% LESS CALORIES!” Arg!! I would yell at the container each time I got it out of the pantry. Then, about a year ago, they actually by golly changed it to FEWER!!! Life is good again.
I’ve always heard the rule that if you can count it, use fewer, if you have to measure it, use less. I have also heard that there are exceptions to this rule, but can’t think of any.
I didn’t really go wrong, did I?
I calculated 6 miles per second because that was what was mentioned in the post. But as you point out, Saltire *then immediately *said 600 miles per hour. One or the other is wrong.
My calculations are correct for 1 mile per second. **Saltire’s **statement that this comes out to 600 miles per hour is wrong. 6 miles per second comes to 21,600 miles per hour.
Now, since I don’t watch the show (well, to be fair, I no longer watch the show), I can’t say which was stated. But based on what was said in the quote, I’m going to say that Saltire miscalculated. Did the writers mess up, or was the report of 600 miles per hour wrong? I don’t know, but the calculations I made for 6 miles per second is a correct one.
It’s identical to the boogers/snot breakdown. If you can count them, they’re boogers, if you have to weigh it or measure by volume, it’s snot.
I feel better too!
Thank you for this decription of your inner mental processes. I’m the same, but with just about every aspect of how English is written and spoken. I find myself mentally ‘vetting’ almost all the English I see or hear. This is entirely involuntary. Whenever I notice errors (of syntax, meaning or usage) it’s as if a little ‘Error alert!’ sign lights up inside my mind.
I am aware of the fact that, given the nature of this post, people will soon come along to point out that it is littered with errors I failed to notice.
Well that does it. I’m going to Tombstone Arizona and correcting Lester More’s grave marker.
I also do this with all aspects of grammar. Don’t even get me started with pronouns and their antecedents or modifying clauses that aren’t anywhere near the thing they’re supposed to modify.