just as an arb fact - in South Africa, the Afrikaans (via French Huguenots) surname LeGrange is pronounced “Leh Gransee” with a hard “G”. I have no idea why the french “g” mutated to an “s” sound, but I probably sounded pretty unique the first time I spoke to an overseas Sci Fi fan about a colony in L5.
You poor arrogant slobs, thinking the Moons revolves around the Earth. Does ignorance have no bounds? Please stop spreading falsehoods. The correct answer is that the Earth and Moon revolve around their common center of mass.
I fail to see the point of mocking people who lack knowledge immediately relevant to their life. It’s much better to gently reduce their ignorance. Everyone has gaps in their knowledge. Remove the plank from your own eye and all that.
Which is within the Earth. And so …
… does still not excuse conflating the Earth with the center of mass of the two.
http://www.gecdsb.on.ca/d&g/astro/music/galaxy.mp3 This is always a good intro to astronomy.
Touché.
I should have said: chill the fuck out, you fucking cocksucker.
You’re probably one of those assholes who thinks that Mozart’s first name is Wolfgang.
Tangentially related anecdote: in seventh grade “Historical Geography”, the following question appeared on a quiz: “How do we know the Earth rotates around it’s axis?” Being a smart-ass, I replied something along the lines of “What else would it rotate around? That’s what an axis is.”
I prefer “In the woods there grew a tree/and a fine, fine tree was he/and on that tree there was a branch/and on that branch there was a nest/and in that nest there was a bird…etc etc”
So I’m confused…do all you people who want others to “be curious about the world around you” really want us to be curious, or just be curious to ourselves and not ask questions out loud?
All the examples I’ve seen in this thread don’t point to knowledgeable people giving less-knowledgeable people information. They point to knowledgeable people pointing and laughing at the ignorance of others.
Not all of us come up with a question and trot off to the library to get 12 books on the subject. Sometimes it’s easier just to help others with their facts and move on. Laughing at people only makes them less eager to care about the subject at all.
On Edit: What Pleonast said.
Hegel, hegel, hegel,
You go there or you pray!
Seems to me that the knowledgeable people are giving information, and then coming into the Pit to express remorse at the state of book learnin’. Which Doper said they actually pointed and laughed at someone?
Is this one of those “the word ‘gullible’ isn’t in the dictionary” kinda things?
rock me, Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart
Supporting cite
The funny part is he was laughing at his mother in law who is apparently smarter than he is.
Actually, no.
Ding, ding!
(Geek.)
Cite that the IAU or any such governing body has made such a definition official? I searched their website and found nothing. The definition on the Bad Astronomer site is pretty clearly one he is proposing, and not something officially declared by a governing body of some sort.
As far as I know, the correct answer is that there is no “official” date for seasons to start (much less to be defined by a “midpoint”), the ignorance of pundits in the media notwithstanding.
I hope somewhere there is a message board where mechanics, carpenters and the like sit around and mock the “nerds and geeks with their heads buried in books, wasting time staring into the sky pondering the boundries of the universe, dragging down society by having never learned anything useful like how to install a ceiling fan or rebuild a transmission.” :dubious:
OK, that’s one person. That hardly constitutes all of us.
It may be worth noting that the passage you quoted was written by a man who believed in the literal existence of faeries.