Jan 23, 2008

Spammatical Errors

Posted in Geek at 1:00 pm by David Bradley -- 1 Comment

I usually ignore the comment spam folders on this website as per my own advice. Occasionally, however, I will scan them quickly. I do so if a regular reader has commented and has emailed to say that their comment is yet to appear. Legitimate words do sometimes get caught in the Akismet netting. I can then add the individual to the filter whitelist and …

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Jan 9, 2008

40320, Such a Significant Figure

Posted in Geek at 1:00 pm by David Bradley -- Click to comment

I am currently writing a post about pico and femto satellites for Sciencebase, these devices are tiny compared to the enormous one tonne behemoths many of us would picture if asked to visualise an artificial satellite (more on that later). Anyway, the earth’s escape velocity at sea level from a standing start was a figure I needed to hand while writing the piece.

I found a …

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Jan 7, 2008

An Amply Adequate Sufficiency of Tautology

Posted in Geek at 8:00 pm by David Bradley -- 7 Comments; add yours

As Russ Swan of Laboratory Talk pointed out in reference to my previous post on the redundancy of the phrase “male semen”, there are numerous other examples around. For instance, the phrase HIV virus is equally redundant as it literally says, “human immunodeficiency virus virus”, likewise ATM machine (automated teller machine machine), PIN number (personal identification number number) and the Sierra Nevada …

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