All four are words which come from Norse.

But for some reason, only the -ness versions made it into Anglo-Saxon, and then into English.

If we assume that some people are hapless, feckless, gormless and ruthless, then how is it you never hear anyone that's said to be full of hap, replete with feck, loaded with gorm or, indeed, has ruth to spare?

Feck knows. That said, I do occasionally say "He/she's got gorm".

"Ruth" you do sometimes see, as a poetic archaism meaning "pity" or "remorse" (same root as "rue" as in "rue the day", I think).

And, as GY says, you occasionally get "gorm" as a jocular usage (though as a back-formation it arguably doesn't count).

One that came up at work today.

"What time is it at the North and South Poles"*

And, if you walked a mile South from the North Pole, and walked round and round in circles, forever crossing the International Date Line, would you travel backwards [or forwards] in time?"

* We've already got an answer for this one which seems to fit btw.

Guy, I'd be intrigued to know your answer to the first one.

On the second one, the answer is no. I mean, obviously the answer's no, it's just not obvious how it works.

Let's say you've walked far enough South that your circumnavigation takes exactly two hours. For the sake of argument, let's say you walk due East. Also for the sake of argument, let's say you start at 6pm on the Greenwich Meridian on 15th June, and let's say the IDL is at 180 degrees (which, near the Pole, I think it is).

So: one hour later, you're at the IDL, about to cross it. This is that point at which you might think you'd "go backwards in time". But wait: you've already crossed twelve time zones, travelling East, to get to the IDL! So rather than being 7pm on the 15th June, where you are it's actually 7am on the 16th.

So: as you cross, it becomes 7am on the 15th. Then it takes you a further hour to get to the Greenwich meridian. That should be 8am on the 15th except that again, you've crossed twelve time zones. So it's actually 8pm on the 15th.

So you started at 6pm on the 15th at the Greenwich meridian. And here you are, two hours later, once more at the Greenwich meridian, at 8pm on the 15th. Which is exactly what your situation would be had you never crossed the IDL at all.

Is there some parallel universe they're describing where more than a handful of journalists have paid researchers?

I spotted that too. As far as I can tell, almost the only "journalists" making big money are on TV and/or syndicated columnists and, for the most part, aren't really journalists any more if in fact they ever were.

Indeed, that whole "professional class = upper middle class" doesn't really work. Nurses ought to be regarded as proper "professionals" and they don't always make much. Many teachers have a lot of education and don't make all that much. Same for the clergy. On the other hand there are CEOs and other business-types that make big wads despite having never finished college.

Next time I see my friend who did geology research in Antartica, I'll ask him how they do time at the bases there. I imagine that for the same of simplicity, they just assume its Wellington time or wherever for the whole continent.

Why on Earth... wrote:
Guy, I'd be intrigued to know your answer to the first one.

On the second one, the answer is no. I mean, obviously the answer's no, it's just not obvious how it works.

Let's say you've walked far enough South that your circumnavigation takes exactly two hours. For the sake of argument, let's say you walk due East. Also for the sake of argument, let's say you start at 6pm on the Greenwich Meridian on 15th June, and let's say the IDL is at 180 degrees (which, near the Pole, I think it is).

So: one hour later, you're at the IDL, about to cross it. This is that point at which you might think you'd "go backwards in time". But wait: you've already crossed twelve time zones, travelling East, to get to the IDL! So rather than being 7pm on the 15th June, where you are it's actually 7am on the 16th.

So: as you cross, it becomes 7am on the 15th. Then it takes you a further hour to get to the Greenwich meridian. That should be 8am on the 15th except that again, you've crossed twelve time zones. So it's actually 8pm on the 15th.

So you started at 6pm on the 15th at the Greenwich meridian. And here you are, two hours later, once more at the Greenwich meridian, at 8pm on the 15th. Which is exactly what your situation would be had you never crossed the IDL at all.

[apparently]
The North Pole uses UTC by convention.

The South Pole uses New Zealand time by convenience, as this is where most of the supply flights comes from.

The various bases etc. use their own nations standard timezone, apparently.

[/apparently]

The question I have been pondering more than any other over the last week or so is "How come I never knew before that Hunter S Thompson's suicide note was apparently headed 'Football season is over'?" and that I was unaware that there's a theory that he was in a post-Superbowl depression.

Apparently, the alternative universe is Pro-Publica, the non-profit (!) investigative journalism outfit. They're advertising for an intern at $700 a week. That's considerably more than most full-time journos I know make.

I admit that I'm doing a lot better than that, but most of the journalism jobs I see advertised - newspaper jobs, mostly - offer $35k or less to somebody with experience. Just out of college students are offered something in the low $20s. I don't know anyone who has stuck with a job like that.

Journalism seems to be better paid on average in the US, at least on a PPP basis. My employer starts people out on £12k a year during their "trial period", which really means their first six months. Then it goes up to a whopping £18k. And that's pretty good for a starting salary. From the NUJ:The starting salary for a trainee reporter on a local/regional paper may be as low as £12,000 according to the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) . You can expect rises of £1,500 - £3,000 as you progress through training (salary data collected July 09 from the NUJ).
The average salary for all journalists is £24,500, but there is wide variation between regional papers and national newspapers. Salaries for journalists with between one to four years of experience are £14,900 - £24,350. For those with five to nine years of experience it is between £21,700 to £35,000. With over ten years’ experience you can expect a salary starting at £22,000 to £39,000 (salary data collected July 09).

Wow. That sucks. How can people afford to live in London on such salaries?

They can't. Which is why most people who go into journalism in London (and most journalism jobs are in London) are those whose parents are able and willing to support them for a few years.

To be fair, those are national averages, and it's a lot cheaper to live outside London, but the pay is usually lower outside London too.

Re adorable and amazingly well preserved million year old* baby animals, how great was the baby mammoth that was just on channel 4? wonderful

*whatever. I don't know

New paper on Ida backs lemur line.

Furtho wrote:
When they go out on the beat at the beginning of a shift, do police officers really say to each other, "Let's go catch some bad guys"?

"Crime won't crack itself."

Why do helicopters in films only make a sound when you can see them on screen? Has no one in Holywood ever actually seen or heard a helicopter?

On a somewhat related note, here's a huge collection of papers on Homo floriensis. It looks like the consensus is that it's definitely a new species, and not microcephalic humans. From the conclusion of one of the papers:Based on rigorous cladistic analyses, we propose that H. floresiensis evolved in the Late Pliocene or Early Pleistocene. The first of our two equally parsimonious trees suggests that H. floresiensis branched after H. rudolfensis (represented by KNM-ER 1470) but prior to the divergence of H. habilis (represented by KNM-ER 1813 and OH 24). Alternatively, our results are equally supportive of H. floresiensis branching after the emergence of H. habilis. Our results sustain H. floresiensis as a new species (Brown et al., 2004; Morwood et al., 2005) and favor the hypothesis that H. floresiensis descended from an early species of Homo (Falk et al., 2005; Argue et al., 2006; Larson et al., 2007; Tocheri et al., 2007). We find no evidence of close phylogenetic relations to H. sapiens, and reject the idea that the Liang Bua remains represent a pathological modern human. Importantly, we also are unable to link H. floresiensis phylogenetically to H. erectus, rejecting the hypothesis that the small enigmatic bones resulted from insular dwarfing of H. erectus.

Why is it called ex-husband/wife!?

ex what? Not "extra", not the exponential function, why ex, why not...... well, what the hell would be a proper prefix?