Amusing Homework Questions

[John Mendenhall]

Not homework related, but it got me thinking. When I was a kid people often said, "I'm starting to sound like a broken record." I wonder how soon that is destined to become an archaic usage. And in the future, when people read it, will they wonder what broken Olympic records has to do with repeating oneself?

My partner Donna and I sell vinyl LP's (Long Playing records) by the hundreds every week at our flea market stand. Except one fine day a youngster walked up and asked "What are these?" And then of course, "How do you play them?"

Questions like that make my arthritis flare up.

Regards, John M.

[John Mendenhall]

Worth noting that when I ask youngsters in the same age range as above why they are buying LP's, they all say "The records sound better!"

That eases the arthritis pain a lot.

[vonmazur]

Whoops.

It's actually a nautical expression that predates trains by a couple centuries. "Boards" referred to the sides of the ship (which is where we get the word "overboard"), and something that has "gone by the boards" is something that has fallen or been thrown off the ship - and thus gone by the boards - into the ocean.

Although it's certainly possible that your mentioned usage may have been a contributing factor to it becoming popular in the more generic sense.

The railroad telegraphers are the "ancestor" of the internet, and the source of many of these expressions...All I can say what the usage was when I was an Operator in a Tower on the RR in Connecticut and New York...Perhaps some operator in the ancient times was a former sailor???

Dale

[HenrikOlsen]

I suspect lots of terminology of telegraphy is inherited from the visual semaphore lines that were an ancestor to them and lots of terminology of those were inherited from naval semaphore.

Those are still very different boards

[Nicolas]

One occasionally hears the expression "drop a dime on him." I can remember pay phones, and even when it cost a dime to make a 'phone call. Of course, I don't see pay phones any more.

We still have them with coins here. No longer with telecards though. Side remark about them: in crime series on television, they always need some high-end tracing mechanism to come to the conclusion that the call was made from a pay phone. I know that instantly, simply from the "rrrrrrt rrrrrrt rrrrrrrt" noise on the background of the conversation. I assume that's the payclock you hear "leaking" into the conversation.

[Nicolas]

Worth noting that when I ask youngsters in the same age range as above why they are buying LP's, they all say "The records sound better!"

That eases the arthritis pain a lot.

I felth arthritis coming up when I hired a DJ for the wedding. He came to my house, saw all the vinyl and was amazed I still used that. The DJ was way older than me.

I for one am not from the "vinyl sounds better" school. Vinyl sounds subtly different [than CD], not better or worse in general. Though I do like some genres best on vinyl. For example Fleetwood Mac's bass guitar lines sound imo best from vinyl. Other things I prefer from (a decent) CD. Anyway, any CD or vinyl record on a home installation sounds better than whatever these youngster listen to through 2mm piëzo speakers in flimsy plastic cases.

On the arthritis part, I recently had to explain someone that there were synthesizers and synthesizer music before the computer. You know, playing them black and white keys on analog circuits, as if it were a music instrument and all that...My hobbies make me feel old. Like that time I was talking about the influence of a carburetor's velocity stack's length on where you change the power band, and the other guy only knew injection engines...Or people who've never driven without power steering. Or never slept in a room without heating.

[Nicolas]

Going back to the homework part, there was a time when a lot of subjects you had to write about were in the "not applicable" range for our (and some other's) households. Computer? We had none. Internet? We had none. Cable television? We had none. Microwave oven? We had none. Central heating? No sir. Shower? No sir (hey, we had a bathtub, don't panic). Mom's job? Housewive. Cell phone? We had none. VHS player? We had none. The upside was that I often was finished quite soon on these questions. Too bad there was no such easy way out on math homework. "We don't have the number 3 at home, so I can't solve this question." didn't work.

[Hornblower]

Many of today's kids who routinely use computer keyboards would not get it with the sound effects in Leroy Anderson's piece, "The Typewriter." The clicking of the keys would be clear enough, but the bell and the carriage return sound would be a mystery.

[Hornblower]

Many of today's kids who routinely use computer keyboards would not get it with the sound effects in Leroy Anderson's piece, "The Typewriter." The clicking of the keys would be clear enough, but the bell and the carriage return sound would be a mystery.

Addendum: For those of you who are unfamiliar of this orchestral ditty, here is a nice YouTube video of it being played on a 78rpm record player about 1957.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vuDMInQMYQ

[SeanF]

"We don't have the number 3 at home, so I can't solve this question." didn't work.

My friend asked me why I never called him anymore. I told him I couldn't, because my phone doesn't have a four on it. He said, "That's weird. How long have you had it?"

I said, "I don't know - my calendar doesn't have any sevens."

[Nicolas]

Time for a good old rimshot.

[Trebuchet]

Off-topic, and I'll probably start an About Baut thread about it, but this particular thread is acting wonky for me:
- It show up as having new posts when there are none,
- Clicking "Go to First Unread Post" goes to the first post, and
- Clicking "Go to Last Post" goes to the first post.

Anyone else seeing this?

ETA: Now that I added a post, it appears to be more normal.

[HenrikOlsen]

It's likely a soft deleted post which you hadn't read, yet was last.
This would result in the thread having a post you hadn't read yet, which wouldn't get marked read because the last post shown to you was the one before.
"Go to last" and "go to first unread" transforms to "go to the specific post" and this, because it isn't shown the thread, means the anchor referred to in the #23436 part of the address isn't there so you go to the start of the page.

[DonM435]

Re: No four on the telephone ...

Long ago, I remember trying to use a pay phone (that's how long ago) and finding that one of the numeric buttons was inoperative: not missing, but rather permenently smashed in. And, it was one that I needed to enter the number that I wanted to call!

What to do? I pressed the "operator" code (in those days "zero" connected you with, well, an operator) and said "Ma'am, could you please connect me with 925-6330?" Heck, they did that all the time in the old movies and rural-setting TV shows. Surely it works in an emergency.

"That's a local call. You can dial that yourself" she said, and disconnected before I said "No, I can't dial that, I have no stupid '6'! Hey, come back here!" Good customer service that.

I figured out which friend I could call with the nine functional buttons and had him pass on the message for me.

[Trebuchet]

It's likely a soft deleted post which you hadn't read, yet was last.
This would result in the thread having a post you hadn't read yet, which wouldn't get marked read because the last post shown to you was the one before.
"Go to last" and "go to first unread" transforms to "go to the specific post" and this, because it isn't shown the thread, means the anchor referred to in the #23436 part of the address isn't there so you go to the start of the page.

Uhh, okay, whatever it was you said. Seems to be working ok now.

[HenrikOlsen]

When a user deletes a post it's still there, just not visible.
Moderators have the choice of doing the same (soft delete) or deleting the post completely (hard delete).

What I suspect is that the board software still counted one of those soft deleted posts as the last of the thread.

Since this post isn't sent this breaks normal navigation to a post, which happens by telling the browser which post to move to after loading the page, and because that post isn't anywhere on the page this strands you at the start.

[Trebuchet]

Ok, thanks! It's working now, just needed one new post which I supplied.

[neilzero]

Worth noting that when I ask youngsters in the same age range as above why they are buying LP's, they all say "The records sound better!"

Even more ancient, I used to think AM radio music and old movie music sounds better than FM and new media. Perhaps I still do but early 20th century music is rarely heard anymore. Neil

[Trakar]

If you really want to feel old: http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2015/

That it does!

I frequently run into these reminders of age when I'm talking to younger co-workers,...it's bad enough to have to explain VCRs, but trying to explain Beta to those who really didn't understand VCR is just down right annoying. It also has made me go through and attach a mental note to associations regarding 8-track players.

[Trakar]

Several years ago, I read a programming book in which the author, while emphasizing a particular point, said "I don't want to sound like a broken record (that's a CD with a tracking error for you kids), but..." It won't be long now before CD has no meaning in that sense.


I don't think I've ever heard the expression "wading through molasses," although "slower than molasses in January" is fairly common around these parts.

The one I think about is "calling card." Nowadays, that refers to a prepaid phone card, so using it as a metaphor for some identifying feature (as in, "he left his calling card") seems odd.

I wonder how many people today know what it originally meant for something to have "gone by the boards"?

I don't know that this last (gone by the boards) is so much anachronistic as it is obscure due to the fact that not many people sail. Rather like the "whole nine yards," "three sheets to the wind," "cut and run," "learning the ropes" or the issue of cold brass monkey orbs. With the exception of the last, these are all still valid sailing references, popular culture has merely de-emphsized their widespread usage.

[Nicolas]

Even more ancient, I used to think AM radio music and old movie music sounds better than FM and new media. Perhaps I still do but early 20th century music is rarely heard anymore. Neil

If you mean movie music so old that it was played live in the theatre by an orchestra, then yes it did sound better.

[Trakar]

Sure, Railroad signal semaphores were called "Boards" by the operators and dispatchers...it means the train is going thru or has left the territory controlled by the signal indication....

20 years as a tower operator and I had to learn something!!!

Dale

Actually goes back to pure sailing vessels, first referring to unsecurded items on deck being lost as they got washed off the deck boards, and later came to reference ports of call on regular routes that went by the boards due to shifts in winds and schedulings which made it impractical if not impossible to make the adjustments to hit every scheduled port call. These stops became like the lost items washed over board and were considered gone by the board. At the least this is the meaning I learned as a youngster when first becoming involved in sailing.

Then again, I've heard alternate and reasonable explanations for a lot of these types of sayings, so treat this as additional and parallel input, rather than any sort of attempted "correction."

[SeanF]

I don't know that this last (gone by the boards) is so much anachronistic as it is obscure due to the fact that not many people sail. Rather like the "whole nine yards," "three sheets to the wind," "cut and run," "learning the ropes" or the issue of cold brass monkey orbs. With the exception of the last, these are all still valid sailing references, popular culture has merely de-emphsized their widespread usage.

"The whole nine yards" is actually one of those expressions for which the etymology is almost totally unknown. It appears to be far too young (the earliest known usage in print is from the early 1960s) for it to have been an old nautical term.

[Solfe]

"The whole nine yards" is actually one of those expressions for which the etymology is almost totally unknown. It appears to be far too young (the earliest known usage in print is from the early 1960s) for it to have been an old nautical term.

I had a teacher claim that "The whole nine yards" was the measured length of the fabric used for a formal toga in ancient Rome. I was pretty sure they didn't use yards in Rome, also wrapping up with 9 yards of fabric doesn't sound to comfortable to me.

[profloater]

My son had to write an essay for homework (you can tell this was a long time ago already) about making jam. He started his essay "First take two chairs" because we did make jam at home with a cloth tied between the legs of the upturned chair! He got a good mark.

[HenrikOlsen]

I had a teacher claim that "The whole nine yards" was the measured length of the fabric used for a formal toga in ancient Rome. I was pretty sure they didn't use yards in Rome, also wrapping up with 9 yards of fabric doesn't sound to comfortable to me.

It actually is quite comfortable with a long piece of fabric, since the length allows adjustments so it doesn't slip and allows a lose enough fit that it doesn't constrain movement.
There's just no comparison with the way a bed sheet feels when pressed into service as a makeshift toga for a costume party, the experience is not transferable.

Disclaimer: I've only tried with 5 yards which was uncomfortably short.

[TJMac]

My kids have actually experienced a VCR, but I still get blank looks at the end of watching a DVD movie, and I say, "make sure you rewind it."

TJ

[Trakar]

"The whole nine yards" is actually one of those expressions for which the etymology is almost totally unknown. It appears to be far too young (the earliest known usage in print is from the early 1960s) for it to have been an old nautical term.

I wouldn't argue heavily against this, I do think that variations of the phrase extend much further back than the 1960s but am not prepared to offer compelling evidences to support this belief.

"to the nines" certainly makes sense with regards to suit making
"full nine yards" certainly makes sense with the old vickers machine guns and aircraft ammunition belts
"all nine yards" makes sense with respect to old three masted sailing vessels

I suspect that it is probably an amalgamation of previous statements of similar meaning.

[Paul Beardsley]

My son had to write an essay for homework (you can tell this was a long time ago already) about making jam. He started his essay "First take two chairs" because we did make jam at home with a cloth tied between the legs of the upturned chair! He got a good mark.

I read this to my wife, and she said that's not jam, it's jelly!

I forward this comment without any comment of my own, because I don't know anything about the subject.

[HenrikOlsen]

The difference between jam and jelly is in how much of the fruit is in the finished product, if you filter it through a cloth it's no longer jam.
Well caught by her. Though I do know the difference I missed it on first reading.