Quick Questions, Short Answers - No Debate

When I say 'the pound sign' I am referring to the libra. When I write it in my posts, that's what I see. When anyone else writes it, however, I see neither the hash symbol nor the libra, but rather the funny capital L with a line through it like in the Polish city 'd'.Bizarre.

To me, the libra looks like a funny capital L with a line through it. I don't see the differnece between the libra and the first letter in that Polish city. I'd guess its a display or language setting in your browser.

And yours too, if you're also seeing the . What I don't understand, if this is just how my browser displays things, is why it doesn't happen to the libra in my own post. Do you see £ as the same as in my post?

How's this for fucked up:In the email alert I got for this response, the html code 163 shows as the hash tag, but then when opened up the actual post, I see it as the libra £That's the html code and it comes out as a libra for me in this post.

ŁdźIt's HTML entity #321The libra is a stylized letter 'L' with a horizontal line through it. The one in the city name is a normal looking L with a slanted line through it.

Ah, I see. In his post, I see the name of that city starting with a libra, not this thing: .ABE:Wait, what the fuck? I swear is was that Polish L in my email notification and what I submitted, but now I see it as the libra again ABE2:Yeah, in your post I see the polish L and in my quote of your post I see the libraWhat sort of wizardry is this!?Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

It's probably this HTML setting that this website uses and that your email probably doesn't. It controls how characters are displayed: I can change this setting if someone would like to suggest a better one, but I should mention that in my own experience I've found that some settings are better for some characters and not others, and vice-versa, and no setting solves all problems.--Percy

Looking at a page from a different forum, I see:Hmm, code tags did not work there with straight html.

Don't bother changing anything; its of little to no consequence.

In Dr Adequate's most excellent geology thread he demonstrates that reversal of the earths magnetic poles has happened in the past and, as I understand it, is happening now or is a constant process.What will the effects be on our technology? On migrating animals? Or anything else for that matter.

Well, anyone using a magnetic compass will be screwed. However, we'll have some warning --- the strength of the poles will weaken and they'll start to wander in an unprecedented way, so we'll see it coming.I don't know what proportion of migrating animals use geomagnetism.Geomagnetic reversals are not associated with extinction events (and a good thing too) so the effect on biology will likely be minimal.The weakening of the Earth's magnetic field will (IIRC) allow the solar wind to hit us harder than it usually does. Some people have suggested that this would be very bad, but again it is a fact that reversals are not associated with extinction events, so it can't be that bad. But there might well be an uptick in cancer rates.It is thought that such an event might well happen quite soon, but that's "quite soon" in geologist time, so maybe some time in the next few thousand years. If you want to worry about something, worry about Yellowstone erupting instead.

Thanks for the reply. Will it help?

Well, forewarned is forearmed. If it happens, and you're anywhere near it, get inside, shut the doors and windows, and turn off the air-conditioning. This won't avert the post-apocalyptic nightmare, but at least your lungs won't be shredded by volcanic glass.

It came up the other day somewhere around here that the English "thee" is the objective/dative second-person singular pronoun in the old familiar style of speech.What is the plural? "Ye" is the subjective, right? Is it "you?" or something weird?

I think it was actually "you", I could be wrong though.In other words:Thou (Nominative singular)
Ye (Nominative Plural)
Thee (Dative/Accusative Singular)
You (Dative/Accusative Plural)