The results to last week's Fun Online Poll on a good turnout of 116 votes (thanks to everybody who took part) were as follows:
Which are acceptable synonyms for sandwich? Multiple answers allowed.
Outright winners:
Sarnie - 95 votes
Butty - 93 votes
Also rans:
[Ingredient] on [type of bread] - 22 votes
Piece [and...] - 14 votes
Hoagie - 14 votes
Sub/submarine - 13 votes
Double-decker - 11 votes
Sanger - 11 votes
Wrap - 10 votes
Hero - 4 votes
Grinder - 3 votes
Other, please specify - 4 votes
So now we know. The only ones I chose were "butty" and "sarnie" so thankfully I'm in the majority on this.
PeterA5145 said: "It's interesting how many different regional words there are for "bread roll" - bap, batch, barm cake, cob, muffin, bun, stottie, hoagie etc. I've even come across one pub that called them "bunnies"."
Indeed this is very interesting - there are few regional expressions for "bread" as such or a "loaf of bread" but dozens for "bread roll". I'd noticed that in Germany as well, in Austria/south Bavaria a bread roll is called a "Semmel" but if you ask for a "Semmel" in north Germany, they stare at you blankly. I'm sure there's a reason for this although I have no idea what it is. Is it like this in other large countries?
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And lo, to this week's Fun Online Poll.
CriticalThinking touches on another conspiracy theory:
As a flying mad youth, living on Royal Air Force bases in the 1950s and 60s, I observed condensation or vapour trails from planes on a regular basis. Typically, they would last minutes at most, even when artificially induced during aerobatic displays of the Black or Red Arrows (the RAF flying display teams).
Today, you can observe two types of exhaust from jet engined planes: normal, temporary contrails consisting of mainly of water vapour and chemtrails about which there is little information but linger for hours muddying the sky and making it dull and overcast.
We don't know the purpose of these chemtrails but there are observations from around the world confirming both the extent and content of the trails. Samples of high levels of barium, aluminium, polymers and radioactive material have been collected from affected areas.
One theory is that it is being used to combat climate change - creating a reflective layer around the planet - but techniques, such as cloud seeding, have also been used to manipulate weather. It could equally be to induce severe weather to reinforce climate change fear. Who knows? More research required.
All of which baffles me. We know that the military get up to all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff and that there is such a thing as "cloud seeding" if you want to precipitate a rain shower, but I find it difficult to believe that commercial airlines would deliberately contaminate their own jet fuel for purposes unknown.
Surely some pilot or technician or designer or somebody would have blown the whistle by now? I have also been led to believe that there is a very short and clearly defined list of stuff which you are allowed to add to jet fuel. If you get more than a couple of millionth parts of crap it in, the planes won't fly properly, the engines wear out more quickly etc.
So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.
Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.
Monday, 27 May 2013
Fun Online Polls: Sandwiches and chemtrails
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2 comments:
Dear Mr Wadsworth
I suspect persistent contrails are just that, condensation of water vapour from the exhaust gases persisting due to meteorological conditions at the altitude of the aircraft.
Whilst there may be experimental seeding of the atmosphere, I doubt that persistent trails are evidence of widespread spraying of chemicals, not least because of the volumes that would be required.
The author's observations dating from the 50's and 60's may be explained by the higher altitudes at which jets routinely fly, and the huge number of them compared with the mid-twentieth century - have a look at www.flightradar24.com to get a feel for how many there are up there.
Ground samples taken after contrails are observed are irrelevant. I suspect it may take weeks for any heavy materials ejected from a jet engine at high altitude to reach the ground, and in that time they would have travelled many hundreds or thousands of miles, and will be extremely dilute.
There may be an easy way (if you have the equipment and necessary skills and it works) to ascertain the chemical composition of the trails using absorption spectroscopy to examine the absorption lines in light passing through the trails from a handy star. It has the virtue of measuring the composition of the trails themselves when they are formed or very soon after.
I'm surprised no one has done that *.
DP
* it seems someone has, sort of. The first result from search claims the presence of barium in the atmosphere, rather than a contrail. Other results are even dodgier.
DP, excellent summary.
As it happened, atmospheric conditions yesterday meant that all the contrails disappeared after about thirty seconds (I timed them).
There was just one patch of sky (colder, wetter, whatever) where they seemed to last longer (two or three minutes). I watched two planes cross this patch, one they were out of it, their con trails disappeared very quickly again.
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