Friday 20 June 2008

English language

I had been meaning to write this one for a while now, but like a lubricated cloud, its was rather hard to keep hold of.

So without further a do; I would like to introduce my first book:


Verbular and noundic plurelacise.

A guide to the tricky world of plurals, singulars and tensing in the english language.

Introduction:
We all know that working out when something should get pluralised and what form this should take is not something that can be equated from a simple set of rules. Often many words have their plural version bear no resemblance to logic. Similarly, singulars cannot be derived from their plural equivalent.
In the course of this book, I hope to provide you with some much needed answers to your question or questicies.

Some universal laws:
Some rules can always be applied, and should be learnt first:
(i) x->ces
Some basic examples first:
Index->indices
Matrix->matrices
prix->prices
chox->choices
box->bocies

but they can also be used in making more irregular words
1 voice-> 2 vox
1 horse-> 3 hoax
1 oak -> 3 oxen (notice how the word is past tense due to the tree now being dead).

(ii) past tensed
Tensing is another tricky area that we can help. Just remember, if it happened then it needs oldering.
dead->deaden
breath-> brend
pig -> pork
navigate->navigot
dog->dug
3-> threed
triplicate->triplipacised
tree->trod
divided->dividend (a past event happening again, in the past).
jump->jimped

(iii) present past continuous.
Possible the toughest of tensing. Best described in a scenario:
Mark would like to tell Peter about a time he was fishing when he fell in to a lake. He tells this story as if he was there at the time, but with reference to the fact that it is in the past. Mark begins:

"I had fished when fallen went water and wet."

Unfortunately, this is not english, and gramatically much closer to Canadian, or Indian.

Instead it should follow simple english rules:

"I was fished and whilst fisheding did I felling and watered." - Much better I think you'll agree.

Wednesday 11 June 2008

Petrol - understanding the problem

A quick note about the use of fuel in cars. Now I understand that censoring newspapers is generally looked down on. But I think that the scenario of petrol inflation causing scaremongering is exactly the kind of thing that should be grounds for masked men taking people away in the night never to be seen again.

The newspaper that caught my eye shall remain nameless (because I can't remember it). But the massive title on the front page was: PETROL SHORTAGES: NO NEED TO PANIC.

Now lets look at this one logically; what will happen when you tell someone not to panic? They will wonder what exactly the emergency is that they shouldn't panic about. Its the kind of statement that is made when a person believes that the logical reaction is to panic, and so therefore prewarns everyone of what is about to happen. In short asking people not to panic will tell them that it is a perfectly rational state to be in.

Of course what the paper should say is "go ahead and panic if you want to. There's plenty of petrol for panickers and non panickers alike". But headlines of "everything is normal" isn't a headline at all.

Petrol is a very weird thing. Very prevalent in the world, it has now been turned into unuseful things, like clouds. Plants realised the usefulness of using waste material for their own ends very early on by absorbing co2 and releasing oxygen. It works in a cycle.

So if we are to learn from nature, then we need a thing that absorbs fuel emissions and turns them in to something that can be used to fuel stuff. An organic being that lives by eating up carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and unburnt petrol.

And what should it release? Well if it is a true cycle, then it should form oil filled leaves, but it should not be flammable in itself, else forest fires would be rather epic.

But perhaps trying to shape nature around ourselves is actually rather egotistical.

Petrol is the by-product of creating water. The oceans formed many millions of years ago when the ground melted and the solid bits sank to the bottom. Many people wonder why it was coloured blue, but this is purely due to the name "blue" coming from the norse word meaning water. As water is often drunk by both humans and some mammals, it is vital to replace what is taken. The Pyro-elastic company of Australia is the world's leader in oxygen dihydride manufacturing; producing over 90 tonnes per minute. This does cause some problems, as no-one has yet built a pipe big enough to handle that kind of hydro-traffic. As a result it is instead poured upwards in to the sky, where the water is forced further and further up by the water underneath it. Once it reaches cloud city it is turned 90 degrees by a series of magnets and from there it falls into the ocean wherever the ocean is at its lowest.

This has caused knock on effects to the country. The perpetual force occurring in one direction is pushing Australia south every year by 3 and 1/8th feet. There has been plans to rotate the water in a "sprinkler effect", but this has been rubbished as causing the country to spin.

But returning to the point of this talk-amble, the petrol is eventually produced by the demagnatised magnets anchored to the clouds via a space lift. These quickly get coated in a layer of dead, magnetic birds sent off course with the alteration in magnetic fields. The magnets are replaced every 3-7 months and are melted down and burnt inside combustion engines, so that there is no record of how many birds died in the water engineering industry.

monkey kung fu