Hey, hairpin bends aren't dangerous unless you can't drive.

One of my favourite roads is the Healey Pass in Ireland it's got hairpin bends, potential for rock slides and stretches with more gaurd rails, but it terms of accidents per vehicle mile it's a lot less dangerous than many other roads in the same area.

If a joke needs to be explained then it's not funny. Or more specifically it's not funny to the person you're explaining it to.

All we needed to see was the sticker. If we got the joke we laughed, if we needed it explaining we were never going to laugh.

@Josiah

Faith is just another word for opinion. Actually faith has less value than personal opinion. Basing your faith upon scripture marks you out as someone who doesn't have the courage to form your own opinion, but instead lets
somebody else form their opinions for them.

Oh and to all the US homophobes out there; whatever happened to all men being created equal? Oh I remember the real text read "all men are created equal, except the ones who are different from me" but they lost that version didn't they? No? Silly me.

Surely everybody knows it was the sea devils? ;)

@Persephone

One problem with a lot of place names and their translations is that until they were pinned to a page they tended to change (even after they were pinned down some continued to chane). Another is that they may already have been (mis)translated, perhaps more than once. Combine the two and you can end up with something that is nothing like the original name. Then along comes an academic who works their etymological magic on the current name to arrive at a meaning a million miles from the original.

It is for example common knowledge that the town of Pontefract in England translates to broken bridge. Indeed, you can arrive at "Pontefract" if you start at "broken bridge" in latin. There are no roman records of a town called Pontus Fractus or similar. Pontefract is not on a river, like many castle towns it's on a hill, so it's unlikely there was ever a bridge of any significance, broken or not. Before it was known as Pontefract the Normans called it Pomfret, so it's likely that the name Pontefract derives somehow from Pomfret. And is nothing to do with bridges at all.

The Normans were, as any fule kno, French so a careless entymologist could easilly decide that Pontefract gets it's name from a plate of fried chips. Pommes Frite? Oh well, never mind.

I'm sorry, but the Dublin=Blackpool one is a popular myth among the English. The english seem to find it amusing that "dubh linn" in gaelic would translate to "black pool" in english. The humour presumably being that Blackpool is a tacky seaside resort in the north west of England.

However Dublin is the city's name in english, not gaelic. It's name in gaelic is Ath Cliath, which doesn't mean Blackpool.

I thought this was about BEER drinkers.

"For example, Britain incorporated fuses in the appliance plug instead of the wiring system because of a shortage of copper at the time"

FAIL. The British system of having a fuse in the plug is for additional protection to the fuse in the ring main, not as an alternative. Often the plug will have a 3A or 5A fuse while the ring main will have a much higher rated fuse. So the fuse in the plug should go before the fuse in the house wiring. That way only the appliance loses power and not every appliance on the ring.

@Zavatone & @Him

To quote Ford Prefect: "It might be right, but it's probably wrong."

Don't forget that when Ford and Arthur arrived on prehistoric earth with the occupants of the B-Ark they supplanted to indigenous humans who became extinct. So at that point the whole program got screwed up anyway.

Not forgetting of course that nobody ever knew what the actual question was.

Which reminds us that when Arthur tried to discover the question by randomly pulling out letters from the Scrabble bag he came up with "What do you get if you multiply six by nine." Pretty much proving that the program had been screwed up.

Oh and @Don't Panic! There were never two double albums. There was a double album (The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy) and a single (The Restaurant at the end of the Universe). As is normal with Hitch-Hikers they were not the same as any other version, while they broadly covered the same material as the radio series, there were small differences in the double album. There was a major change in the second album where the (IMHO rather weak) Haggunenon sequence from the radio series was replaced by Disaster Area's stunt ship.

And finally it certainly isn't the most inaccurate trilogy. As far as I'm aware that title belongs to Robert Rankin's Brentford Trilogy. Although I'm willing to be corrected on that.

So what? He's translated "songs" into another language, people have been doing that for centuries. It's not a talent really, is it? It really doesn't matter that it's an invented language rather than an evolved one.

Funny? Where?

This guy is in the business of selling overpriced stuff to suckers. Not that I have a problem with that, if you're dumb enough to buy his snake oil then that's your problem and good luck to Mr Dyson. A fool and his money etc.

It's clever, sure, but it's an "invention" that nobody needs. A conventional fan works fine and costs a fraction of the price.

Pickpocketing in Liverpool? Nah. That's far too subtle. Belting you over the head and just taking your stuff is pretty subtle for Liverpool.

Why beer? Because it leaks. A beer glass should never be vertical for long enough for the leaks to be a problem.

Fill it.

Empty it.

Belch.

Fill it again.

@ K!P

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head there. When the overhead cables or third rail are out, you may need batteries. The battery powered electric loco was first used AFAIK on electric railways such as the London underground when the power to the third rail was off. When the power is out parts and machinery may need to be moved to repair the fault, so a loco is required that needs no external power source and you don't want steam or diesel power in an underground railway. I'm sure such locos have been used on underground railways in the US as well.

On surface railways there seems to be very little point.

I bet it takes a long time to recharge too.