2.28.2008

Vocabulary and Extra Credit

I am a big fan of spell check. While I consider myself a decent speller, I rely on spell check to catch my errors. I even use spell check before I send out emails - not all the time, but most of the time - which I suppose makes me a nerd. Three little words quicken my heart: "No misspellings found". Quite often though, words that I use on a regular basis pop up as potentially misspelled words, for example, blogging. Do I mean "blagging" the computer asks me? Blagging? What in the world is blagging? So I googled it.

blag·ging
n. Caribbean
Informal talk, usually among men, occurring in a public place: "the street corner, the rum shop, the crossroads, wherever hanging out, or . . . blagging, takes place" Roger D. Abrahams.
[From French blaguer, to talk through one's hat, from blague, bladder, pouch, of Germanic origin, ultimately from Latin bulga, leather bag; see bulge.]


Well I'll be. Perhaps blogging and blagging have something in common after all, though in my experience blogging is usually among women (not to exclude my male readers, but you are the minority) in private places, from a computer at home (though I'm sure we wouldn't mind blogging at the rum shop if it had wi-fi).

To be quite honest, I haven't really been in the blagging or blogging mood lately. The weather has been so nice this week that I have been spending as much time as possible soaking up the sun. Yesterday I spent several hours laying on my front porch; it is made of brick and gets direct sunlight in the winter. Avery even brought me a pillow and painted my toenails while I rested. I'm sure my neighbors found my behaviour curious, but I felt too good to care.

Made in the Shade

My kids followed suit and set up camp on the grass with blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals. Perhaps this afternoon we'll move our lounging to the backyard; the hammock is beckoning me.

I've also been busy blessing my home (a fly lady euphemism for cleaning). Not real exciting, no pictures to share, but I have gone to bed with a clean kitchen three nights in a row and I'm happy to report that my dryer and laundry baskets are empty, our clothes washed and put away. I've also been tackling my hot spots, and ran across a paper I have been hanging on to that I could use some help with.

how can this be true

We brought this challenge home from the science fair a few months ago and have been unable to solve it, much to my nerdy dismay. I'm thinking that a hand made goody awaits the person who can help me solve this puzzle. Email me with your answer: mollydunham@sbcglobal.net.

Enjoy Leap Day tomorrow; I'll see you in March.

8 comments:

  1. I'm quite certain that it has to do with the angles of the triangles, but I'm going to play with the math and get back to you.

    Enjoy the sun! We sure are.

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  2. I didn't solve it but the question was making me crazy so I found the answer online:
    Ans: The Inclination between the red and the green triangles are not the same. The red one is 3:8 ( 37.5% ) and the green one is 2:5 ( 40% ), so the hypothenuses ( the incline side of the triangle ) in both pictures are not a straight line. ie they look like ..../ and /'''''', this is where the hole comes from.

    Does that make sense? There is actually a better explanation at Google Earth Community but the html is causing errors in my comment.

    Thank God for Google!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am too busy thinking about laying in the sun having my toenails painted to think about a math problem!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I must go on record for saying that I also love spell check and can't live without it.... "nerds & cool kids" - what's going on around here lately? funny.

    And I'm with Kirstie; forget math!

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  5. Blagging! I love it. The math I can't even TRY to work out. I want to focus on blagging at the rum shop and painting toenails in the sunshine!

    ReplyDelete
  6. me, too! I love the satisfaction of clicking on spellcheck and seeing "No mispellings found"!! English classes were always my strong suit and I loved when the teacher would give us 20 new vocabulary words to look up and spell properly...

    Math problems??? ugh!! I'd rather hear about your sunny day in the hammock. BRRRRR!!! Much too cold for that here!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am not sure about the math but the two images are not the same, just similar. If you hold up a straight edge to the diagonal line, you will see the top image angles upward at the eighth line (left to right) whereas the bottom image is a straight line across the diagonal. And both images cross through different cross-hatch points on the diagonal so they are not the same even though they almost look alike. Somewhere in there is a mathmatical equation in which the answer is 1 square. If you dropped the angle on the top image even more, so the first 8 squares were even closer to flat, it would become more conspicuous why the top one has less total area. -- Mark.

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  8. i feel like i could have written this post...oh, joy to read.

    but wow, let me go look at that puzzle more closely now. : )

    ReplyDelete

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