Noted and Queried
Dec. 31st, 2009 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustAnother one from the Guardian: Notes and Queries is part of their ongoing campaign to persuade the readers to write the newspaper for them. Readers submit questions, other readers (or, for all I know, the same readers - I'm not keeping track) submit answers, and the Guardian publishes them, apparently unmediated, in the sense that some of the questions are plain silly, and some of the answers are plain wrong.
Snark aside, it's usually entertaining and occasionally thought-provoking. Some of the questions act (intentionally or otherwise) as the set up line for jokes ("Is a dead badger still a badger?", "Can vegetarians eat jellyfish?"), some make me snarl "Oh, go and look it up yourself!", others (though I can't off-hand think of an example) are the sort of sidewise approach to an issue which wouldn't be easy to research, and can draw interesting answers from people who know what they are talking about.
Into which category, though, should I place yesterday's query: "Before AD, what did people of the BC era call their years?" I'm hoping it's a joke...
ETA: It occurs to me belatedly, having seen the comments on this post, that of course they started counting from the creation of the world, and that they called their years 'years' (just as we call our world 'the world', on the basis that it's the only sort there is).
Snark aside, it's usually entertaining and occasionally thought-provoking. Some of the questions act (intentionally or otherwise) as the set up line for jokes ("Is a dead badger still a badger?", "Can vegetarians eat jellyfish?"), some make me snarl "Oh, go and look it up yourself!", others (though I can't off-hand think of an example) are the sort of sidewise approach to an issue which wouldn't be easy to research, and can draw interesting answers from people who know what they are talking about.
Into which category, though, should I place yesterday's query: "Before AD, what did people of the BC era call their years?" I'm hoping it's a joke...
ETA: It occurs to me belatedly, having seen the comments on this post, that of course they started counting from the creation of the world, and that they called their years 'years' (just as we call our world 'the world', on the basis that it's the only sort there is).
