more EABF15 capsubs

I was rewatching it today (I was a little harsh in my review) - anyway, two things - it seemed like on Homer's fax machine (and the pay phone Marge uses?) the star and pound keys had switched places - anyone notice that? Also, Homer's suggestion of a "family walk" recalled a similar thing in AABF17. End communication.

I have a question unrelated to the Simpsons but related to the "star" and "pound" keys on a phone. Is the so called "pound" key the key that has the # symbol? If so, why do Americans call it the "pound" symbol? The "star" key I can understand because it is the * symbol and kind of looks like a star, but why is # called "pound"? In Australia, it is called the "hash" symbol - the "pound" symbol is the symbol for British currency. I don't know what other countries call the # symbol. Anybody like to shed some light on this?

Richard Kelly said:

It's an Americanism. In US (Canadian also?) usage, "a 5# sack of sugar" means "a five-pound sack of sugar". These are avoirdupois pounds (0.45359237 kilograms), not pounds sterling in other words.

See http://www.bartleby.com/61/84/P0488450.html

(0.45359237

Oh, OK. For pound (the weight) in Australia, we use lb, as in "a 5 lb sack of sugar" (lb is short for Libra, the symbol of which is the scales - it goes back a long way). Well, actually, we don't have 5 lb sacks of sugar, because the Stonecutters have not set up chapters in our country, so there was nobody to keep the metric system down. And our sugar comes in paper or plastic bags. And we actually call sugar "moondust" and we wear hats on our feet and hamburgers eat people. But apart from all that, Australia and the US are pretty much the same ;-)

Richard Kelly wrote:

How are the frogs doing?

I'd have called them chazwozzas. How are the koalas doing in the US?

Its a bad situation. A lot of urban infestation. They are worse than cockroaches in buildings. Have to spray koalasides and set out traps nightly. They are worse than pidgeons in the parks and streets....

These animals sure act different at night...

And how about the owls?

Oops, wrong century and wrong show...

I am continually cleaning out the owl traps.

Key question, how do you eat corn on the cob (assuming you eat corn on the cob)?

I usually grab it at each end and chew on it, not line by line like a typewriter, but making full rotations from each end until I get to the middle. Sometimes I spread a little butter on it, but usually I just eat it plain.

Thank God, I was afraid that you might hold it vertically.

"Richard Kelly" wrote in message news:3ec4aa0b$0$31522$[email]...

our

buy a 2.2 kg bag of sugar?

"I'm the new exchange student from Ca-na-da... they put me in here because they think I'm slow, ehhhhhhhh?"

"Stephen Rennick" wrote in message news:bxdya.30024$[email]...

Actually sugar is sold in 1kg or 2kg not 2.2kg in Australia.

"Andrew Murray" wrote in message news:3eccd252$0$31507$[email]...

sugar"

sack

it

sugar,

there

paper or

on

the

to

because

Well we buy it in 5 pound bags which is roughly equivalent to 2.2 kg.

"Opinicus" wrote in message news:[email]...

(0.45359237

We used to use lb, but now we just say 2.3kg instead of 5lb.

For some reason everyone still estimates in imperial though...

# = hash = sha = number = pound (not the currency) . = point = period = dot ! = exclamation = bang * = asterisc = star - = hyphen = dash = stroke

I suppose it is all in how you use the symbol. In the US a # is a number sign most of the time, unless you use it on a phone.

On Fri, 16 May 2003, [email] wrote:

Or when you're using it to denote pounds as a unit of measuring weight. Such as a 10# bag of flour. Or when you're commenting things out in shell scripts, although that's kind of a newfangled thing and isn't related really, other than the fact that it's the same symbol.

Yep that is the 'sha' version of #. All shell scrips start with a shabang (#!)

On Fri, 16 May 2003, [email] wrote:

Cool, I never heard of it referred to as a sha. Nor will I ever refer to it as such, as it sounds very gay.

Richard Kelly wrote in :

The use of the word "pound" in relation to the # symbol comes from the old days when commercial shipping companies used it in place of the word "pound" (the measure of weight). "5 pounds of bird seed" on a bill of lading would have been abbreviated as "5# bird seed," for example.

Otherwise, in the United States, the # symbol has always been (and today commonly still is) known simply as the "number sign."

The reason that the # symbol is still called "pound" when it comes to American telephones, however, draws back to those commercial entities. When touch-tone dialing was developed by AT&T, the keypads originally had just 10 buttons (0 through 9). At about the same time, however, big businesses were beginning to think of the possibility of accessing computers via telephone for remote data input, and for remote data inquiry (by keying in codes on the touch-tone keypad and hearing taped voice responses). So after a bit of research into which symbols were the most common for data applications, AT&T decided to add the # and * keys to touch-tone keypads, officially naming them the "octothorpe" and "sextile" keys, respectively. But in the real world, when it came to employees of big businesses using those keys in stock/inventory/ shipping/etc. data inquiry/entry applications, the # button was just casually called "pound," since the # symbol was already known to them as an abbreviation for weights in pounds. And since the popularity potential of its official name -- "octothorpe" -- was nil, the slang name "pound" caught on and eventually became the # button's de facto title in the world of American telephony.

I'm not an expert on the different names for the # key on telephones throughout different countries. I know that it's also called "pound" in Canada, and that "hash" is its name in both Australia and the UK. I believe in Japan, it's known as "sharp." No clue about elsewhere.