Tuesday 30 September 2014

Heavens to Murgatroyd

'Heavens to Murgatroyd' is American in origin and dates from the mid 20th century.

The expression was popularized by the cartoon character Snagglepuss - a regular on the Yogi Bear Show in the 1960s, and is a variant of the earlier 'heavens to Betsy'.

The first use of the phrase wasn't by Snagglepuss but comes from the 1944 film Meet the People. It was spoken by Bert Lahr, best remembered for his role as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. Snagglepuss's voice was patterned on Lahr's, along with the 'heavens to Murgatroyd' line.

See more at https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080707123703AA9IoCE

Friday 19 September 2014

I wouldn’t talk to him with a barge pole

This Is an eggcorn heard recently

See more on eggcorns at www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

Tuesday 9 September 2014

Golden Ratio

The golden ratio (symbol is the Greek letter "phi" ) is a special number approximately equal to 1.618
It appears many times in geometry, art, architecture and other areas.

See more at http://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/golden-ratio.html

Wednesday 3 September 2014

Olbers' Paradox

Why isn't the night sky uniformly at least as bright as the surface of the Sun? 

If the Universe has infinitely many stars, then presumably it should be. 

After all, if you move the Sun twice as far away from us, we will intercept one quarter as many photons, but the Sun's angular area against the sky background will also have now dropped to a quarter of what it was.  So its areal intensity remains constant. 

With infinitely many stars, every element of the sky background should have a star, and the entire heavens should be at least as bright as an average star like the Sun.

See more at http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/olbers.html