Monday, February 27, 2012

45 and 33 1/3

I woke up, not too long ago, from a dream. Well, I guess it started as a dream, but I can't actually remember a location, or the other people involved--so really at this point what I have is a "morning musing".


For some reason, the topic of records came up. And there was some song of which I said, "I remember having that on a '45'." To which the other person asked "45? 45 what?"
"RPM"
"Which stands for...?"
"Um...Rotations per minute." (Sometimes I'm a little amazed at how much old information I have tucked away somewhere in my brain. This sort of thing is hidden most of the time, but still can be dug out without too much bother should the need arise.)


So, I woke up thinking about this. "Back in the day" I was a lot closer to being able to tell you how the music happened than I am now. Mind you, the music sounded like crap--I guess. (But at the time I had nothing to compare it to.) But I actually had to set a needle down in the little groove, and I could watch and see that one kind of record spun faster than another kind.


We've got much cooler stuff these days, but I have NO idea how any of it works.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

In ancient times....

I found this in an Introductory Psychology text. For anyone who can't make out the words, the caption starts out, "In ancient times, people actually had to write or type their first, second, and sometimes third drafts on real paper."





Shouldn't there be some sort of indication that "this is hyperbole"? Even quotation marks around the word "ancient" would have helped. :p