Ask Chromus

Twilkitri · Post by **Twilkitri** » Wed May 21, 2003 7:38 pm

How is 'could care less' memorable ?!?
And the thing about 'couldn't care less' is that it's meaning _can_ be obtained just by looking at the words in the sentence. NYARGH.

Phred · Post by **Phred** » Wed May 21, 2003 8:09 pm

its best not to think about the enigma that is the english language. how does flammable and inflammable mean the same thing?

Twilkitri · Post by **Twilkitri** » Wed May 21, 2003 8:32 pm

*gasp* what about unflammable ? and non-flammable ?

Do these terms also mean the same as flammable&inflammable ?

This question will be answered by chromus, within a few short months. Maybe.

Kamui · Post by **Kamui** » Thu May 22, 2003 12:12 am

Well.... I asked my mom and she thinks that inflammable can include the possibility of the item exploding.... I have no idea for sure ^^;; I had always thought that Inflammable was something that didn't burn or didn't burn as good ^^;; *looked it up on dictionary.com and was proven wrong* ^^;;

Post by **Pez-Man** » Thu May 22, 2003 9:58 am

Why the pez is "huggle-muggle" a word?

chromus · Post by **chromus** » Thu May 22, 2003 12:31 pm

"could care less" is an idiom, meaning that you cannot get it's true meaning just by looking at it's words. "coudn't care less" is not an idiom, as it means exactly what it says.

Actually, the "in" in inflammable is not a negation. It just looks that way and confuses a lot of people. It actually comes from the word "inflame", which means to set on fire. It then evolved into inflammable, which means capable of being set on fire.

Unflammable and non-flammable aren't real words.

Huggle-muggle isn't a real word.

Zornak · Post by **Zornak** » Thu May 22, 2003 3:59 pm

Usage Note: Historically, flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. However, the presence of the prefix in- has misled many people into assuming that inflammable means “not flammable” or “noncombustible.” The prefix -in in inflammable is not, however, the Latin negative prefix -in, which is related to the English -un and appears in such words as indecent and inglorious. Rather, this -in is an intensive prefix derived from the Latin preposition in. This prefix also appears in the word enflame. But many people are not aware of this derivation, and for clarity's sake it is advisable to use only flammable to give warnings.

source: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=flammable

Zornak · Post by **Zornak** » Thu May 22, 2003 10:02 pm

why does college cost more for people from out of state than in state?

chromus · Post by **chromus** » Mon May 26, 2003 11:34 pm

Actually, the only colleges which make a difference are public colleges, or those which are run by the state. The reason for this difference is that the college gets a tax break by admitting students from within the state. The extra cost of admitting a student from out of state is passed on to the student's tuition.

Twilkitri · Post by **Twilkitri** » Tue May 27, 2003 11:24 pm

What is a general protection fault ?

chromus · Post by **chromus** » Sat May 31, 2003 4:16 am

A general protection fault is a bit of a cryptic error because it seems to be the default error for basically everything that goes wrong. Exactly, it means that some program tried to access memory that it didn't have and caused another program to execute an invalid command and crash. Windows raises this error almost everytime a program crashes, even though this isn't always the right reason for the crash.

Phred · Post by **Phred** » Sat May 31, 2003 3:32 pm

so whats up with blue screens? woulnt a popup alert-thingy work just as well?

ayana · Post by **ayana** » Sat May 31, 2003 5:31 pm

Popup of death doesn't sound as cool.

Zornak · Post by **Zornak** » Sat May 31, 2003 7:34 pm

how is artificial gravity produced and/or created?

chromus · Post by **chromus** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 11:26 pm

Well, generally a general protection fault caused an error so bad that the operating system can't recover, which means that it can't display a pop-up. The blue screen is a sure way to display the error.

First of all, we have no idea what actually causes gravity, though we know it has something to do with the amount of mass something has. The theory is that a special particle called the graviton causes gravity, and according to super-symmetry theory, every particle has an opposite, so an anti-graviton would cause anti-gravity. Now, this is all theory, so we don't know if any of it really works.