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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: NG's "Midnight Fun"
From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2010 Jun 15, 14:48 +1000
From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2010 Jun 15, 14:48 +1000
I do apologise for not realising that this is a localised expression, and can confirm that it does denote "an erroneous or improbable story" as Wikipedia puts it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furphy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furphy
On the other hand, we're all part of a very large world of English speakers, where many American and English slang terms are expected to be understood and normally are, as well as terms from India and Japan and all sorts of other places. Australian slang is part of this wide world of English, if occasionally less well known.
And when in doubt - Google !
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Hewitt Schlereth <hhew36@gmail.com> wrote:
Peter -
A "furphy"? I like the sound of it; but what is it?
Hewitt
On 6/14/10, Peter Fogg <piterr11@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> George Huxtable wrote:
> >
> > As that posting confused distortion with perspective, it had little
> > relevance to the matter in hand.
> >
>
> No. George is wrong. I have been careful, unlike George himself, even in
> his latest post, to distinguish apparent distortion, such as the effects of
> perspective, from other distortions caused, by example, by the shortcomings
> of lenses.
>
> >
> > This question takes on a bit of importance because postings appear on this
> > list, quite often, from proponents of the use of cameras for making
> > celestial measurements. The geometrical distortions discussed here, that
> > arise from portraying a spherical surface on to a plane array, add serious
> > complications to interpreting measurements, and deriving scale factors;
> > complications which are often neglected.
> >
>
> As in a lot of stuff you post, George, you confuse the theoretical with the
> practical. The examples of "use of cameras for making celestial
> measurements" that's I've seen here involve the sun's image near the centre
> of the image field. In this case there is nothing, in any practical sense,
> to worry about in respect of what may happen to other parts of the image
> towards the edges of the field, from whatever cause. Once again, like so
> many of these you trumpet so loudly so often as matters of grave concern,
> its just a furphy.
>
>