[ExI] And Meta You Know (was: You know what?)

Bryan Bishop kanzure at gmail.com
Thu Jan 24 03:25:42 UTC 2008


On Wednesday 23 January 2008, spike wrote:
> The astronauts have a speech-activated radio in order to keep both
> hands free.  I have one like that on my motorcycle helmet.  In the
> 60s, electronics were much slower than they are today, so the first
> fraction of a second activated the radio but was not transmitted.
>  The astronauts got in the habit of starting every sentence with
> ahhhh, and inserting ahhhhs in order to hold the transmit line open
> in the natural pause in speech.  This is why we have the saying
> "...Ahhh Houston, ahhh we have a problem..."

Heh, I always thought it sounded like "uhh", so when I read your "ahhs" 
I was thinking screaming (try it out): ".... AHHH Houston AHHH we have 
a problem ..."

- Bryan
________________________________________
Bryan Bishop
http://heybryan.org/



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