Assume v. Presume

The Independent got it right:

"Tonight’s phenomenon, known to scientists and astronomers as a “perigree” moon, occurs when the moon is in the 30,000 miles – or 50,000 kilometres – closer to the Earth than the farthest point in its orbit, which is called an “apogee” moon."


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The local news bulletin for BBC West has just reported that a road in Gloucester is closed because "a van has gone into a tree". I would like to see that.
 
I caught an episode of Word of Mouth (Radio 4) today - very interesting. Now where's the podcast archive, I have a long drive tomorrow...
 
Black Hole said:
The local news bulletin for BBC West has just reported that a road in Gloucester is closed because "a van has gone into a tree". I would like to see that.
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Kay Tumble said "200 square acres" the other night. How many Olympic swimming pools is that I wonder?
 
Presumably each of the acres has to be square. That limits the overall shape of the thing in question somewhat. A square acre is 69 yards 1' 8½" each way (70 yards near as dammit), so 200 square acres could be a rectangle 1750x560 (ish) yards... or something with very jagged edges indeed.

What it couldn't be is a rectangle 1 mile x 550 yards, because although that is exactly 200 acres, it can't be made up out of squares that are each an acre in area.
 
That's how I came up with my answer. But I suppose, as you say, a square acre is really something to the 4th power not cubed that I used in my calculation. So it must be 51 million cubic metres for 51 years. Or is that square hectares?
 
Now I've caught them teaching our kids it's "airplane"! Even the Chrome spell checker has baulked at that.
 
Woman interviewed on Fake Britain: "I use my car on a day to day basis" (and then proceeded to list all the journeys she has to do on a daily basis).
 
I caught a glimpse of a caption the other day on daytime TV on BBC1 which said "Febuary 2014". Probably HUTH or ETTC and probably a repeat, but how stuff like this gets past all the eyes who'd have seen it in post-production is just amazing.
 
Or simply that they didn't have the spell checker turned on. It doesn't surprise me that nobody spotted the error (or at least didn't spot it before it was not economically viable to fix it), the human brain has a habit of seeing what it expects to see.

That said, it could be an example of somebody typing what they think they hear when February is (typically) mispronounced.
 
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