(no subject)

On the train yesterday, I sat behind an American and three Austrians, all in their twenties. They had quite an interesting discussion of what the word "mushy" means. And then one of the Austrians said that when she got in the plan in Vienna, the moon was one phase, but it was a different phase when they landed here, because Vienna and New York were so far from each other.

To which the American--who, it turns out was a grade school astronomy teacher--was like, no, nope. Then he got them all to hold out their beer cans in a mini solar system to explain how the phases of the moon work.