In fact all vowels have negative mass, and O’s have a particularly large negative mass. Additionally the effect of sandwiching the I between the G and S like that is to make that I’s mass more negative than usual, while diminishing the positive masses of the G and S. Finally, letters such as P, H and L do not have much mass anyway (note the absence of weighty letters like X, B and F) so the negative masses win, even though there are no E’s involved.
“Phlogiston” does contain an E, but it cannot be detected. We note that in certain words — “note” itself is one — the E does not appear where we would expect, but has slid past an intervening consonant. The hypothesis is that E’s at the ends of words can slide off them altogether, evading detection.
Because the word “phlogiston” is not itself phlogiston.
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Date: 2005-02-10 12:40 pm (UTC)