Topic: Episode #349

[seaotter]

The opposite of a Pyrrhic victory is a Laevinic defeat.
Publius Valerius Laevinus was the Roman general defeated by Pyrrhus of Eprius at the Battle of Heraclea.

Ms. Watson,

How about this:

      “We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.”

Nathanael Greene

"I get knocked down
But I get up again
You're never going to keep me down."

chumbawamba

[Demosthenes]

Do you speak esporonto?

95% of the world uses the metric system while only a couple of hundred thousand people speak Esperanto.
There’s a difference between embracing a universal language that “no one” uses, and embracing a measuring system that the overwhelming majority of the world uses.

[seaotter]

Do you speak esporonto?

95% of the world uses the metric system while only a couple of hundred thousand people speak Esperanto.
There’s a difference between embracing a universal language that “no one” uses, and embracing a measuring systems that the overwhelming majority of the world uses.

I think it's 95% of statistics are made up on the spot. There's a difference, but it's just in degree. It would be a little easier on everyone if we all used the same measurements (again scientists do) but it would be a hell of a lot easier if everyone spoke the same language. To characterize Americans as silly for not investing effort into a system that would offer few advantages I can see, seems like a cheap shot.

[GodSlayer]

Science or Fiction grammar Nazi...

the phrase should be
'as much as, or more than, [whatever]',
not
'as much, or more, than [whatever]'

the idea is that you should be able to remove either clause and read it normally: 'more than [that]', 'as much as [that]', there's no phrase 'as much than [that]', so that tells you what needs to be in the clause/where the parenthetical commas go.

[Moloch]

[Demosthenes]

I think it's 95% of statistics are made up on the spot.

“US Federal agencies are required by the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 (Public Law 94-168) and by Executive Order 12770 of July 1991 to use the International System of Units, commonly referred to as the metric system or SI. In addition, the metric system is used by over 95 percent of the world's population.”
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/faqs.html

To characterize Americans as silly for not investing effort into a system that would offer few advantages I can see, seems like a cheap shot.

Few advantages!
From an engineering and design perspective the advantages of adopting the standardised measurements that the rest of the world uses would be immense.

[GodSlayer]

I think it's 95% of statistics are made up on the spot.

“US Federal agencies are required by the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 (Public Law 94-168) and by Executive Order 12770 of July 1991 to use the International System of Units, commonly referred to as the metric system or SI. In addition, the metric system is used by over 95 percent of the world's population.”
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/faqs.html

the CIA would never allow evidence to get out that shows they lie. therefore I trust this is true.

[Trinoc]

1 stone = 14 lbs

Thanks Chew. I looked it up. My point was of course that he used a precise metric measure for height, but used an archaic term of "stone" for weight.

I'm surprised you don't use stones in America, particularly as the general concept of using a stone as a weight goes back to biblical times. In the UK it is almost universally used for one's own weight, but for almost nothing else. If I tell my weight to someone other than a doctor I generally have to convert it (about 6.4kg to a stone) if I want to be understood.

Outside of science and engineering the UK pays lip service to the metric system but doesn't really take it to heart. If you buy a sheet of plywood, for example, it will be labelled as 2440x1220mm, when of course it is 8x4ft, just like you would buy in pre-metric days. Architectural measurements were often given in units of 0.9144 metre, which was referred to as the "metric yard".

Of course, American pints and gallons are smaller than UK ones, a fact that has not been lost on manufacturers of containers out to con the customer into buying less than they thought they were getting. If you buy a 2-gallon bucket it is almost certain that somewhere in the small print it says it is "2 US gallons". But if anyone tried to sell a US pint of beer there would probably be a riot.

[CopperNick]

The reason Valdez rhymes with "cheese" is that, notwithstanding Rebecca's desire to rechristen it for Juan Valdéz, the ship was in fact named for the city of Valdez ("val-deez"), Alaska.

[Skeptic]

Most skeptical comment:

Tick: And so, Arthur, we learned that
gambling is bad and yet in a certain
sense, isn't life itself a gamble? You
can never be sure of anything. Like
who would have thought that dolphins
could go bad and that fish were
magnetic? Not me, no sir, not me.

Least skeptical comment:

Tick: And, isn't sanity really just a one-
trick pony anyway? I mean all you get
is one trick, rational thinking, but when
you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh,
oooh, the sky is the limit.

Debatable:

Tick: Sanity, you're a madman!

Almost in response to bob:

Tick: Arthur, you have no historical
perspective. Science in those days
worked in broad strokes. They got
right to the point. Nowadays, it's all
just molecule, molecule, molecule.
Nothing ever happens big.


Someone is going to reference the My little pony reference.  Also that episode where Cheetara questions if that actually is the sword of greyskull poking her in the back.

[Anders]

Do you speak esporonto?

95% of the world uses the metric system while only a couple of hundred thousand people speak Esperanto.
There’s a difference between embracing a universal language that “no one” uses, and embracing a measuring systems that the overwhelming majority of the world uses.

I think it's 95% of statistics are made up on the spot. There's a difference, but it's just in degree. It would be a little easier on everyone if we all used the same measurements (again scientists do) but it would be a hell of a lot easier if everyone spoke the same language. To characterize Americans as silly for not investing effort into a system that would offer few advantages I can see, seems like a cheap shot.

That's right. Keep fighting Big Metric!

[superdave]

The only American measurement that makes sense to me over metric is the month day year thing because it goes in order or potential highest value.

[Demosthenes]

I think it's 95% of statistics are made up on the spot.

 “US Federal agencies are required by the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 (Public Law 94-168) and by Executive Order 12770 of July 1991 to use the International System of Units, commonly referred to as the metric system or SI. In addition, the metric system is used by over 95 percent of the world's population.”
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/faqs.html

the CIA would never allow evidence to get out that shows they lie. therefore I trust this is true.

[Johannes Factotum]

Rory McIlroy is from Holywood, County Down, Northern Ireland. He does not have a Scottish accent.

[Trinoc]

The only American measurement that makes sense to me over metric is the month day year thing because it goes in order or potential highest value.

Then it should be year-month-day, which incidentally is the ANSI (American National Standards Institution) standard (now ISO 8601). This has the additional advantage that if you sort a file where every record begins with the date (and possibly the time in hh:mm:ss form), the result comes out in chronological order.

Would you write the time starting with minutes and seconds, but with the hours at the end?