| Author |
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 6:18 am
Post subject: Re: reading fractions |
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Robert Bannister wrote:
| Quote: | Seán O'Leathlóbhair wrote:
Robert Bannister wrote:
Seán O'Leathlóbhair wrote:
[...]
computation. Note that "one upon two" is also common.
I've never heard that "upon" usage. Which region is that common
in?
--
Rob Bannister
I cannot pin it down to a geographical region any more accurately
than "The British Isles". It may be restricted to a mathematical
context but not necessarily a serious academic one.[...]
I lived the first 31 years of my life in the British Isles, and I
don't ever remember hearing this.
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I've occasionally heard it, and even "[number1] on [number2]". But my
own teachers only ever said "over", as far as I remember.
--
Mike.
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Robert Bannister
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 6:21 am
Post subject: Re: reading fractions |
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Seán O'Leathlóbhair wrote:
| Quote: | larrysulky@gmail.com wrote:
Seán O'Leathlóbhair wrote:
I don't remember if there was an official start to our metrification
but it did begin in the early seventies. The start was very slow. The
pace has increased recently but there is still a long way to go. How
chaotic was the change? We fear changing to km on the roads since many
will probably go wild when they see a 110 sign.
Oh, they will! They'll be screaming along at 110, even 120 kph! (I do
it all the time, just for the thrills! Shhhh!)
I am jealous, I have to crawl along at 70mph. But, if the signs go
metric but my speedo remains in mph . . .
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Our speedos in Australia (not swimming trunks) were in dual format for
some years before the road signs changed. Whatever car I had at the
time, had a red mark on 50 kph, which was rather wasted as we opted for
60 kph as the town speed.
--
Rob Bannister |
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 6:22 am
Post subject: Re: reading fractions |
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Robert Bannister wrote:
[...]
| Quote: | * We had been Morris dancing, so I suppose it was to induce us to
stop.
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First time I've ever heard of Morris dancers needing to be induced to
stop in a pub!
--
Mike.
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R H Draney
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 6:33 am
Post subject: Re: reading fractions |
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=?iso-8859-1?B?U2XhbiBPJ0xlYXRobPNiaGFpcg==?= filted:
| Quote: |
I am jealous, I have to crawl along at 70mph. But, if the signs go
metric but my speedo remains in mph . . .
The French police always let off speeding Brits for this reason (*).
(*) In case, anyone does not realise, this is a joke. On the contrary,
I have heard that they are very strict. I am not recommending you to
speed on French roads. =20
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When I lived in Douglas, just under a mile from the Mexican border and the
slightly larger town of Agua Prieta, I was puzzled for some time why cars with
Sonora license plates invariably drove along at speeds far under the limit...on
a major arterial street, where the signs said forty, they drove twenty-five; in
a residential area where the limit is twenty-five, they dropped to fifteen....
And then the ball dropped (accelerating at 9.8 m/s²)....r |
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Evan Kirshenbaum
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 7:09 am
Post subject: Re: reading fractions |
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"Seán O'Leathlóbhair" <jwlawler@yahoo.com> writes:
| Quote: | Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Seán O'Leathlóbhair" <jwlawler@yahoo.com> writes:
Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
(This is 27 CFR 4.72, for anybody interested.)
What's that? A reference to the legislation?
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The regulation, rather. Section 4.72 of Title 27 (Alcohol, Tobacco
Products and Firearms) of the Code of Federal Regulations. The CFR
contains regulations instituted by the various executive departments.
Actual legislation (at the federal level), including the legislation
that authorizes the regulations, is contained in the United States
Code, references to which are written similarly, but with "USC" rather
than "CFR".
The two corpora can be found at
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cfr/index.html
| Quote: | Which is better value 100ml for $1.50 or 187ml for $2.80?
I don't think that it's likely that you'll see such a comparison
needed. Wine is typically encountered in 750 ml bottles (sometimes
375 ml), and if you were comparing to the second series, I'd guess
you'd probably be comparing to either 500 ml or 1 L, which isn't all
that hard.
Here it may be required. As revealed elsewhere in the thread, milk is
sometimes imperial and sometimes metric.
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That could happen here, too. (I don't think I've seen it for milk,
but it's common for other beverages.) US food labeling laws are
somewhat schizophrenic. Most food is regulated by the Food and Drug
Administration, which doesn't mandate the sizes you use but does
mandate that you label them in both "customary" and metric
quantities. Alcoholic beverages are regulated by the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (part of, I kid you not, the Department
of Treasury), which specifies the sizes you can use. (Meat and
produce are regulated by the Department of Agriculture, which has
still another set of rules.)
| Quote: | One UK pint for 40p or 500ml for 35p?
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Most stores provide (and, I believe, some states require) shelf tags
that specify a "price per standard unit" to make such comparisons
straightforward.
| Quote: | Pub measures of wine here have to be multiples of 125ml for this
reason. I had presumed, but not checked, that this applied outside the
pub. My own wine rack has just contradicted this. I found a 187.5ml
bottle. It looks like it came from a plane, maybe they have an
exemption. Someone in the airline may have calculated that one glass
(125ml) would look too mean but two glasses was unnecessarily generous.
That's a "split".
I recognise some of the bigger terms (e.g. magnum and jeroboam) but
none of the smaller ones. Are "fifth" and "tenth" US only?
|
"Tenth" isn't even really common in the US. I think most people would
think of it as a "half bottle". And even "fifth" isn't really used
very much anymore. "Bottle" is usually specific enough, and "750 ml
bottle" is probably more common than "fifth" when it isn't.
| Quote: | [1] To forestall (or spur) discussion:
4.5 L ("rehoboam"), 6 L ("methuselah" or "imperial"), 9 L
("shalmaneser"), 12 L ("balthazar"), 15 L ("nebuchadnezzar").
Was Nebuchadnezzar a heavy wine drinker?
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I don't know of any good reason for the names. The OED gives an
earlier sense of "jeroboam" as "a large bowl or goblet" (1816) and
dates the "wine bottle" sense to 1889. "Rehoboam" is cited to 1895,
"methuselah" and "balthazar" to 1935 (from the same source,
A.L. Simon's _Dictionary of Wine_), and "nebuchadnezzar" to 1913.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |"You can't prove it *isn't* so!" is
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |as good as Q.E.D. in folk logic--as
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |though it were necessary to submit
|a piece of the moon to chemical
kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com |analysis before you could be sure
(650)857-7572 |that it was not made of green
|cheese.
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | Bergen Evans |
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Graeme Thomas
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 8:06 am
Post subject: Re: reading fractions |
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In article <nah7n1pt99pmbml5fr7nsbtq37rkuhsoql@4ax.com>, Robin Bignall
<docrobin@ntlworld.com> writes
| Quote: | According to an article in The Times a day or two ago a real ale pub
(somewhere near Oxford?) has introduced glasses containing a third of
a pint so that customers can taste many different beers without
getting too pissed.
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About 20-25 years ago there was a restaurant in Oxford that started
serving beer in jugs (=AmE "pitchers") containing a third of a gallon.
After a short period of this some interfering busybody pointed out that
this was against the law, as beer had to be sold in multiples of a half-
pint. The restaurant then stopped serving beer in these jugs, and sold
shandy instead. They added about a thimbleful of lemonade to the jugs
in order to make it not beer.
At this point the interfering busybody said that this was still against
the law. The restaurateurs consulted the laws carefully, and amended
the menus so that they did not make any claims about the size of these
jugs. It turned out to be legal to sell shandy in containers of unknown
size.
The menus contained a clause saying that the owners had heard someone
claim that the jugs were a third of a gallon, but obviously they
couldn't confirm that.
This did confirm that the licensing laws made no sense.
--
Graeme Thomas |
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Richard Bollard
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 8:06 am
Post subject: Re: reading fractions |
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On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 08:18:03 +0800, Robert Bannister
<robban@it.net.au> wrote:
| Quote: | Richard Bollard wrote:
On 8 Nov 2005 14:18:59 -0800, "Seán O'Leathlóbhair"
jwlawler@yahoo.com> wrote:
I think that Australia started after us but they certainly completed
long before us. They appear to have been completely metric for a long
time. Can any Australians out there tell us when the transition
occurred and how long it took?
Officially 1971 to 1982, industry by industry. Metrification, it were
called.
Before that, pharmaceuticals in 1965. The currency went metric on the
14th of February, 1966 (which every Australian alive at the time sings
to the tune of "Click go the shears".
The odd thing is the reappearance of "pint" glasses over the last few
years. I'm not sure whether this stemmed from Guinness or from boutique
beers, but just about every trendy pub has pint glasses now. I did ask
my barmaid whether they were how many mils they were or whether they
were 20 oz, but as I'd had a few, I can't remember the answer.
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Beer may be measured in ml but the traditional sizes, with their
nicknames that vary from state to state, are still used.
The pints tend to be the 20 oz in Oz. A middy (in most places) is
still 10 floz and a pint is two middies.
The Totally official measure is probably slightly off the floz but
near enough with a head. A schooner (15 floz) is pretty much the same
size as a can or stubbie at 370ml.
--
Richard Bollard
Canberra Australia
To email, I'm at AMT not spAMT. |
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Richard Bollard
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 8:06 am
Post subject: Re: reading fractions |
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On 10 Nov 2005 01:33:48 -0800, "Seán O'Leathlóbhair"
<jwlawler@yahoo.com> wrote:
| Quote: |
Richard Bollard wrote:
On 8 Nov 2005 14:18:59 -0800, "Seán O'Leathlóbhair"
jwlawler@yahoo.com> wrote:
I think that Australia started after us but they certainly completed
long before us. They appear to have been completely metric for a long
time. Can any Australians out there tell us when the transition
occurred and how long it took?
Officially 1971 to 1982, industry by industry. Metrification, it were
called.
Before that, pharmaceuticals in 1965. The currency went metric on the
14th of February, 1966 (which every Australian alive at the time sings
to the tune of "Click go the shears".
--
Richard Bollard
Canberra Australia
To email, I'm at AMT not spAMT.
I don't remember if there was an official start to our metrification
but it did begin in the early seventies. The start was very slow. The
pace has increased recently but there is still a long way to go. How
chaotic was the change? We fear changing to km on the roads since many
will probably go wild when they see a 110 sign.
|
It was smooth as. I was only a kid at the time so it may have seemed
easier but we always find the prospect of change harder than actually
doing it.
There was a lot of preparation and we ran both measures in parallel
for a while.
This article aint bad but the contributor seems to have an obsession
with the nuts and bolts of the issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia
--
Richard Bollard
Canberra Australia
To email, I'm at AMT not spAMT. |
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Charles Riggs
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 8:06 am
Post subject: Re: reading fractions |
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On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 23:05:08 -0000, "Mike Lyle"
<mike_lyle_uk@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
| Quote: | Seán O'Leathlóbhair wrote:
[...]
I thought that it was only legal to sell in multiples of half a
pint.
I wonder if they have to sell then three at a time. In some US
bars,
there are samplers where you buy a set of small glasses of each of
their beers. If I am new to the place, I often start this way.
It's hard to approve of Wetherspoon's, but they'll always give you
free tastes.
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Irish barmen typically allow a customer to try one or another beer for
free, but I've only seen the practice of publicans selling a set of
small glasses of all their beers in one establishment, a bar in
Bellingham, Washington which brewed their own line of beers. As Seán
has done, I bought a set on my first or second visit there.
--
Charles Riggs |
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