The whole “http://www.” thing. Damn, there’s gotta be a better way.
[QUOTE=Sunspace]
That would be “January II”.
I’m sure I’ve seen calendars that have two months with the same name, and pit “II” after the second one.
[/QUOTE]
Probably Hebrew calanders.
The Jewish calender, being only 354 days long, adds a month every three years or so. This “leap month” is tacked on after the month of Adar (roughly equivalent to March) and is named Adar B.
[QUOTE=Sunspace]
And there’s only one convention that starts with the year. There are two that don’t start with the year: M/D/Y and D/M/Y, leading to ambiguities like 01/03/02. (Speaking of which, why is anyone at all still using a two-digit year?)
[/QUOTE]
For my own usage, I use YYMMDD (no slashes). If I’m in a spreadsheet and need to sort, anything before 2000 starts with a decimal
[QUOTE=Emilio Lizardo]
I’ve always used the method my dad taught me, which he called ‘the right-hand screw rule.’ Take your right hand and point your thumb up, then curve your fingers like you are grasping a pole. Keeping the same relative orientation of finger and thumb, point your thumb the direction you want the screw or nut to go, and to make it so, you simply turn it in the direction indicated by your fingers.
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… huh? I can’t work this out. I mean, I already know that if I want the screw to turn to the right then I have to turn it to the right, but I can’t imagine anyone would exactly need a mnemonic for that, and I can’t see how that helps me to remember which way tightens it and which way loosens it. What am I missing? 
[QUOTE=AndLuna]
… huh? I can’t work this out. I mean, I already know that if I want the screw to turn to the right then I have to turn it to the right, but I can’t imagine anyone would exactly need a mnemonic for that, and I can’t see how that helps me to remember which way tightens it and which way loosens it. What am I missing?
[/QUOTE]
The thumbs points in the direction the screw will move when you turn it.
[QUOTE=AndLuna]
… huh? I can’t work this out. I mean, I already know that if I want the screw to turn to the right then I have to turn it to the right, but I can’t imagine anyone would exactly need a mnemonic for that, and I can’t see how that helps me to remember which way tightens it and which way loosens it. What am I missing?
[/QUOTE]
Just how are you turning it to the right? The screw’s not moving, and the bottom of the screw’s moving to the left. Under normal orientation, where we’re a bit above what we’re screwing it’s natural, and when we’re straight-on we’re conditioned to assume the movement of the “top” is the “direction” of the screwing, but to me at least, when I am screwing something by looking up at it from below, to the point where I can barely see the top of the screw, clockwise doesn’t seem intuitively to the “right” to me, since the biggest part of what I can see is actually moving to the left.
… Ah, I think I get it; it’s mostly for use for when you’re underneath or otherwise in an awkward position? I think as you said, it’s just the way my mind works; I tend to think of it as moving in the direction the top’s moving, and therefore I somewhat automatically think of clockwise as “to the right”. Which I hadn’t actually consciously noticed about myself before. Interesting. Thanks for being patient with me, I feel very stupid now. Ignorance fought, I guess!
Well, I chalk it up a bit to me being overly literal-minded, but the mnemonic really is a problem when I am “under” the screw.
[QUOTE=panache45]
The European method of counting floors in a building. Ground floor, 1st floor, 2nd floor, etc. This is something I can never get used to.
[/QUOTE]
As opposed to what? Never knew there was another way of looking at it. 
Is ground floor = first floor what you want? Ie, the floor at ground level is first floor?
[QUOTE=Etumretniw]
As opposed to what? Never knew there was another way of looking at it.
Is ground floor = first floor what you want? Ie, the floor at ground level is first floor?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, ground floor is another term for first floor. It’s usually the one with the entrances.
Saying “basement, first floor, second floor”, etc, is even better in cases where the building is on a hill and there are entrances at different levels. The ground floor is on two different levels in this case, and the name becomes less accurate.
The Eaton Centre in Toronto is like this; it numbers its shopping floors starting with Level 0 (a late addition built into the basement), which is below the level of the subway tunnels at the north end, and ending at level 4, which is well above grade. The street entrances at ground level are on Level 2 at the south end of the mall and Level 3 at the north end.
[QUOTE=panache45]
The whole “http://www.” thing. Damn, there’s gotta be a better way.
[/QUOTE]
Well, I believe most modern browsers will at least fill in the “http://” part for you (i.e. you can just type “boards.straightdope.com” and you’ll get to the right place).
My vote is for POP/SMTP.
[QUOTE=Etumretniw]
As opposed to what? Never knew there was another way of looking at it.
Is ground floor = first floor what you want? Ie, the floor at ground level is first floor?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, in the United States, buildings have either a ground floor or a first floor; they don’t designate two separate floors. The first floor is not above the ground floor. So the elevator buttons go (… B2 B1 1 2 3 …) or (… B2 B1 G 2 3 …), not (… G 1 2 3 …).
[QUOTE=alreadymichigan]
They are not different things. Wikipedia agrees with my definition, though mentions that yours is valid.
[/QUOTE]
Wikipedia is quite wrong about this. There are no sources cited for that article (and there won’t be, either, because it’s, well, wrong.)
[QUOTE=Sunspace]
Screw threads. Rotate left to loosen, right to tighten. Except sometimes.
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http://www.forgotten-ny.com/SUBWAYS/newcityhall/newcityhall.html
[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
Turning your car’s steering wheel clockwise causes your car to turn right.
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That’s the first time I’ve come across a reasonable justification for the “righty tighty” rule. Thank you.
One comment about calendar reform: good luck getting orthodox Jews to skip an extra day between shabbat once a year. And then they won’t be able to hold down jobs because 5 years out of 7 they’ll have to take a weekday off.
[QUOTE=Chronos]
This does actually make sense. Almost everything is righty tighty, lefty loosey, because that’s the (arbitrary) standard. The exceptions to the standard occur for one of two reasons: First, some things are deliberately opposite of the standard, because there would be bad consequences for mixing them up with the more common things that use the standard. For instance, propane fittings have reversed threads, so that you can’t use a hose designed for water with propane. Second, some screwed things, due to their mechanical environment, would tend to loosen with use, if they were righty-tighty. This is often the case for wheels and related hardware of vehicles, which rotate forward much more often than backward.
[/QUOTE]
Further to what you said, I’ve encountered reverse thread on my previous job while working on the oil patch. Often, threaded sections are in series or are “nested” and when you loosen the entire unit you will either locally loosen one section or the other. At times, it’s super, super important that certain sections never, ever loosen, and those sections are reverse thread. If you indeed want to loosen those sections you must specifically target them.
[QUOTE=Steve Wright]
Wikipedia is quite wrong about this. There are no sources cited for that article (and there won’t be, either, because it’s, well, wrong.)
[/QUOTE]
I was going to say that, at least in Canada, we never use “cross the floor” to mean “vote against party lines”; if there’s a term for this, it’s “defying the whip” (assuming a whip is imposed). “Crossing the floor” always means joining another party (not even leaving your party to sit as an independent). So it’s nice to have some backup from the Mother of Parliaments.
To be fair, depending on the party and the circumstance, defying the whip might well get you invited to leave the caucus.
[QUOTE=robardin]
…Come on, who’s with me?
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But then there would either be no Friday the 13th, or there would be one every month. (You seem to have started on Saturday, if the 22nd is on a Friday.)
[QUOTE=alreadymichigan]
However, because the executive is inside the legislature, the executive tends to weild more power over members of the legislature, weakening its power to act as a balance. Westminster governments tend to see a lot more party unity than in the American system - although people think the two party system is bad in the U.S. now, it would be much worse if the U.S. adopted the Westminster form of government. In America, a member voting against his or her party’s legislation is fairly common; in some Commonwealth countries, it’s a major news event if politician crosses the floor.
Further, the Westminster system relies to much on the honor of its politicians (honor, politicians? Exactly - what were they thinking?). Ministers are expected to resign if they breach certain standards, but they don’t have to. In the U.S. system, the Senate can impeach a member of cabinet. And thus there is far less oversight on the Prime Minister. It may be fun watching Tony Blair get yelled at in British Parliament, but at the end of the day, he’s there so long as his party thinks he’ll win them elections. In the U.S. system, a bad president can be impeached, and because an entirely seperate branch of government is doing the impeaching, the President has a lot less influence on the outcome.
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I think Giles’s post assumes that we keep the other aspects of the U.S. system – divided government co-equal checks and balances. Just reduce or eliminate the “implied” or unreviewable powers of the executive.
Actually, I don’t thinkt there is any real support in the U.S. Constitution for implied powers of the executive. It’s something that some people holding the office have dreamed up and have been successful in pushing along to some extent. I think the Supreme court let out a huge brain fart in the Nixon tapes case. It should have concluded that there is no support in the Constitution to allow the executive any “implied” authority to withhold any information from the judiciary or the legislature. The very concept effectively assassinates the idea of co-equal branches of government.