Then I guess I’d better make it x2000
While she may have used the wrong veriage in looking at the measurements, if we just listened to her question, you are the wrong one and there is nothing silly about her question. The difference is 132m[sup]2[/sup].
My father told of meeting a woman who was seeing the Pacific Ocean for the first time and was not impressed. She was standcing at the water’s edge with the horizon about eight miles away.
“I thought it would be bigger.”
I’ve encountered the opposite, people surprised that places which are at the seaside can be listed as having an elevation greater than zero. In Spain there’s two reasons for this: first, the elevation is given at City Hall (which may or may not be at the seashore) and second, it’s measured not “over the nearest bit of salty water” but “over the medium waterline in Alicante”, and apparently this and measurement error lead to things such as San Sebastián/Donosti having an altitude of 258m or Santander having 64. Barcelona, whose City Hall is further from its local shore than Donosti’s, clocks in at a bare 12m…
We visited my husband’s father and stepmother this week. The list of things my mother-in-law is ignorant of would be very very long.
Things she said during our visit:
“I’m disabled now, but ‘they’ told me I can’t draw disability because I haven’t worked in more than ten years. I want all of that money back that I paid in all those years ago.”
Upon getting a postcard about the grand opening of a new Goodwill location in the next town: “Wow! They’ve made it up here all the way from Jacksonville!” (" All the way" being about 80 miles. But she had no idea that Goodwill is more than a local thing. She was shocked when I said that there are stores all over the country. She used to work for one of their stores…)
“Won’t the baby get hungry without a bottle?” (Asked while I was nursing the baby.)
And so on. She’s a nice enough lady, but dear Lord she’s dumb!
Should I feel stupid?
to me 12 sq metres means 3m x 4m (or whatever variation you like) while 12 metres square = 12metres x 12 metres…
If you live in Illinois, I have some bad news for you: Northwest Ordinance - Wikipedia
Yeah, let’s confuse climate issues in voters’ minds with Calvin’s-Dadding. :rolleyes: Then again, it’s sequestration, which is kooky anyway.
Yeah, wonder where they got that idea. http://abundancesecrets.com/motivational-posters/index.php?item=5153415
It’s formed as a liquid and vitrified instead of crystallized when it cools.
I’ve got one. People who think “democracy” and “republic” mean arbitrary random things instead of the obvious “government by the people/nation.” I blame a particular political party for this.
Not at all. Must be a local notational thing.
Areas were either written in the standard format (XXm[sup]2[/sup]) or the room dimensions were given.
… I guess it lost a bit in translation, or I’ve been hanging around with drafts-men too long :). In context it was like asking “What’s the difference between 3 x 4 and 4 x 3?”
I think it just lost a bit in verbalization. My first off-context reaction would be the same as bengagmo’s, but the context does make it silly.
Which reminds me of something people manage to get amazingly wrong. I’m reading a detective novel; the writer doesn’t seem to be able to decide whether he wants to be Dashiell Hammett* or García Lorca, and he sure isn’t either one. The dimensions he describes are not quite impossible but often close: a 2m[sup]2[/sup] room with a desk, three chairs, metal drawers with hanging folders (the ones in this office are 70cm deep, I just checked)… and the door opens in. Sure, dude. Here: take 1€, go to a 60-cents-or-more store and buy a metric tape… (those 2m[sup]2[/sup] of his would have to be the best-distributed Tetris ever)
*I’m glad I looked it up: that’s a lot of double letters!
This idea comes from a Roald Dahl short story (and was made into an episode of the Night Gallery in the early '70s). Because the idea is fiction–earwigs don’t do this–my father refuses to believe in the existence of earwigs at all.
You’re correct. That isn’t even close to being my point.
I have no idea what any of that is supposed to mean.
No, that would be your issue. Your declarations on the right and wrong way to use a box fan are the reason people responded to you in the first place. Some posters dropped in to point out that there are various useful ways to cool a room with a box fan, and you argued with them.
For future reference, all you have to do is google [url=http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=160851]The Horror of Blimps (title of original thread).
back on topic:
My brother met a fellow in college who believed that it got cold because it snowed.
RD may have used the idea, but he certainly didn’t invent it. The OED has precedents going back to the year 1000.
It’s a very common question if you live in the mountains. In Colorado, we don’t put the population on the town sign. We put the elevation.
On a related note, people who grew up where it never snows often equate “snow” with “cold”. It’s difficult for them to understand that it only snows when it’s actually pretty warm, northern-winter-wise (like, between about 20 and 35 degrees F). When it gets truly cold, it DOESN’T snow (though it’s true there still may be snow lying on the ground).
Related to this is the assumption of some people from some climate regions that “sun”=“warm” and “clouds”=“cooler”. In temperate climates, from late fall to early spring, pretty much the opposite is true. Clear days and, especially, clear nights, usually mean FREAKIN’ COLD. Cloud cover in winter means “not so cold, usually” – because the clouds trap the energy re-radiating from the Earth, like a blanket.
Agreed.
Me, I love assumptions that the weather changes drastically at the lines in the map (rather than at, say, mountain ranges) or that there’s places where the weather is exactly the same every single day: even in tropical locations, there’s days it rains and days it doesn’t…
“Oooh, you’re from Navarre! That’s the north! It’s cold!”… uuuh, except when not, I mean, usually in the southern half it only gets below 0ºC once a year (exactly once a year) and summer temperatures in that same southern half exceed 36ºC routinely, but hey, if all you can think of is the fact that we have one (count it: 1) sky station, go ahead.
You know, in Canada people live in igloos and polar bears roam the streets. 
(I live about four miles from the border. 
)
And all of you ice-skate to work? 
Not me. I’m four miles south of the border!
Anyway, I think most of them commute on snow machines nowadays. 
I realized that little detail after posting… so what is the weather like where you are, rain all day was it?
Question brought to you courtesy of the following story: a coworker from our Washington State factory mentioned going down to the beach. Someone else asked “:eek: there’s beaches there? :eek:”
Silence.
Then a third coworker said “Washington State, not DC. It’s on the sea, yes there’s beaches.”
“But it rains all the time!”
That’s when the people from Washington took offense, having held back so far…