Yes, but, the thermostat has a range. If you set it to 68, it may not turn on the heat until it gets a few degrees colder than that. On older dials you can usually feel a click when you’ve increased it enough to actually turn on the heat, but its not as obvious on other systems. And if you are really cold, you may want a higher temperature to reset your core.
It’s an address stamp that changes addresses automatically.
It’s just a hundred or so different address stamps lined up in a row conveyor style for sending out mass mailings. Now we have printed label stickers instead. In those days if you were mailing things very frequently to a large consistent group of people, you used the addressograph to save you from addressing mailings by hand or having to fiddle with a very large box of hand stamps. Works similar to those hand stamps that automatically increment a number every time you use it.
Also, a lot of places have thermostats in only one part of the building (like my house). Sure, my hallway is 78 degrees, but in the daytime with the sun beating on my window, my living room is a lot hotter than that.
The point is the furnace or AC system heats or cooks at a set rate. Turning the AC to 60 won’t get the house cooler any faster than if it set to 72.
It will if the AC isn’t on at 72, but is at 60. Sometimes I have to set my AC to something ludicrous like 50 because my room is 85 degrees and my hallway is 53 or so, AC only kicks in when it’s 2 degrees over the set temperature, so I have to set it to 50 to get ANY COOLING AT ALL in the hot part of the house.
I don’t doubt you have, but I generally tend to put more stock into the results of multiple research studies instead of anecdotes, for some reason. 
Sorry to hijack but, if it your face blindness is that bad, how then do you recognize your wife? Really, I’m sorry, this has just piqued my curiosity. 
Back to the thread.
Guns are dangerous deadly weapons. It boggles my mind why some can’t wrap their minds around, " Treat your deadly weapon like it’s LOADED AT ALL TIMES". I have to constantly remind my father that he cannot sweep people when he’s checking/playing with a gun. EVEN IF IT ISN’T LOADED!
When I view my own deficiencies (I can’t stay on key, I can’t learn another language, I don’t recognize faces well, unless I know the people), I am much more sympathetic to others.
But here’s one I cannot understand why people have so much trouble with the Monte Hall problem. It just seems so obvious to me. Assume you play the strategy of always switch. Then when your first choice is wrong (2 times out of 3), you win and if your first choice is correct (1 in 3) you lose. Why is this so hard to grasp? Reputedly, Erdos couldn’t see it. And Brian Hayes, math and computer columnist for The American Scientist reported that he didn’t believe it until he ran a Monte Carlo simulation on his computer. Amazing!
Incidentally, on the question of what’s a sentence, it is really not so clearcut. I consider that “Amazing!” is a sentence. At least I punctuated it as one. And while “Went to the store” lacks an explicit subject, you can argue that it is simply elided. And what say ye about, “The more the merrier.” Grammar is not as cut and dried as many seem to think.
This thread is full of stuff that resonates with me, on both sides.
Regarding programming: Taught it at the college level for years. Forget loops, it is astonishing that some people don’t understand the idea of one statement followed by another. I.e., the computer executes the first statement, then it executes the second statement. I’ve had people who are completely baffled by this idea. “How does the computer know to do the next one?” Haven’t these people ever followed any sort of step-by-step instruction? A recipe at the very least? Wow.
Ditto handling CDs, etc. Mrs. FtG just doesn’t get it at all. Whole lot of proper care of anything remotely techie.
We rent DVDs from RedBox. Unless it’s a brand new movie that isn’t very popular, expect the disc to be dirty and scratched. A popular movie out for a couple of weeks is going to be a disaster. What is the matter with these people?
OTOH:
Drawing. I have a really good visual memory. I can picture something really well. But converting that into a drawing? Forget it. Drawing is a linear act. My mental image is holistic. No way can I go from one to another.
Parts of speech. I don’t get “subordinate clauses” or any of that. So I have no clue as to when a semicolon is proper. Direct/indirect object, transitive/intransitive verb. It’s all gibberish to me.
Emphasis and rhythm in speech. Don’t have it. Don’t get it. Don’t even get syllable accent in words. Want to know what syllable gets the stress in “nutrition”? Don’t ask me.
Part of the reason is that I “over notice” effects that others don’t see or care about. Take the word “three”. To me that’s a two-syllable word. Many words seem to have several syllables that are stressed. Things like that.
In terms of grammar, there are just so many exceptions to all of the rules that the so-called rules end up making no sense. It’s like “i before e except after c or pronounced as a as in neighbor and weigh”. I use more words that are the exception to this rule than adhere to it. So why is this a rule at all? Ditto grammar. The stuff you are taught as “correct” grammar doesn’t really correspond to large chunks of everyday English. Just look at the recent thread about “Yes”. How could the role of such a simple word be viewed in so many contradictory ways?
I don’t understand what possesses people to engage in behaviors that piss people off and foster distrust, but they think that just because their behaviors are well-intentioned, this should prevent people getting offended.
My step-level boss–who is a trained mental health professional–admitted to me that she’s gotten in trouble with her subordinates for basically informing them about minor and major shit being said about them behind their back. If John says something negative about Jane, for instance, my step-level boss will tell Jane about it so that she can “shape up” if necessary. What she fails to predict is the friction this action will undoubtedly now cause between Jane and John.
I’m like, how can you not see this trainwreck coming? People don’t like feel like they’re being talked about behind their back. This is psychology 101. You’re an executive with a background in mental health. Get it together.
Don’t you get it with my example of record the noun and record the verb? They’re spelled the same and all the letters make the same sounds, the only difference is which syllable is emphasized.
And for sentences, don’t you see the difference between how someone would answer these two questions: “Did he go to the store?” (No, *I *went to the store.) or “Did you go to the movies?” (No, I went to the store.)?
Not all words or sentences are super obvious, but you don’t have to know every single one to get the basic concept.
Well, I get what you are saying about the emphasis, and I agree with that part completely. However, I would say “I REE-cord music on the reh-CORD.” So the letters don’t make the same sounds when I say it. 
Just sayin’.
It really gets my goat when a grown ass man (or woman) admits that they DO NOT read or write for recreation.
The rest of the nation has paid taxes on your education in literacy for the first 18 (potentially 21) years of your life… and yet there are Americans in existence that still find no motivation for further self enrichment. Mind blowing.
On a more personal note: Historically, every person I have been on a date with who had enough balls to admit this without a second thought has been painfully trolled… and then out right rejected. Ladies and Gentlemen, they do exist… and they are dubbed “Chuds”.
Also…
I find terribly upsetting that the majority of the American Nation under the age of 40: can not, are able to but only at the literacy of a 3rd grader, if not inexplicably disdain the act of writing. I am not saying my shit doesn’t stink… writing hard. However, I am trying to illustrate that it bothers me to no end that people, of all nations, races, societies do not strive to better themselves and further enrich their character. Literacy, man…
Books, they are not just awkwardly shaped paperweights.
Coming at the question from the other side…
My kids have been studying Mandarin ever since they started school, and my Grade 4 daughter and her classmates are now quite good at it. Obviously, the sounds in Mandarin, particularly being a tonal language, are quite different from English, and I think all of us parents (who aren’t ourselves native speakers) have now had the experience of having a frustrated child roll their eyes at us with “No! It’s not ‘sheh-sheh’ . It’s ‘sheh-sheh’. How can you not hear the difference!!!”.
It’s like listening to Zathras talking about his brothers Zathras, Zathras, Zathras and Zathras.
It’s posts like this that make people roll their eyes at this message board.
First off, the entertainment/recreational aspect of reading is not why we have public education. As long as people can read well enough to work and stay out of the emergency room, then we should all let out a sigh of relief.
Secondly, reading/writing for fun is an interest just like anything else. Not all of us have the same interests. I took physical education in school, but I don’t play or watch sports. Because I’m not interested in these things. Was the tax payers’ money wasted on me?
Thirdly, have you never heard of learning disabilities? Attention deficits? Headaches? Or just not being very verbal? I’m betting that the majority of non-readers have pretty good reasons for why they don’t prefer this activity, and no amount of preachy self-righteousness is going to change their minds.
That re-cord is not the same at rec-ord has already been mentioned.
As to the second example, I wouldn’t notice the stress on “store” in the second sentence and I would probably notice that the “I” in the first sentence was longer (not inflected-type stressed) than normal.
It irritates me that people get this wrong, but I can see one reason it might be an easy mistake to make: there are hundreds of thousands of nouns that form a possessive using an apostrophe plus an s. How many words do otherwise? “Its”, “his”, “hers”, “yours”, “ours”, and “theirs”, which still use the “s”. And “mine”. I don’t think any other words act this way (unless I’m missing something dumb – if I am, you may mock me). Given the fact that there IS a word spelled “it’s”, grabbing it because it fits the overwhelmingly common pattern is forgivable in my book.
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If a slim, short woman with dark hair comes up to me in my home and starts speaking Portuguese, the clues point me in the right direction.
Of course, I’m kidding a bit, but folks like me learn to depend on visual aspects such as hair, skin color, clothing style, gait, as well as a person’s voice in order to recognize them. It’s very difficult for me to recognize a woman who has changed her hairstyle, when we meet out of context. If a woman at work changes her hair and fashion choices, I’ll figure it out with little difficulty, but I would never know who she was if I bumped into her at the mall.
Once my wife came to the airport to surprise me when I was coming home from a business trip—I had been planning on taking the train home. I didn’t recognize her at the gate even though there weren’t that many people there, and I walked right past her.
The reason I finally figured out what was going on with me was when I read an article on face blindness in Scientific American. They had a small test where they showed cropped faces of famous people, with nothing but the face visible. I couldn’t recognize a single one. My wife immediately pointed at them and said “That’s Bill Clinton. That’s Oprah.” And so on. I was amazed. I guess it’s like how colorblind folks must feel about trying to see the hidden numbers n those pictures full of dots that everyone else can see so well.
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Its posts that assume things that ruin threads. So before you go throwing bombs on people and being rather rude for a casual “fun topic” forum:
I am dyslexic, had to have people proof read everything i did from 4th grade(when i finally stopped getting detentions and they realized i couldn’t fricken read, do math, or learn how to even tell time) on. And then I really got into reading and writing through comic books. No w I write them. So if you don’t know already, which now you do… i have proofread this post five times already and have google searched how words should look. So put a sock in it and loose the chumpy attitude. bro chest bump some other dickwit elsewhere.
also, self righteousness has nothing to do with being turned off by someone who doesn’t celebrate being capable of learning new things. I’m stoked I can kind of read one language, if i were you i’d probably be able to finally learn how to speak german or spanish and not have had a childhood being called “retarded” and shoved in disabled classes. So being that you have none of these humbling qualities and feel compelled to strut it around on the internet, i can prowdly say I would never consider a date with you, regardless of the circumstances…and would feel a bit sorry for anyone who did. 
My apologies for the misunderstanding. ~best
You may want to re-read the OP title and the OP, TOTIDO. This isn’t a rant thread.
Um, what? Go sit in the corner somewhere and cool off, man. Your temper is showing.