I am so angry right now


MarginOfError
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22 hours ago, Vort said:

From what I can tell, these are brilliant, hard-working people who have produced more than their fair share of Nobel Prize winners and such. Polish immigrants came to the US and within a generation or two established themselves. As far as I know, they didn't demand accommodations such as Polish-speaking public school teachers ... What's to make fun of

Nerds!

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1 hour ago, dahlia said:

It's easy to say we all joke about each other. Yeah, probably.

Am I just naive? Neither I nor anyone in my family ever jokes about other people by race or nationality. We do enjoy the occasional sex-based joke--that is to say, based on a person's sex ("gender")--but such jokes are generally quite broad (npi), silly by nature, and tend to be more self-deprecating than anything else.

I have long suspected that those who crow loudest about the evils of racist/sexist/etc. jokes are in fact those who engage in such "humor" most regularly. From their point of view, the evil is not so much in making such demeaning jokes, but in having the poor taste to let anyone else outside your "in" group actually hear you do so. The hypocrisy is stifling and almost unfathomable. But again, perhaps I'm just naive.

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On 10/20/2018 at 5:02 PM, dahlia said:

I don't know about you, but I don't joke about rape too much. It's just a thing with me.

It's easy to say we all joke about each other. Yeah, probably.  But keep that stuff out of the workplace and the classroom.

I don't know about you but when we're talking about joking about women's weight and luggage I don't usually lump all those with rape.

And that's why men are more efficient without women.  They don't have to worry about someone's hurt feelings.

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On 10/19/2018 at 6:44 PM, Vort said:

Never quite understood Polish (or "Polack") jokes. From what I can tell, these are brilliant, hard-working people who have produced more than their fair share of Nobel Prize winners and such. Polish immigrants came to the US and within a generation or two established themselves. As far as I know, they didn't demand accommodations such as Polish-speaking public school teachers or start violent social movements because they thought they weren't being treated as well as they deserved. What's to make fun of?

When even Filipinos know about Polack jokes, you can be sure it has something to do with Hollywood...

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On 10/19/2018 at 6:19 PM, Carborendum said:

Interesting.  There was a girl seated right beside me at the time.  She and I both looked at each other and rolled our eyes at the Newton joke.  But she was still smiling.  When he went on to the slug, she laughed louder than I did.

Yes, times have changed.

That girl is suited to Engineering.  Times haven't changed there as far as I know.  Dunno about this new-fangled STEM incentives.  Might change that now with the everyday culture permeating the Engineering culture.

P.S. Software Engineering is not like the other Engineering fields for some reason.  

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A lot of Americans come to the UK expecting to be faced with distances in kilometers and speeds in km/h and - having wasted days researching these things - are astonished to learn that we use miles here, same as they do. Furthermore we measure people's heights in feet (not metres) weight in pounds (except at the doctors clinic where it is in kg) and milk and beer in pints. About the only things we do use metric for are temperature (degrees C) and fuel (litres). It's worth noting though that a British pint is not the same as a US pint - it's slightly more.

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Hey this thread still lives.

Funny enough, I'm American, fairly clueless if you give me a temperature in Celsius. I'd have to convert it to realize "Hey that's room temp".

But with computer temperatures, it's really standard to measure the temperature in celsius. It's what I understand. If a cpu temp is 65 degrees I know that's getting really hot and that's it's in celsius. If you tell me It's 150 degrees fahrenheit I'd look at you like you were an alien for a bit before converting it to celsius. Engine sizes tend to be metric too. I see cubic centimeters listed for bikes way more often than I see cubic inches, to the point where I "understand" cc better than ci, and liters for car engines more often than cubic inches too. I think we are actually slowly sliding to the metric system.

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4 hours ago, jerome1232 said:

But with computer temperatures, it's really standard to measure the temperature in celsius. It's what I understand. If a cpu temp is 65 degrees I know that's getting really hot and that's it's in celsius. If you tell me It's 150 degrees fahrenheit I'd look at you like you were an alien for a bit before converting it to celsius. Engine sizes tend to be metric too. I see cubic centimeters listed for bikes way more often than I see cubic inches, to the point where I "understand" cc better than ci, and liters for car engines more often than cubic inches too. I think we are actually slowly sliding to the metric system.

Most importantly, fountain ink is sold in mL (except Noodler's and maybe another odd brand or two, who insist on using ounces - makes it hard to compare prices with other brands).  As I recall, the Noodler's 3ounce bottles are roughly equivalent to 90mL.

Thank goodness for Versaverter!

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On ‎10‎/‎23‎/‎2018 at 2:45 AM, jerome1232 said:

Hey this thread still lives.

Funny enough, I'm American, fairly clueless if you give me a temperature in Celsius. I'd have to convert it to realize "Hey that's room temp".

But with computer temperatures, it's really standard to measure the temperature in celsius. It's what I understand. If a cpu temp is 65 degrees I know that's getting really hot and that's it's in celsius. If you tell me It's 150 degrees fahrenheit I'd look at you like you were an alien for a bit before converting it to celsius. Engine sizes tend to be metric too. I see cubic centimeters listed for bikes way more often than I see cubic inches, to the point where I "understand" cc better than ci, and liters for car engines more often than cubic inches too. I think we are actually slowly sliding to the metric system.

10 C is basically 50 F.  Using that, for every 5 C increase, you increase the F by 9.  Thus at 15 C it is 59 F.  at 20 C it is 68 F.  20 C is Room Temperature.

25 C is 77 F and 30 C is 86 F. 

35 C is where it starts getting really hot (95 F) and if it is 40 C you KNOW it is extremely hot (104F).

It just get's hotter from there.

However the 10 C = 50 F is pretty easy to remember as well as the for every 5 C add 9 F.  Remember that and you are good to go.

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3 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

10 C is basically 50 F.  Using that, for every 5 C increase, you increase the F by 9.  Thus at 15 C it is 59 F.  at 20 C it is 68 F.  20 C is Room Temperature.

25 C is 77 F and 30 C is 86 F. 

35 C is where it starts getting really hot (95 F) and if it is 40 C you KNOW it is extremely hot (104F).

It just get's hotter from there.

However the 10 C = 50 F is pretty easy to remember as well as the for every 5 C add 9 F.  Remember that and you are good to go.

The way I do "close enough" approximation is this way because it is easier on my mental math: 

Temp conversations usually becomes a conundrum in everyday life in these 3 scenarios:  Weather, Fever, Cooking.

For weather and fever:  If I have F, then I subtract 30 then half the result to get C.  If I have C, then I double that then add 30 to get F.

So, say I have 70F on my thermostat, I just count down by 10 3 times (easy for my head).. 60, 50, 40... then divide by 2... 20C.  Close enough.

Or if I have 20C on my thermostat, double it to 40 then count up by 10's 3 times... 50, 60, 70F.  Close enough.

 

That jury-rigged conversion doesn't work in high temps.  So, for cooking/baking temps... I just divide F by 2 or multiply C by 2.  It's usually close enough for cooking (ranges between 200-500F)

So, say I have an oven in C, but a recipe in F... tells me to bake the chicken in 400F... divide by 2 is 200.  Close enough.  

When I'm dealing with the opposite, and it tells me to bake a cake in 175C... double to 350F.   Close enough.  

You do need to memorize safe eating temps for meat:   chicken and ground meat is not ready until the internal temp is 75C or 165F.  Whole cut other than chicken is 65C or 145F.

 

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On 10/15/2018 at 3:28 AM, JohnsonJones said:

They are both measurement systems created by men.

The worst part about metric is that gas companies then try to sell gas to you by the liter, and if you think gas is expensive in price per gallon, you haven't seen how much it can be jacked up when they charge you by the liter. 

It could be that it is the US automobile industry (which sells a LOT of trucks, which use a LOT more gasoline/mile than smaller vehicles) is one of the reasons that we do not switch over to metric.

All US cars use metric measurements. Just saying. 

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On 10/17/2018 at 10:52 AM, jerome1232 said:

Well, in Alaska it would work between 0 and 24 hours a day. I think there's a total of three days where the sun never sets. You are golden for those three days.

 

Random thought, wouldn't a sundial not work very well super close to the equator, since the sun isn't very offset to the north or south there, the shadow on the sundial wouldn't really go around, it would just point at 3 or 9 and the shadow would be short or long. Hmmmm.

That's not the way a sundial works... in either location.

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On 10/23/2018 at 3:45 AM, jerome1232 said:

Funny enough, I'm American, fairly clueless if you give me a temperature in Celsius. I'd have to convert it to realize "Hey that's room temp".

A while back I was working with a fairly experienced contractor and an engineer from IIRC Russia.  They were prepping an area for construction which requires only approximate measurements.  The contractor marked some spots and marked #ft simply by looking at it.  The engineer paced it off and declared that the contractor was wrong.  It was ##m.

Neither of them cold convert the units.  So, they saw me kinda rolling my eyes at them.  They asked me to convert.  I informed them that their findings were approximately equal.  They both laughed and went about their work.

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