From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Mar 17 0:15:46 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from flood.ping.uio.no (flood.ping.uio.no [129.240.78.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F40B737BBD3 for ; Fri, 17 Mar 2000 00:13:53 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from des@flood.ping.uio.no) Received: (from des@localhost) by flood.ping.uio.no (8.9.3/8.9.3) id JAA83154; Fri, 17 Mar 2000 09:12:30 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from des@flood.ping.uio.no) To: Will Andrews Cc: Mark Ovens , Paul Richards , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Useful Metric Conversions References: <20000315214713.H244@parish> <38D042B3.8B07AA4C@originative.co.uk> <20000316182207.C235@parish> <20000316143925.A393@argon.blackdawn.com> From: Dag-Erling Smorgrav Date: 17 Mar 2000 09:12:29 +0100 In-Reply-To: Will Andrews's message of "Thu, 16 Mar 2000 14:39:25 -0500" Message-ID: Lines: 25 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) Emacs/20.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Will Andrews writes: > On Thu, Mar 16, 2000 at 08:06:56PM +0100, Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote: > > 453.6 g (gram) = 1 lb (pound) > > > > Geez, isn't it scary when furriners who've spent a grand total of one > > week in an English-speaking country in their entire lives get jokes > > the natives don't? > You should be aware that this is a universal conversion method, not an > English/American-only thing. Which isn't relevant. What's relevant is that the jokes Mark posted are puns *in English* which require of the reader a) a good grasp of English (particularly US English) semantics and pronunciation and b) familiarity with American culture and idiom. For instance, understanding the "8 nickels = 2 paradigms" joke requires not only knowledge of how US natives pronounce "paradigm" but also knowledge of the fact that "nickel" is a common name for the US five-cent piece (which is usually made of a nickel-copper alloy) and "dime" (from the latin word for "one tenth") is a common name for the US ten-cent piece. DES -- Dag-Erling Smorgrav - des@flood.ping.uio.no To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message