Am 20.07.2013 01:27, schrieb Stephen:
> On 20/07/2013 12:50 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Not initially, though.  They used "rob", which was a mix of sauerkraut
>> and a concentrated fruit juice mixture, which was boiled.  Well, I guess
>> the fruit juice concentrate could have been (or had as a component)
>> lemon, so fair play on that.:)
>>
>>> >There was some skulduggery going on at the time between us and the rest
>>> >of the world. And no one would sell the Brits lemons. So we used limes
>>> >from one of the islands in the Caribbean. Hence Limeys.
>> First recorded use of "Lime juicer" (which became "limey") to refer to a
>> Brit was 1859.
>
> I did not know any of that. I only found out about the embargo, recently.
> I tried looking it up and guess it was another Stephen Fry lie, said in
> a convincing manor.

Never believe a person named Stephen ;-)

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On 19/07/2013 3:02 PM, clipka wrote:
> The use of fractions, all by itself, is still on the fun side; just wait
> until you have to express longer distances to high precision, as in "2
> ft 3 1/4 in".

What is wrong with saying "two feet, three and a quarter inches"?

But on a side issue. Our move to the SI system coinciding with cheap 
calculators means that younger people can no longer do sums in their 
head even with a very simple money system. And by younger I mean people 
in their early 30's. Shop assistants need a calculator to add two items 
then subtract it from the money tendered.I think that being forced to 
use your mind to do quite complex simple arithmetic, was no bad thing.

Lordy! Things were better in my day.
Heaven help the shopkeeper who tried to short change some one on a 
thrupenny ha'penny purchase when handing over a half crown. ;-)

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 20/07/2013 9:55 AM, clipka wrote:
> Never believe a person named Stephen ;-)

It didn't take you long to learn. :-P
Although believe ME. When I say that if it can be broken, I will break 
it. :-)

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Am 20.07.2013 11:05, schrieb Stephen:

> Lordy! Things were better in my day.

I bet! - Nowadays, even the good old times ain't what they used to be...

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On 20/07/2013 10:12 AM, clipka wrote:
> Am 20.07.2013 11:05, schrieb Stephen:
>
>> Lordy! Things were better in my day.
>
> I bet! - Nowadays, even the good old times ain't what they used to be...
>

How true. Notice that I did not mention being strapped (beaten by a 
leather strap on the hand) for bad spelling? Or even sneezing in class, 
as one boy, in my class, was.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 20/07/2013 3:29 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Well, I'll cop to my source being John Lloyd for that, and it wouldn't be
> the first time that I'd seen/heard something in one of his books that I
> knew wasn't quite correct.
>

True. I would think that there is a team of researchers being used for QI.

> OED cites an example from 1888 as its earliest citation, but OED doesn't
> always have the earliest, since the quotations are just examples. But it
> does confirm something I thought was the case, which is that it wasn't
> common to the US, but more common to other colonies, notably Australia,
> New Zeland, and South Africa. At least as an "English Immigrant".
>

Our "received wisdom" is that it was Poms for Brits in the antipodes.
But you never can tell.

> In the US, the term comes along later (or at least the earliest quote
> citing it is later, 1918), referring to an English or British sailor.
> That actually does match up with the information in the Second Book of
> General Ignorance (the quotation uses "lime-juicer" to refer to the ship,
> and "limeys" to refer to the sailors).
>

Jack Tars, this side of the pond. Me lad!
Oo Arr!

BTW Did you know that Avast! Me hearties. Actually means "Stop what 
you're doing"?

> But Mr. Fry doesn't do the research, generally, for QI.  I don't know
> that Lloyd does that much of it any more, either.;)

Mr. Fry says more than his prayers, when he wants to impress. IMO.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 19/07/2013 11:31 PM, Stephen wrote:
> They used lemons which are a better source of vitamin C.

The daft thing is, blackcurrent is even better.

(Although I'm not sure how long that would last at sea...)

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clipka wrote:
> 
> BTW, does anyone outside the world of printed circuit board design ever
> use the measurement "mil"?
> 

Yes.


Swedish use it as a synonym for 10 kilometers. :-)

-Aero

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > three seventy-seconds of one inch
>
> I think that at least *some* Americans realize how ridiculous the
> imperial measurement system is. It's a petty that resistance to change
> is such a huge psychological phenomenon that it's not going to change
> any time soon.
>
> --
>                                                           - Warp

I actually had a laugh at the "three seventy" vs the usual "seventy three".  or
did he mean "3 x seventy-seconds"?

then again, I'm used to it from Sherlock Holmes books :)

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On Sat, 20 Jul 2013 10:45:38 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 20/07/2013 3:29 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Well, I'll cop to my source being John Lloyd for that, and it wouldn't
>> be the first time that I'd seen/heard something in one of his books
>> that I knew wasn't quite correct.
>>
>>
> True. I would think that there is a team of researchers being used for
> QI.

There is - they talk about it on the official site (and in the books). :)

>> OED cites an example from 1888 as its earliest citation, but OED
>> doesn't always have the earliest, since the quotations are just
>> examples. But it does confirm something I thought was the case, which
>> is that it wasn't common to the US, but more common to other colonies,
>> notably Australia, New Zeland, and South Africa. At least as an
>> "English Immigrant".
>>
>>
> Our "received wisdom" is that it was Poms for Brits in the antipodes.
> But you never can tell.

That's one of the goals QI has, though - to challenge the received 
wisdom. ;)

But clearly they don't always get it right. :)

>> In the US, the term comes along later (or at least the earliest quote
>> citing it is later, 1918), referring to an English or British sailor.
>> That actually does match up with the information in the Second Book of
>> General Ignorance (the quotation uses "lime-juicer" to refer to the
>> ship,
>> and "limeys" to refer to the sailors).
>>
>>
> Jack Tars, this side of the pond. Me lad!
> Oo Arr!
> 
> BTW Did you know that Avast! Me hearties. Actually means "Stop what
> you're doing"?

I didn't - well, I knew "Avast" was a way of saying "stop", but beyond 
that I didn't. :)

>> But Mr. Fry doesn't do the research, generally, for QI.  I don't know
>> that Lloyd does that much of it any more, either.;)
> 
> Mr. Fry says more than his prayers, when he wants to impress. IMO.

Given his lack of religious convictions, that's pretty easy to achieve, 
don't you think? ;)

Jim

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