FROSTY MISTRESS of the Outer System: Pluto yields to probe snapper NASA's New Horizons spaceship, which has been on its mission to Pluto for nine years now, is expected to start snapping photos of the icy planet today. The probe has travelled roughly 3 billion miles away from Earth for its closest approach with the dwarf planet expected to take place on 14 July this year. Boffins at the U.S …
Russell Crowe made a comment about banking 'bail-outs' seven or so years, he said something like 'Why don't they divide it up and just give x thousand dollars to every member of the population.'
He was widely ridiculed for the comment, particularly in places where, until recently, 'billion' had the correct definition of 10 to the twelfth power, not the ninth.
I checked his calculation, it was correct on that basis.
A great testament to short memories and the ignorance of so many journalists.
The mockery on that point from US journalists can, of course, be excused, but there wasn't much.
For those from other places, where there was a lot of mockery, it just displayed their ignorance.
Russell Crowe made a comment about banking 'bail-outs' seven or so years, he said something like 'Why don't they divide it up and just give x thousand dollars to every member of the population.'
There's something to be said for that. Most of the bailout money did go directly to the richest 1%. When you do the math, for the total amount the U.S. Congress spent on "bailouts", you could give each household in the USA $14,000.
"Most of the bailout money did go directly to the richest 1%"
One wonders what would happen if some of the "quantitative easing", i.e. printing money, was given to the unemployed and people on low incomes.
Forget 55 inch TV sets, a lot of it would be spent on food, clothes and basic necessities - which would result in a boost to local economies. Even things like getting cars fixed and houses insulated would add real economic value.
Other countries have billion also and use it correctly. Numeration by groups of six is the only thing that makes sense. If you insist on having it mean groups of three then you should skip thousand and let million be ten to the power of three, billion be to the power of six etc.
On the other hand, it wouldn't be the first word (or set of words in this instance) that have lost touch with its origins and that is language I suppose. I just object to the long scale being the odd one out. So I will continue to use it correctly in my language and incorrectly in English :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
You have to love wikifiddlers sometimes, they make lists and maps so you don't have to.
On the one hand there is you, and on the other the International System of Weights and Measures, or SI to give it the usual abbreviation. I am afraid that international standards tend to trump personal preference.
The root "milli" in million has nothing to do with 106. It means one thousand. The word "million" is a backwards formation from the Italian "millione", literally lots of thousands. The naming system million, billion etc. is arbitrary. Bi- and tri- are Greek, but quad- and quint- are Latinate. One assumes that having got to 4, it was decided that a tettarillion sounded silly, so it would be Latin from then on. I imagine in the same way that using Latin for 2 and 3 would result in the odd sound duillion and trellion. (Names of numbers are often adjusted for convenience - e.g. the logical Russian for 40 would be the difficult "chetirdyesyat", so it has been replaced with "sorok")
So all these terms are just more or less arbitrary names for powers of 10 that you just have to know. SI sensibly went with grouping in threes because it makes engineering units convenient - for integral values, not more than 3 digits plus exponent (999GW would have to be written 999000MW in a 6-based system).
Nearly 50 years ago our maths teacher kept trying to persuade us that the "Imperial" system of weights and measures was superior to that "Metric" system because it was easier to do mental arithmetic with all those scales of 2,3,4,6,12,14,16 and 22. Of course, as soon as we discovered the slide rule and then the pocket calculator we realised that this was just special pleading. In the same way, the decimal system with unit groupings in the power of 103 is justified because it makes a lot more sense, not because somebody's imaginary number system goes mi, bi, tri, quad.
Sorry, you are wrong. It is the US vulgar billion that is born of exaggeration and error. Every European language had it as ten to the twelfth.
Of course, we in the east reckon in fourth powers of ten, so multiples of third powers are irrelevant.
Much US english originates in error, from the fucked-up pronunciation of 'forehead', so that the little girl with the little curl rhyme doesn't work in most US english, to all of the morons pushing stupid prepositional usage, like 'based off' instead of 'based on', avoiding 'with' when it is perfectly correct, and using 'to' instead, never using the perfect verb tenses when they are not only correct, but add to clarity of expression, easy to name many more.
'I could care less' is one of the most nonsensical vulgarities, someone reversed the sense to make the statement rubbish, but murricans probably don't even understand how that is a logical fallacy, while 'couldn't care less' is not.
All (except for the fucked-up pronunciation of forehead), very recent or pretty recent innovations. The fuck-up of the pronunciation of 'forehead' is also recent and I gather not quite universal, but at least pre -WWII, the rhyme about the little girl who had the little curl was popular in the US, too, so it must have worked at the time.
Read US literature, you won't find the other vulgarities I mention, until very recently.
I doubt that anybody who has the first vestige of a clue about the Solar System could possibly be confused. The scientific billion is exactly the same as the American short billion, and the British billion hasn't been used for a long time.
No, the problematic thing is the use of miles.
Whichever side of the debate one started on, this question is now settled. Nobody should now be writing 'billion' and meaning '1012. The convention that billion=109, trillion=1012, etc. is now practically universal, by which I mean all practitioners use it. It is wise merely to remember that this was not always the case, when reading older documents.
Ref: How many is a billion? [oxforddictionaries.com]
The short billion is used broadly through the English-speaking world, including the British Commonwealth* as well as the former USSR, Oceania, and Brazil, so there shouldn't be ambiguity unless you're trying too hard to show that you're not subject to the American cultural hegemony**. Only a smaller fraction of the world's population - primarily the Spanish-, French-, and Dutch-speaking regions - use long scale regularly.
However, even the large population of short scale users is overshadowed by the third fraction of the world's population (including India, China, and Greenland) that have its own system(s).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#mediaviewer/File:World_map_of_long_and_short_scales.svg
*Hence the common use of short scale by The Register, BBC News, Guardian, and other British publications.
**Canada has mixed long and short scale use stemming from its "See? We're not just politer Americans with fewer guns" policy. Either that or it's a Quebecois plot.
New Horizons here. Look, I don't quite know what's happened but I'm here, where you said the planet would be and it isn't. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Oh, there's some little dwarf thingy, but my memory banks definitely say there should be a planet around here somewhere...
Remember that at its liquefaction temperature in air, nitrogen has a vapour pressure of 1 bar.
I can't find the vapour pressure of nitrogen at 55K, NIST has a link that only goes down to the triple point (63.14K). At the triple point, however, the pressure is a considerable 0.125 bar, so I imagine that a thin nitrogen atmosphere at 55K is entirely reasonable.
Another reason why the U.S. should give up the idiotic measurement system used and go with the standard, which is the metric system. One reson for the US not switching is the belief of many of its folks that the current system is the same as in the Bible.
The U.S, back in the 1950s, should have been at the forefront of the conversion to the standard system
The scientific world got to have their metric notations. We Yankees convinced them to use our billions. Get over it.
About the probe.... Well, this ought to be interesting. I've never agreed with deplanetizing Pluto, always felt it should've been grandfathered in. Still, it'll be nifty to see what they can see.
From what they said about closest approach, I'm guessing this probe isn't going to be inserting itself into orbit of pluto but is just going to swing by on a parabolic path. Where's it going after that, assuming it doesn't crash into a moon?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
