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  1. about 6 hours ago on Wallace the Brave

    Let the winds blow high, let the winds blow low / through the streets in my kilt I’ll go….

  2. 10 days ago on Frazz

    Also there was that time when they just decided “Screw it, this is gonna be the longest year ever”.

  3. 13 days ago on Frazz

    Not only does every month have a Kalends, a Nones, and an Ides, but Roman calendar keeping is wild.

    See, we count up from 1. March 1, March 2, and so on until the last day of the month. The Romans counted down from the next signpost.

    So let’s take the Ides. We’d call that March 15. The Romans simply called it the Ides of March. The day before the Ides they referred to as “the day before the Ides”. The day before that they called… three days before the Ides. Yes, three days. Because they did inclusive counting, and if you count “today, tomorrow, and then the Ides” that makes three days.

    I’m aware this makes no sense, but that’s how they did it!

    At least they finally got around to doing a calendar by schedule rather than fiat. That caused more than a few problems, I can tell you!

  4. about 1 month ago on Calvin and Hobbes

    Sex ed should begin in preschool. Middle school is already too late – they’ve already started to hear wrong things, like “you can get pregnant if you go swimming with a guy” or “you can’t get pregnant if you do it standing up”.

    Plus, lots of young people have begun puberty before leaving elementary school. My mother’s cousin got her period at the age of nine! Can you imagine how traumatic that is if you don’t know what’s going on? All of a sudden you’re just… bleeding. From a private area!

    And let’s not forget those unfortunate children who are at risk of molestation. Knowing the proper terms for body parts means that if they report it other people will understand what they’re saying and believe them. Every year there are cases that are dismissed because the children refer to those parts using opaque terms. That happened to Maya Angelou – she called her body her “pocketbook” and the case was thrown out.

  5. about 1 month ago on Calvin and Hobbes

    Easier and harder is in the eye of the beholder. There are advantages to word classes in language, that’s why they’re so persistent in multiple language families.

  6. about 1 month ago on Crabgrass

    Sure, but the creator was still a monster. Every action Frankenstein takes in the book, from creating Adam to leaving him alone without any sort of guidance or moral instruction, is monstrous.

  7. about 1 month ago on Rose is Rose

    I’m sure that greasing your pole can seriously harm birds and their chicks.

  8. about 1 month ago on Rose is Rose

    It doesn’t matter what you grease it with, if any of it happens to get on a bird’s chest feathers and thence their eggs the chick will suffocate. You’ll also make it harder for the bird to fly and to regulate their body temperature or waterproofing.

    Just use a baffle. You can make one yourself out of a soda bottle. Or coat the seed with some cayenne. Or do both those things.

  9. about 1 month ago on Rose is Rose

    Don’t grease the pole, that’s bad for all the wildlife including the birds. Just put a baffle on the bottom of it.

  10. 2 months ago on Luann Againn

    > What do cookies and bookcases have to do with anything?

    That’s what I’m mostly using measurements for. I never said anything about miles in my original comment, so I’m not sure why you brought that up at all.

    > My bookcase is 80 cm wide. Doubling that gives us 160 cm

    Okay. So let’s divide. You have a length of fabric that’s one meter long, but you’re altering the pattern. You cut it into thirds, that’s a third of a meter, so… um… about 333 cm. Then you cut it into half so that’s… uh… a bit more than 150cm ish.

    There are more prime factors in 12 than there are in 10, therefore units of measurement based around the dozenal system allow us more easily to divide into thirds, quarters, and halves than those based on the decimal system.

    The foot is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6 easily. The cup comprises sixteen tablespoons of three teaspoons each, so it’s easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24. The more factors you have to divide by the easier basic arithmetic is going to be.

    What can you do with the metric system? You can only divide by multiples of 2 and 5, and not easily by all of them. You have three meters, you divide by four, okay, that’s 3/4 of a meter. Then you divide by eight and that’s… 3/32 of a meter but how many centimeters is that?