Some Blog Site

or, to please Winston Churchill, I Think You Get That For Which You Paid

Arby’s was on the way home from the ice-hockey tournament at which we were spectating, so we used the convenient drive-through ordering thingy. My wife is a fan of whatever restaurants’ value meals, so she ordered value-meal roast-beef sandwiches for everyone. Everyone except me. I was driving, so that meant I had to give the order to the Metal Pole Which Speaks. I ordered a regular roast-beef sandwich for myself.

We noted that the value-meal sandwiches were $1 each but the normal sandwich was $3 (I think the actual prices were $0.99 and $2.79, in case you care). So, if the value meals were really a better value, they would be comparable to the regular sandwich.

What do you think?

Yes, you can order three of the small sandwiches for about the same price as one normal sandwich, but all you will be doing is filling up your tummy with cheap bread. It looks to me like the regular sandwich has the same amount of meat as three of the measly sandwiches. The value-meal sandwich is not a value. I propose they should call them cheap-meal sandwiches because they are cheaper but not a better value.

On the other hand, they don’t claim it is a better value, just that it is a value. The measly sandwiches do have a value – about 1/3 that of the regular sandwich.

First bird flu, now swine flu…

A co-worker and I were wondering what will be next, probably in a year or so. We came up with horse flu and frog flu and fish flu. I think we could come up with the next global scare (remember, you can’t spell pandemic without panic) if we just randomly affix a type of animal the to word flu. No, not the real animal, just its Latin name.

Why is it called the Swine Flu and not the Porcine Flu?

The only answer I could muster is that swine is a noun and porcine is an adjective. That provoked me to wonder “What about avian flu? Isn’t avian an adjective?”

Avian is an adjective, but don’t forget about bird flu. So that’s a toss-up.

Then there was the great Hong Kong flu of 1968. Hong Kong is a proper noun, but that still counts. I suppose the adjective form of the whole term would be “Hong Kong flu-y”, and it would make you a number one super guy. And I will resist the urge to insert a “Kung-Flu Fighting” joke here.

Another flu strain throws a wrench into all these works – the Spanish flu. Spanish is definitely an adjective. The noun would be Spain. But no one calls it Spain flu. So maybe there’s no rule about how to name a flu strain.

I would like the adjective form of flu names. That way we could use all those obscure terms like

• equine flu
• ranine flu
• piscine flu
• bovine flu
• vulpine flu
• lupine flu
• ovine flu
• apian flu
• etc.

Just don’t get the donkey flu.

Knowing that I like chocolate, my wife got me a bag of chocolate for a present. The Ghirardelli dark chocolate assortment, also known as the “Dark Collection” (almost makes it sound ominous) :

These dark chocolates come in three varieties:

• plain dark chocolate (60% cacao),
• dark chocolate with raspberry filling, and
• dark chocolate with caramel filling

.

The plain dark chocolate is self-explanatory. Actually, they all are. And they were all very tasty. But I prefer caramel with milk chocolate rather than dark chocolate.

For some reason, the sweeter milk chocolate taste mingles with the caramel filling better. The dark chocolate and caramel are polite to each other but they never get past the formalities, leaving one’s mouth with two distinct tastes that have an unspoken agreement that they will never be more than passing acquaintances.

The dark chocolate and raspberry complement each other nicely. The raspberry filling has seeds, ensuring that the eater knows this is real filling made from real fruit.

The nutrition information informs its reader that the average bag contains 21 squares of chocolate. The average person would be able to know that 21 pieces and 3 flavors should result in 7 pieces of each flavor. That would be a reasonable assumption.

Another reasonable assumption would be that there is no good reason to read the nutrition information on a bag of chocolates.

To verify their claims, I counted the pieces in a bag – 21 pieces. I counted how many of each variety – 6 of each with filling and 9 of the plain dark chocolate. Pretty sneaky of them to provide more pieces of the cheaper chocolate and fewer of the better chocolate. Here is how it all stacks up :

Astute readers will notice that the middle stack has only 8 pieces of chocolate, not the 9 that I claimed earlier. The ostensible reason for that is that it was done to show that 8 pieces of plain chocolate are equivalent in volume to 6 pieces of filled chocolate. Ghirardelli provided the same amount of chocolate per flavor even though the number of pieces differed.

The real reason is that someone ate a piece of chocolate between the time I counted the pieces and the time I stacked and photographed them.

And just to make sure that the sample size of one bag of chocolates was representative of the lot of bags, I counted the distribution of flavors in another bag. It was the same – 6 raspberry, 6 caramel, and 9 plain.

Of course, I had to check if the flavors were consistent from bag to bag.

Ahh … research is so rough sometimes.

Olive has a bad reputation. No, not her…The color olive.

Why is it Olive Drab? That’s such an unflattering name. I propose a new name: Olive Lively! (exclamation point optional)

Of course, it couldn’t apply to the same exact color.

Here is Olive Drab (with its color code):

#6B8E23

And here is my new color Olive Lively! (with its color code too):

#A0C838

Note that my Olive Drab is the internet version and does not conform to the color standards of the federal government.

A couple years ago, I read and thoroughly enjoyed Lynne Truss‘ book Eats, Shoots & Leaves. It had a very entertaining section about the interrobang, which is the combination of a question mark and exclamation point. How exciting is that!?

A few weeks ago, I read The Word Snoop. The Word Snoop is a quick, easy read. It is about the English language and written by an Australian and intended for children (elementary/primary school), but I, as an American many years removed from school, was able to read it.

I don’t know exactly what I was expecting. Since I had just read an actual mystery/crime novel, perhaps my expectations were skewed. It was mostly a review of things – if you already know what anagrams, palindromes, and pangrams are then you might not be that excited about this book. But the part with the history of letters and English was interesting.

The Word Snoop revisited the interrobang, and also introduced me to the question-comma and exclamation-comma. The best way to explain those is with examples.

It’s about time,! and what took them so long?

or the other way around:

What took them so long,? and it’s about time!

After that, I started wondering what other punctuation could be invented. Other languages already have the upside-down question mark. And someone already proposed a backwards question mark (the irony mark). I contemplated proposing the backwards exclamation point, but I fear that the untrained eye would not be able to distinguish it from a normal exclamation point.

My first new punctuation mark is the semi-semi. We have the existing progression of period (full-stop for you Brits), comma, colon, and semi-colon. The semi-colon is a period above a comma. The next logical step in that sequence would be a comma above a comma. I thought about calling it the comma-comma, but that left me thinking about Culture Club, so I decided against it.

The semi-semi doesn’t fill a need, so it is wandering aimlessly right now. If necessity is the mother of invention, then I have an orphan.

My other new punctuation mark is the colon-semi. It is, of course, a comma above a period. I have found this to be a useful defense against the onslaught of full-stop abuse. Placing periods in between words is bad.

The . Worst . Punctuation . Ever!

A period is a full stop. Placing it between words makes it a pause, not a full stop. For this reason, the colon-semi could also be called “partial stop”. It’s a comma and a period together! It means both a pause and a stop! Hmm, there’s not enough distinction there… It means both full stop and continue! Okay, maybe the advertising needs more work, but you get the point.

The Best Punctuation Ever!

My new punctuation marks are impossible to type right now, as no font files (to my knowledge) include them, nor do they have a reserved spot in Unicode. Feel free to hand-write them until they are supported – not that I have any plans to spend any time lobbying for their inclusion or promoting them to the masses.

Another post about Saturday’s trip to the zoo – yes, it’s about another sign…

I noticed this sign at the zoo.

I know this one has nothing to do with animals. The zoo has a nice play area for children, in case they tire of animals and just want to run around and do whatever. This sign was encouraging the kids to develop scientific minds have fun while playing in the stream.

It’s not a real stream, but it plays one on TV. This “stream” is the child’s-play-area equivalent to those plastic-liner-and-electric-pump waterfalls that people put in their backyards. Yes, it is a stream, just not a natural stream. But it is fun for the kids, especially those who don’t have access to real streams where they live.

Anyway, back to the sign… It seems this sign is somewhat related to Yoda: “Do, or do not. There is no try“.

Hmm… free marketing advice time, worth the price of admission. Mountain Dew should adopt a new slogan: “Dew or Dew not, there is no try” There are obvious licensing agreement issues with the Star Wars people, but it could work. Or there’s the way I usually remember the phrase: “There is no try, only do.” They could use “There is no thirst, only Dew“.

Anyway, back to the sign… The part I don’t like is “try and block”. If you’re going to try blocking it, and then block it, why bother trying first? Just do it. They meant for you to “try to block” the water.

Remember, never try and do something unless you really want a trial run before the actual event. Try to do something. Or, like Yoda, you could just do something. Even hard things.

“Nor let us try the Lord, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the serpents.”
– 1 Corinthians 10:9

We went to the zoo this past Saturday. It was a good day for the zoo, weather-wise and sign-wise.

First off, this sign, seen inside a new building (“new” as in “just opened about a month ago”).

It clearly states that this particular building does not use any light bulbs. Not reduced use of light bulbs but NO LIGHT BULBS. We are green, but it’s not enough for us to feel good about being green, we have to promote ourselves to you by showing how green we are. Even our signs are colored green.

It’s a zoo. I want the signs to be about the animals. I suppose that “animals” could be extended to “planet”, and “planet” could be localized to mean “building’s lighting systems”. My recommendation would be to put that type of information on a brochure or webpage so that people who cared about it could find it.

I suppose I could have ignored the sign. If all this was about being solarly responsible, I probably wouldn’t have written this post. I might have mentioned it, just in passing, maybe something about do not look directly into a solatube. The building had both skylights and solatubes, and those solatubes are bright. And they worked quite well to light the room.

So why am I rambling about the zoo’s claims of being environmentally friendly? Take a look at this view of the sign.

Do you see the irony? The sign is in the lower right corner. What do you see near the top left? That’s right, a fixture containing 8 light bulbs. And they are lit. In the middle of the afternoon. On a sunny day. You can tell it’s a sunny day because of how bright the solatube at the top left is.

In case you’re not convinced that those are them newfangled electric lights, here’s a closer shot.

Those are definitely powered by electricity. And there were more of those fixtures in this room, so there were at least 16 light bulbs.

So the sign should say “We are green and do not use any light bulbs in our buildings unless we want to highlight a wall with no displays on it.”

Overall, the zoo is great. We are going to keep going back. But the signs could use a little help.

“Therefore their inhabitants were short of strength,They were dismayed and put to shame;They were as the vegetation of the field and as the green herb,As grass on the housetops is scorched before it is grown up.”
– 2 Kings 19:26