Story Monday November 6, 2017

[Scotty 1,061]

9 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Or maybe the Really Big Couch (with remote control), it's gags exhausted, went to couch heaven where it frolics with the other sofas of yesteryear and the ottomans of old. Or maybe Dan just decided, "Hey, how about a better-looking couch for this comic?"

Dan did mention in the commentary of the Really Big Couch that Susan "might have a new fancy sofa if and when we revisit this location in the future." He also added " I’m thinking one of those fancy huge sofas with 90 degree turns and whatnot." but considering Dan did that commentary in 2015 (it doesn't say so on that page in particular but a few pages earlier states the date and adds that following commentaries will have been posted on the same date unless stated otherwise.) and Elliot's visit to Susan's was in 2013, Dan either forgot he had already given her a standard looking couch or the fancy new one is in a different room still waiting to be revealed.

9 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

I noticed something in Dan's commentary for that comic: He got his math wrong. He says Susan is 5' 6". But that was Susan's height before her growth spurt, as noted 137 comics earlier, before the summer break began, when Matt Cohen (remember poor Matt Cohen?) asked Susan for a date. 

There was nothing mentioned in the commentary that Susan was 5"6' when talking about Elliot's transformed height:

" Elliot's form in this comic is essentially just his female form (which is essentially Ellen with a different hair style), only proportioned differently so as to fit a height of 6' 3", AKA about five inches taller than Elliot normally is. And about seven inches taller than Susan, but that's all the height comparisons I'm going to list. "

Elliot being 6'3" and 7 inches taller than Susan would make Susan 5'8".

[Tom Sewell 268]

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

If that would be the issue, Adrian would be the best to protect him. Hiding him would only make sense if Noriko feared specifically Adrian or Pandora. AND if she had sex with Adrian, she likely knows him better than we do.

Would Adrian be the best to protect the forbidden child? His record with Noah isn't quite perfect. Adrian could think it would be better if as few people as possible could connect him with his child.

And it is also quite possible that Adrian would not know Noriko had a child by him. It takes many screws to build a crib, but only one to fill it. And it is extremely possible that Noriko knew that Adrian is the only one who would be the father. She could even be the only person who knows.

[Tom Sewell 268]

13 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Elliot being 6'3" and 7 inches taller than Susan would make Susan 5'8".

Yes. It is as I suspected. A reality quake has altered that commentary since the time I read it before.

OR

You're right again, Scotty, but I still get all the space bimbos.

[hkmaly 490]

18 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

19 hours ago, Scotty said:

Elliot being 6'3" and 7 inches taller than Susan would make Susan 5'8".

Yes. It is as I suspected. A reality quake has altered that commentary since the time I read it before.

OR

You're right again, Scotty, but I still get all the space bimbos.

The fact there is more than 10" to ' is little confusing.

19 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

20 hours ago, hkmaly said:

If that would be the issue, Adrian would be the best to protect him. Hiding him would only make sense if Noriko feared specifically Adrian or Pandora. AND if she had sex with Adrian, she likely knows him better than we do.

Would Adrian be the best to protect the forbidden child? His record with Noah isn't quite perfect. Adrian could think it would be better if as few people as possible could connect him with his child.

Noah was still alive last time we saw him. And hiding something from immortals seem to be hard.

19 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

And it is also quite possible that Adrian would not know Noriko had a child by him. It takes many screws to build a crib, but only one to fill it. And it is extremely possible that Noriko knew that Adrian is the only one who would be the father. She could even be the only person who knows.

She still didn't told him and there would need to be reason for it.

However ... this raises another option: what if the child IS Adrians BUT Noriko is either not sure or even convinced it's Edwards?

 

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

The fact there is more than 10" to ' is little confusing.

American Measurements and British Currency got along just fine before decimalization.

What is so difficult about twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound?  Certainly no more difficult than dividing inches by factors of two (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32), twelve inches to a foot, three feet to a yard, 1760 yards to a mile...

...Before I get into rods, chains, furlongs, fathoms, and hogsheads, let us reconsider the usefulness of a decimal based measurement system.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

American schoolchildren in the 1970s were taught the metric system, and were told the whole country was going to be going metric.  Then the stupid grown-ups chickened out and never made the change.

We've gotten used to two liter bottles.  We can do this.  I say we put metric measurements under the customary units on all signs, labels, directions, etc. for ten years, then swap and put the metric units on top for ten years, then allow the customary units to be printed below in a much smaller font for another ten or twenty years.  By that time, everyone should have gotten used to the new system, and most people will have grown up with it or been relatively young when the change was made.

[hkmaly 490]

46 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

What is so difficult about twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound?  Certainly no more difficult than dividing inches by factors of two (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32), twelve inches to a foot, three feet to a yard, 1760 yards to a mile...

That it's always different number.

There would be considerable advantages of having the unit system based on 12 or 16, but the fact that there are 12 inches to a foot but just three feet to a yard is confusing. Not speaking about mile - or rather, any of three commonly used miles.

Also, concluding that Susan is 5'6" from Elliot being 6'3" and 7 inches taller than Susan is using decimal by mistake.

[Tom Sewell 268]

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Noah was still alive last time we saw him.

Only because Grace put Dex to sleep in time. The dragon was aiming at Noah, which means Voltaire was aiming at Noah.

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

And hiding something from immortals seem to be hard.

 But worth trying.

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

She still didn't told him and there would need to be reason for it.

I believe I gave at least two reasons why Noriko wouldn't tell Edward or Adrian. 

2 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

What is so difficult about twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound?

You left out farthings, tuppences, thruppences, sixpences, guineas, and groats.

 

2 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

...Before I get into rods, chains, furlongs, fathoms, and hogsheads, let us reconsider the usefulness of a decimal based measurement system.

Nor should you get into grains, pennyweights, hundredweights, drams, stone, dry quarts, bushels, pecks, firkins, leagues, hands, long and short tons, troy vs. avoirdupois...

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Also, concluding that Susan is 5'6" from Elliot being 6'3" and 7 inches taller than Susan is using decimal by mistake.

No, it's just a mistake. Seven inches shorter than 6'3' is 5'6". I MADE A MISTAKE!!! 

[Don Edwards 548]

11 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

American schoolchildren in the 1970s were taught the metric system

I disagree with that statement. Speaking as one of those schoolchildren. We were not taught the metric system. We were taught another set of conversion factors, so we could not only convert between quarts and gallons, we could also convert between quarts and liters. But we were never given any sort of sense of how big a liter is - there were no liter containers anywhere around us. And where the conversion factor between quarts and gallons is a small integer, the conversion factor between quarts and liters is a decimal fraction; you need a minimum of two digits, and preferably three, to get any sort of accuracy.

This in an education system that was doing a pretty poor job of teaching most people basic arithmetic, and considered itself to be doing an acceptable job if 80% of the students mastered at least 60% of this subject, one of the three foundations on which all other education rests (the others being language/literacy and behavior).

The soft-drink industry has done far more to actually teach people the metric system. Simply by distributing their product in 1- and 2-liter bottles.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

But we were never given any sort of sense of how big a liter is - there were no liter containers anywhere around us.

There were plenty if you took a second year of chemistry in high school. We were surrounded by the things. I had hands-on experience as a lab assistant.

[mlooney 3,417]

48 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

2 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

But we were never given any sort of sense of how big a liter is - there were no liter containers anywhere around us.

There were plenty if you took a second year of chemistry in high school. We were surrounded by the things. I had hands-on experience as a lab assistant.

My school had liter jars and kilogram weights, plus meter sticks etc.

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

4 hours ago, mlooney said:

My school had liter jars and kilogram weights, plus meter sticks etc.

That still leaves the question of what makes a good yardstick for a meter stick.

[hkmaly 490]

18 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

22 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Noah was still alive last time we saw him.

Only because Grace put Dex to sleep in time. The dragon was aiming at Noah, which means Voltaire was aiming at Noah.

The dragon was aiming directly under itself. Voltaire already admitted Elliot was primary target - wait. Elliot was not there. Ok, it's entirely possible it was deliberately aimed at Noah. On the other hand, he didn't tried to hit Noah in air, making possible Grace or Greg were primary targets, or that it deliberately tried to take out multiple targets at once.

18 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

22 hours ago, hkmaly said:

She still didn't told him and there would need to be reason for it.

I believe I gave at least two reasons why Noriko wouldn't tell Edward or Adrian. 

Maybe I got little lost in the discussion there, but I wanted to emphasize that it wouldn't be new option, as one of those already mentioned reasons would need to be present.

7 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

The soft-drink industry has done far more to actually teach people the metric system. Simply by distributing their product in 1- and 2-liter bottles.

See, you can already adopt liters now that people know how big it is. Now ... is Pokemon Go measuring egg distance in miles in US or is it teaching current schoolchildren how long kilometre is?

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

11 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

I disagree with that statement. Speaking as one of those schoolchildren. We were not taught the metric system. We were taught another set of conversion factors, so we could not only convert between quarts and gallons, we could also convert between quarts and liters. But we were never given any sort of sense of how big a liter is - there were no liter containers anywhere around us. And where the conversion factor between quarts and gallons is a small integer, the conversion factor between quarts and liters is a decimal fraction; you need a minimum of two digits, and preferably three, to get any sort of accuracy.

This in an education system that was doing a pretty poor job of teaching most people basic arithmetic, and considered itself to be doing an acceptable job if 80% of the students mastered at least 60% of this subject, one of the three foundations on which all other education rests (the others being language/literacy and behavior).

The soft-drink industry has done far more to actually teach people the metric system. Simply by distributing their product in 1- and 2-liter bottles.

I'm sorry you had such a poor educational experience.  All I can say is that my experience was quite different from yours, and my schools didn't settle for 60% grades or try to teach children in only abstract ideas.

[hkmaly 490]

5 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

I'm sorry you had such a poor educational experience.  All I can say is that my experience was quite different from yours, and my schools didn't settle for 60% grades or try to teach children in only abstract ideas.

I would be really surprised if everyone has same educational experience. Is there any article summarizing how well the reform was executed?

There's "citation needed" on that topics on wikipedia.

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I would be really surprised if everyone has same educational experience.

Amen to that. So much depends on the individual school, the individual community and even the individual teacher.

(I am not making a political comment here, not intentionally anyway -- merely reminiscing about how I had horrible experiences in some schools and with some teachers, and good experiences with others.)