Quote of the Day

[lproven]

I recently saw a rather fun little web page which took various passages from books and replaced all works describing colour with a small block of the colour itself; the object was to try to work out the hue described. You could click on the swatch to see if you were right. (Alas, I can't find the link. Sorry

Comments

[lovingboth]

A US 'gallon' is smaller than a real Imperial one - about 3.75 litres - so their price per litre is higher than that.

Still 'tough' though...

[lproven]

Oh noes! Google *lied* to me!

;¬D

My fault, really. I didn't realise there were different gallons. I ought to have known that.

[ccomley]

US gallon is 8 light pints, nto real ones, so it's not 4.5 litres. So it's worse.

[lproven]

[Looks it up]

Still 1/8 of a gallon, but a US pint is an eighth of a smaller gallon. Gods, this old nonsense is even worse than I thought!

Still pretty close to 50p a litre, tho', no?

[lovingboth]

The pint difference is why B&J ice cream tubs used to have to have stickers on - they're 'pint' sized, but US pints...

[lproven]

Never saw that, but then, if I'd ever allowed myself to buy icecream by the tub, I'd weigh about 200kg by now. (30+ stone, if you prefer.)

[makyo]

Some years ago, probably the early 1980s, round about the age I first became aware of things like Chancellors of the Exchequer, red briefcases and budget statements, I remember sitting in my dad's car while some people on the radio speculated about what that afternoon's budget statement would have in store for the people of Britain. At some point during the programme, I have a memory of someone saying "... well, the question he has to ask himself is whether he wants to be remembered as the Chancellor who brought in the £2 gallon

[lproven]

I remember fuel in gallons, but not anything about its prices. My only significant recollection from back then was my buying fuel for my VW Beetle at Uni, and having great difficulty finding the cheaper 2-star it'd happily run on... But I've no clue what it cost

[fishlifter]

I remember fuel in gallons, but not anything about its prices.

My father worked in a garage in the days before self-service and when petrol was still under £1/gallon. I remember as a kid hearing of a technique employed by one of his colleagues for selling fuel. If somebody pulled up onto the forecourt and asked for five gallons of petrol, the chap would carefully explain that, no, love -- in this story it was always a 'lady driver' -- you don't want five gallons, you want five pounds-worth 'cos you get more that way.
---Mark

[lproven]

Ahh, those were the days. When men were men and women were grateful.

Out in Nigeria in about '78, we were returning from the local supermarket - 10 miles away, so an hour or so's drive. The company car was a big Merc, complete with company driver, Johson Onakufe.

We noticed that he was pelting along at rather more than the usual pace - a somewhat dangerous thing to do on Nigerian roads. My dad asked him why.

"Because we are low on fuel, sir."
"Er... we're low on petrol, so you're going faster?" Asked my dad.
"Yes, sir!"
"Er... why?"
"So we get back before it runs out!"

True story.

[*Sigh* 4th go. It's not my night. Morning. Thing.]

I have a small degree of sympathy

[syllopsium]

Only, however, because the rise appears to have been quite fast over there.

It's certainly a bit unreasonable of them to carry on running gas guzzling cars and whinging about prices which of half of hours.

On the other hand, a huge increase in the cost of any basic resource will cause problems and exactly the same thing is happening here. Whilst we all budget for increases if we're sensible, it's not usually of the order of 40% or more..

It's also unfair to blame consumers for an entire culture. What are you going to say to rural dwellers here - 'move to the city' ?

Re: I have a small degree of sympathy

[lproven]

Yeah, you're right there - AIUI, it's come on pretty fast.

But the US gov't could've been making a pretty penny for /years/ on fuel tax and spending the money on alternatives - such as nuclear plants, or solar (it has lots of deserts) or wind or hydroelectric (ditto mountains) - and thus gaining itself independence from those unstable middle-east Muslim countries it likes to bomb.

As for blaming communities - they either voted the idiot Republicans into power, *or* (like many of my American friends & acquaintances) were too lazy to vote at all. I have never met or talked to /anyone/ who voted for Bush, but I've known lots who didn't bother to vote for anyone. Yes, they *are* complicit. Not solely responsible, no, not even primarily, but they're in there.

Rural dwellers? Cut down on mileage, grow yer own, buy a small, fuel-frugal vehicle (need a 4x4? Get a Fiat Panda), use a bicycle for local journeys...

Re: I have a small degree of sympathy

[watertigersf]

i still have american friends who insist that 'great scientists' as they call them have proven that climate change is not due to human action and inaction, but just part of the cycle of nature, and therefore they dont have to change their habits....was it stand on zanzinbar, or the sheep look up, where john brunner has a computer run a programme to decide the best way to save the world, and after due considerations it concluded that nuking america is the best solution, given their greed and waste....pretty prophetic guy, our john....

Re: I have a small degree of sympathy

[lproven]

Some people will not accept it even when their cities are flooded and washed away.

Also, a very common attitude, which I do not understand, is to say "so? By the time it gets bad, I'll be dead. What does it matter to me?"

[lproven]

Really

[vatine]

You know that things could've been even messier? Anders C started his scale with "100 is the triple-point of water, 0 is when water boils". If it hadn't been for a quick-witted lab assistant, we would've been settled with a mess of a temperature scale!

We had lots of exercises in non-metric units in school. Specifically in maths class, where converting between different measure systems was a surprisingly good lesson in base conversion and was somewhat fun, when you were in your low teens (I say "non-metric", because not only did we play with US and UK measures, but also with Swedish pre-metric units and if you EVER wanted a mess, that's one; three, I think, inches, all context-dependent, one of them identical to the imperial inch).

[vatine]

Hm, I think we might've done some pre-decimal UK currency to (pence, shillings, pounds and guineas), again in maths class and primarily to exercise base-conversion.