Assume v. Presume

Trev said:
Were you not paying attention to raydon's post #1227?:disagree:
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It was incorrect. Metric is both an adjective and a noun.:disagree:

I agree about audience is, though.

The audience is I.

That sounds right! Not!
 
Metric when used as a noun, as apposed to an adjective, is not necessarily referring to the Metric system of measurements based on the metre, your comments were.:p
30 - love I believe.
 
Trev said:
Metric when used as a noun, as apposed to an adjective, is not necessarily referring to the Metric system of measurements based on the metre, your comments were.:p
30 - love I believe.
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Nonsense. I was referring to the whole metric system. We have a hybrid system and have had for 150 years. Until we have 100 minute hours and 100 days in a year, we will never be fully metric. The number of seconds in a day is already metric, according to BH!

Apposed?????
 
Opposed = (of two or more things) contrasting or conflicting with each other.
Until we have 100 minute hours and 100 days in a year, we will never be fully metric.
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That's decimal base 10) not metric.
 
I agree. When things are in duodecimal, it's easier to divide by more divisors. Try sharing 10 doughnuts between three or four people. Now try the same with 12 doughnuts. OK, five doesn't work, but one, two, three, four and six does, without the use of a knife. Selling stuff in decimal quantities makes no sense at all.
 
Trev said:
five doesn't work, but one, two, three, four and six does
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An interesting grammatical conundrum. It sounds wrong, but is strictly correct.

As for duodecimal, whenever evolution tries to move to six fingers, the surgeons move in and amputate one of them! Polydactyly is the subject of much prejudice, even though some of the genes causing it are dominant ones, albeit rare. Fascinating subject! Tetrapods sometimes had 8 digits per limb until about 375m years ago, when 5 became the norm.

So, polydactyly is dominant but rare. I guess there are other genes linked to it that cause this rarity. Who would not want to breed with this specimen, though?

g-hlt-081111-gemma-hmed-12p.standard.jpg
 
It doesn't sound wrong at all!
If you said "...five doesn't work, but one do." THAT would sound wrong. Stick the word 'work' on the end of my sentence. Does that make it 'sound right'? Nah, that doesn't make it any better at all.:frantic:

But she's only got five fingers.
 
Trev said:
It doesn't sound wrong at all!
If you said "...five doesn't work, but one do." THAT would sound wrong. Stick the word 'work' on the end of my sentence. Does that make it 'sound right'?
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Five [doughnuts] don't work, etc. It depends which word(s) you elide.

OK, five [doughnuts] don't work, but one [doughnut] does [work], two [doughnuts] do [work], three [doughnuts] do [work], four [doughnuts] do [work] and six [doughnuts] do [work]

So,

Five don't work, but one does, and two, three, four and six do.
 
But "two into three don't w0rk" is incorrect, and we are trying to divide the doughnuts equally after all. So it's "two into three doesn't work". and it's the word 'work' that is being alluded to. (never end a sentence with a preposition is the rule, before you start on that old chestnut)
And it MUST be the word 'work' that is elided otherwise the sentence makes no sense .
 
Trev said:
Opposed = (of two or more things) contrasting or conflicting with each other.That's decimal base 10) not metric.
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But Apposed???

Point taken about metric vs decimal, but the advantage of metric was always its decimal nature. Perhaps SI would have been better, but not in the BH case!:oops:
 
Trev said:
But "two into three don't w0rk" is incorrect, and we are trying to divide the doughnuts equally after all. So it's "two into three doesn't work". and it's the word 'work' that is being alluded to. (never end a sentence with a preposition is the rule, before you start on that old chestnut)
And it MUST be the word 'work' that is elided otherwise the sentence makes no sense .
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But "two into three don't work" is a totally different sentence. You were talking about doughnuts! Both doughnuts and work were understood to be omitted by me.

I never use phrases like "two into three doesn't work" because it does work. It has worked ever since man has used fractions. Also, its meaning is far too obscure. By the time you have explained

Suppose you have two indivisible objects and you wish to divide them into three equal piles. It doesn't work!

it's easy to see that doesn't is correct. But that is totally different to what you were saying. On the other hand, in your statement, you appeared to switch from sharing doughnuts to stating a fact about cardinal numbers, and in that sense it is grammatically correct. So, in a way, we are both correct.
 
It had nothing to do with cardinal numbers. It was to do with sharing doughnuts, without cutting them, between different numbers of people. My wife and I have to cut one approximately in half so that we can share a packet of five doughnuts, however, if they came in fractional duo-decimal backs, six in this particular case, we could stuff three doughnuts each down our necks without having to wash up a knife afterwards. Thus you have my wholehearted support for retailers selling stuff in duo-decimal based packs.
 
With someone as close as your wife you should not need to cut them but take alternate increasingly smaller bites in the endearing game of leaving your loved one with the last morsel. :)
 
Even a single doughnut can be shared between three people, using ruler, compass and a knife.
 
The Greeks would expect to do that with only a straight edge and a pair of compasses; I'm not sure how a method for finding magnetic north is much use in this situation.

gomezz said:
With someone as close as your wife you should not need to cut them but take alternate increasingly smaller bites in the endearing game of leaving your loved one with the last morsel. :)
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I thought the game was to take bites in turn but avoid the poisoned bit...
 
Mike said:
but the advantage of metric was always its decimal nature
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A metric can be in any units that you want. The Metric system, as you say, generally uses SI units.
 
As heard on a news bulletin on Smooth (radio station), from the mouth of somebody advising British visitors to Thailand regarding the current curfew:

"...should stay in their hotels from 10pm in the evening to 5am in the morning"

<deep sigh>
 
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