Assume v. Presume

Black Hole said:
"Diffuse" as in "quantum uncertainty where exactly it is at the moment"?
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For the bombs that are still missing ... yes, that could apply.
For the one addressed in the article ... no, I don't think there is any uncertainty about its location (and at 1.8 tonnes it certainly ain't quantum).
 
People who say "on Christmas" instead of "on Christmas day" or "at Christmas"?
Noticed this one a lot this year.
 
af123 said:
People who say "on Christmas" instead of "on Christmas day" or "at Christmas"?
Noticed this one a lot this year.
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prpr said:
I guess that comes from "on the weekend" which always grates on me.
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Interesting ones. On one hand we say (eg) "on Tuesday" and it would seem daft to say "at Tuesday" ... BUT, the days of the week all end with 'day', as does 'Christmas day'. Is it the 'day' that makes the difference? (And we could be back to the discussion a few days ago about two words becoming one; when did Mon, Tue's, Wedne's, etc, get close coupled to day?)
 
"At Christmas" to me means all the days making up the festive period. Personally that means just Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day rather than spinning it out from October to January as the retailers and the media like to do.
 
gomezz said:
"At Christmas" to me means all the days making up the festive period. Personally that means just Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day rather than spinning it out from October to January as the retailers and the media like to do.
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There is a lot of variation in the UK alone for when Christmas is and when the Christmas period needs to be brought to the fore. Retailers choose to display 'Christmas' decorations early enough to advertise early enough as a method to encourage the worship of earthly possessions and will lose interest in that line of advertising before Epiphany.
To me 'at Christmas' is twelve days. Religious decorations go up Christmas eve and come down 12 days later (Epiphany). This view is compatible in with Christmas Nativity depictions which include 3 magi (wise men) arriving at the stable 12 days after Christmas day.
 
Luke said:
Retailers choose to display 'Christmas' decorations early enough to advertise early enough as a method to encourage the worship of earthly possessions
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I didn't notice this year, but TV advertising for Christmas toys used to begin in September.
 
Why do people who should know a lot better do that. It's beyond belief. Fine for chavs, but surely a big no no for scientists and pseudo scientists?
 
Mathematically it works if you define smallness as the inverse of size, but I'm not making excuses for it.

Maybe we should assign it a unit: how about defining 1/m as the "Peabrain"? In those units, the diameter of a hydrogen atom is about 8 giga-Peabrains.
 
I find that quite difficult to get my head around BH. I f the meter is the unit of size, then 1/m (the Peabrain) is 1/1 =1, so I'm not getting how a Hydrogen atom is 8GP. I could handle something like 8 nanoP but that's not what 'we' are postulating about.
Just found something about inverse size HERE;)
 
If something is 8 giga-Peabrains small, that means it would take 8x10^9 of them end-to-end to cover 1m.

That doesn't feel right for the smallness of a hydrogen atom to me, but the value I got when googled was 120 pico metres, so...
 
Black Hole said:
Even on the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: apparently the hydrogen atom is "five times smaller than lithium".

:frantic:
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Oh for f's sake!
How many things are wrong with this...
1) the hydrogen atom is "five times smaller than [a] lithium [atom]"
2) by smaller, did the lecturer actually mean one-fifth of the size?
3) by size, did he mean diameter, volume, mass, number of protons or neutrons or even electrons?

Trev said:
Why do people who should know a lot better do that. It's beyond belief. Fine for chavs, but surely a big no no for scientists and pseudo scientists?
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As a [probably failed] engineer, bad science does irritate me!
"Five times smaller" is of the same value as "three shades whiter". :poop:BS.

Black Hole said:
how about defining 1/m as the "Peabrain"?
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But what is m? (Yes, you can call me a peabrain for not understanding your definition - but only 1 peabrain)
 
Obvious really. Size is measured in metres. m is the thingy for metres. Smallness is the inverse of size so is measured in units of 1/m commonly known as the Peabrain. :D
 
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