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[Kuildeous]

"To my audience, Ozle and eHalcyon"
That to me reads three seperate things.

Incidentally, I read that as two people. I see eHalcyon and Ozle as the audience. This may not have been the writer's intention upon writing it, but that's how it reads to me.

It's such a strangely worded sentence that I would read To my audience, Ozle[,] and eHalcyon as having three items, regardless of whether the serial comma is there. If I were writing this and I wanted to include one or both of them as the audience, then I'd rewrite the sentence.

[theory]

"While visiting New York, I met rrenaud, a former circus clown, and my favorite purveyor of fine illicit substances."

"While visiting New York, I met rrenaud, a former circus clown and my favorite purveyor of fine illicit substances."

How many people did you meet?

[Captain_Frisk]

Except for the fact that Celsius is objectively better than Fahrenheit, I absolutely agree.

[Kuildeous]

Heh, sure enough, I saw where someone misused PEDMAS.

He wrote that 7 – 4 + 0 + 1 was actually 7 – 5 and came up with 2.

Granted, he didn't say that he was using PEDMAS, but I'm willing to bet that's exactly what it was.

[Grujah]

Now, C_F is probably trolling but
0 = water freezes.
100 = water boils.
Is pretty much better than "really hot" and "really cold".

[Ozle]

"While visiting New York, I met rrenaud, a former circus clown, and my favorite purveyor of fine illicit substances."

2, because the second comma ends the description of Rrenaud the clown.

"While visiting New York, I met rrenaud, a former circus clown and my favorite purveyor of fine illicit substances."

This is the ambiguos one I agree, that could be 1 or 3

[Captain_Frisk]

Now, C_F is probably trolling but
0 = water freezes.
100 = water boils.
Is pretty much better than "really hot" and "really cold".

Well - I am a stupid american - and I agree 100% we should move to the metric system. 

That said - the freezing and boiling points of water are not especially useful when it comes to me intuitively understanding how warm or gold something is. 

The nice thing about Fahrenheit is that 0 and 100 are near the lower and upper bounds for human safety - this is a nice range of things that you can actually experience.  0 degrees outside?  You might die.  100 degrees outside?  You might die.

If you truly want it to be anchored on something that makes sense - then you have to go with Kelvin... and at that point it doesn't matter how big a degree is, we're talking about huge numbers to answer the question "How hot is it outside"?

[Robz888]

"While visiting New York, I met rrenaud, a former circus clown, and my favorite purveyor of fine illicit substances."

"While visiting New York, I met rrenaud, a former circus clown and my favorite purveyor of fine illicit substances."

How many people did you meet?

See in the second sentence, I would always read that as just one person: You met rrenaud, who is a former circus clown and your favorite purveyor of fine illicit substances.

The first sentence I would probably read as three people.

[Ozle]

Now, C_F is probably trolling but
0 = water freezes.
100 = water boils.
Is pretty much better than "really hot" and "really cold".

Except Water doesn't always boil at 100 degrees...

[Captain_Frisk]

"While visiting New York, I met rrenaud, a former circus clown, and my favorite purveyor of fine illicit substances."

"While visiting New York, I met rrenaud, a former circus clown and my favorite purveyor of fine illicit substances."

How many people did you meet?

See in the second sentence, I would always read that as just one person: You met rrenaud, who is a former circus clown and your favorite purveyor of fine illicit substances.

The first sentence I would probably read as three people.

As would I.  Of course, you could always remove the ambiguity by putting rrenaud as the the 3rd person in the list.

[Grujah]

Now, C_F is probably trolling but
0 = water freezes.
100 = water boils.
Is pretty much better than "really hot" and "really cold".

Well - I am a stupid american - and I agree 100% we should move to the metric system. 

That said - the freezing and boiling points of water are not especially useful when it comes to me intuitively understanding how warm or gold something is. 

The nice thing about Fahrenheit is that 0 and 100 are near the lower and upper bounds for human safety - this is a nice range of things that you can actually experience.  0 degrees outside?  You might die.  100 degrees outside?  You might die.

If you truly want it to be anchored on something that makes sense - then you have to go with Kelvin... and at that point it doesn't matter how big a degree is, we're talking about huge numbers to answer the question "How hot is it outside"?

Thats how you base your imperial system too - based on personal, subjective stuff.
You use "how hot it is outside" only in personal life, anywhere other than that (science, industry, even with fridge and freezer and house appliances stuff!), Celsius is better. (Kelvin too!).

@Ozle - no, its under some conditions (air pressure and so) but its a pretty good estimate IIRC. Actually is defined through Kelvin nowadays.

[Kirian]

On the Oxford comma:

@Ozle - no, its under some conditions (air pressure and so) but its a pretty good estimate IIRC. Actually is defined through Kelvin nowadays.

Fine, fine, 99.97 °C at 1 atm or 99.61 °C at 100 kPa.  And interestingly, the Kelvin scale is defined using the triple point of water, not the boiling and freezing points.  (And hopefully as of 2014 will be defined by defining the Boltzmann constant instead.  Pretty, pretty please, CIPM, please make the standard kilogram obsolete!)

[Grujah]

And interestingly, the Kelvin scale is defined using the triple point of water, not the boiling and freezing points.

So is Celsius nowadays. Abs. zero and triple point (though I don't really know what this is ). That's what I meant. But still old rules apply.

[eHalcyon]

"To my audience, Ozle, and eHalcyon"

Except I would always read that as Ozle being the audience.

Whereas:

"To my audience, Ozle and eHalcyon"
That to me reads three seperate things.

Obviously I dont follow the rules of English grammar properly, but thats how I have always done it, and thats how I write.

There is ambiguity in that second line too though, because maybe it is a single thing, "audience", which consists of "Ozle and eHalcyon".

Edit: did not notice there was a third page, so I was ninja'd AGES ago.

[eHalcyon]

Now, C_F is probably trolling but
0 = water freezes.
100 = water boils.
Is pretty much better than "really hot" and "really cold".

Well - I am a stupid american - and I agree 100% we should move to the metric system. 

That said - the freezing and boiling points of water are not especially useful when it comes to me intuitively understanding how warm or gold something is. 

The nice thing about Fahrenheit is that 0 and 100 are near the lower and upper bounds for human safety - this is a nice range of things that you can actually experience.  0 degrees outside?  You might die.  100 degrees outside?  You might die.

If you truly want it to be anchored on something that makes sense - then you have to go with Kelvin... and at that point it doesn't matter how big a degree is, we're talking about huge numbers to answer the question "How hot is it outside"?

This is one of my favourite internet discussion topics.

0 F ~= -18 C, which is pretty cold but not terrible.  And in that image above, where 0 C was "fairly cold"?  Ha, no it's not.

[Captain_Frisk]

This is one of my favourite internet discussion topics.

0 F ~= -18 C, which is pretty cold but not terrible.  And in that image above, where 0 C was "fairly cold"?  Ha, no it's not.

Depends on where you live.  As someone who's grown up in the northeast US, I agree.  0C is not that bad, but you're still wearing a jacket.  I spent some time in Atlanta for work - and laughed my ass off when people were wearing fur hats to work when it was 50 degrees (F) outside.

If you really wanted to define the scale based on human safety, I'd probably go with -20F -> 0 Degrees Frisk, and 120 degress F -> 100 Degrees Frisk.

It was this discussion that actually caused me to look up how Fahrenheit came up with the scale.  Pretty interesting read.  He basically defined 3 points - the temperature of a brine mixture, the temperature of icewater, and human body temperature.  He used brine as 0, and then defined the difference betwen ice water and and human body temp as 64 degrees because it was a power of 2, so it was easy to bisect the differences in powers of 2 on his scale. 

It's just a fortunate co-incidence that the helps in conversationally discussing the temperature of things you can touch.

[eHalcyon]

This is one of my favourite internet discussion topics.

0 F ~= -18 C, which is pretty cold but not terrible.  And in that image above, where 0 C was "fairly cold"?  Ha, no it's not.

Depends on where you live.  As someone who's grown up in the northeast US, I agree.  0C is not that bad, but you're still wearing a jacket.  I spent some time in Atlanta for work - and laughed my ass off when people were wearing fur hats to work when it was 50 degrees (F) outside.

If you really wanted to define the scale based on human safety, I'd probably go with -20F -> 0 Degrees Frisk, and 120 degress F -> 100 Degrees Frisk.

It was this discussion that actually caused me to look up how Fahrenheit came up with the scale.  Pretty interesting read.  He basically defined 3 points - the temperature of a brine mixture, the temperature of icewater, and human body temperature.  He used brine as 0, and then defined the difference betwen ice water and and human body temp as 64 degrees because it was a power of 2, so it was easy to bisect the differences in powers of 2 on his scale. 

It's just a fortunate co-incidence that the helps in conversationally discussing the temperature of things you can touch.

Light jacket that isn't even zipped.

OTOH, I think what I define as "hot" is barely even warm to some people around here.

[gman314]

I'm with eHalcyon on the temperature debate! I'm not sure where in Canada he's from, but Edmonton gets some pretty extreme temperature swings. We typically get at least one day of -40 C but this past week was around 30-35 C

[eHalcyon]

I'm with eHalcyon on the temperature debate! I'm not sure where in Canada he's from, but Edmonton gets some pretty extreme temperature swings. We typically get at least one day of -40 C but this past week was around 30-35 C

Except it cooled off yesterday and today... *cough*

[Grujah]

We typically see like up to -10C over winter here at Serbia.
Last winter it was like all the way to almost -30C, it was damn cold, but still, life went pretty normally (cept for traffic), didn't stop me  going out, having long walks and or stuff. You just really needed to get dressed.

@Canada folks - but guys.. its summer now?

[Captain_Frisk]

-40C?  That's obscenity.  It doesn't even sound like a plausible temperature on this earth.

[eHalcyon]

-40C?  That's obscenity.  It doesn't even sound like a plausible temperature on this earth.

I think we've had -45 C with windchill.  Without windchill, I think it's only been down to -35 C.  But windchill (frost)bites.

Fun fact: -40 is the same temperature in F and C.

[Grujah]

-40C?  That's obscenity.  It doesn't even sound like a plausible temperature on this earth.

Last winter here (worst in my 23 years):

[gman314]

For Edmonton, Celsius really does make sense. The center of our temperature range is near 0 and we range from -40 to 40 (give or take a bit). Now with Farenheit, we'd range from about -40 to a little over 100.

[shMerker]

Braces is the plural of bracket. I think as long as we're nit-picking math we should nit-pick vocabulary too.

Source?  I've always learned that braces refer to {}, and we say "square/angle braces" sounds super weird.  Wikipedia says this is common in the US, which makes me a little wary because I'm Canadian.

I can't find one. Maybe the person who drilled this into my head (who I can no longer remember either) was just making it up. Awesome.