Hey, all you Board members who are lawyers ...active or inactive.
Isn't there a well known law case where the jury was swayed -- concerning a three-minute period that was in question as to guilt or innocence of the defendant -- when the prosecutor demonstrated to the jury just how long three minutes is by having the jury sit and wait while three minutes went by on the clock? wow
Dear Faldage: I looked up speed of light in encyclopedia, and got figure "about 186,000 miles/sec" . Multiplying that by 60 (sec/min) gave me 11,160,000. Where did the discrepancy come from?(What value did you have for speed of light?)
I started school in 1972, around the time NZ made the switch to metrics, and c was still given in imperial values, as 186,282 miles per second. Multiplying that by 60 gives 11,176,920, if that helps. The imperial value has a nice rhythm to it that is lacking in the prosaic metric approximation of 300,000 kilometres per second (closer to 299,727, akchully)
And then there was the poor rooster-- purchaced by a new age radical, who went back to nature and had a farm. He/she called up the Cooperative Extentions (a US gov agricultular service) and asked-- "how long should i leave my rooster with the chickens to insure good laying habits of the hens?"-- the clerk at the extention office needed to check, so he said "Just a minute"-- and the new age farmer said "thank you" and hung up!
But this can lead on to other unanswerable questions, and a fruitful discussion on the use and misuse of language. For instance:
How small is minute?
Linguistic fall-out:
1. Category error - using a pun to change the direction of the question. Philosophical implications: G E Moore's attack upon the logical argument for Hedonism - pleasure is desired, therefore it is desirable - showing that the first use of the root desire is descriptive (and even tautological, since the fact of pleasure and that of something being desirable are intextricably woven into the meaning of each other), whereas the second use is normative or prescriptive. And, as all the philosophers tell you, you cannot turn an is into an ought.
2. A minute would currently be defined not as a unit of time, but as 60 seconds. Max, I think, used that to equate it to a unit of distance, given the speed of light in vacuo as the standard. My understanding, however, is that it is not the distance travelled by light that is the standard, but the number of waves of a particular colour of light (emitted by a defined substance at a precise quantum state) that counts. Anyone here have more information on this one?
Whilst not wishing to roll around in the gutter again, I might suggest that the biggest discrepancies in definitions of a monute may well be in regard to two partners' perceptions of the length of time the sex took - by the classical joke format, a woman's minute would be a man's hour.
Category error - term used by Kant when showing the fallaciousness of the Ontological Proof of the existence of God - confusing an imaginary thing with reality. Now commonly used to describe any error in a fallacious argument when the categories of the things being compared, or related to each other, are not the same. Hence, in hedonism (in one form of it at least - the one that G E Moore refuted), the words desired and desirable are in different categories - the former being descriptive the latter prescriptive.
OK?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
ps. I believe you may be right - unit of length defined by number of waves/frequency of light, whilst the second is defined by the distance travelled. Ah well...
i had intended on refraining from a gratuitous post, having nothing explicitly linguistic to offer, but since you asked... i'd say the length of a minute depends on where you're standing. if you're in Quito, it's about 1.16161616 miles. on the north pole, it's equivalent to blink of an eye.
I used 186,300 mps from a NASA site, but I would defer to MaxQ's figure. If it's got more significant figures it's more impressive*. My handy-dandy conversion to real units site wasn't working (Dang Russkies) so I left it in miles.
*People are 80% more likely to believe you if you quote numbers and 87.3% more likely if you quote more than two significant figures.
ps. I believe you may be right - unit of length defined by number of waves/frequency of light, whilst the second is defined by the distance travelled. Ah well...
Ah, Shanks! You clear the puddle, to muddy the pond--what a pleasure to trip on ripples left there--I will miss you while you are gone.
Cher sunshine warrior, be of good cheer! [wave] and [tear]
I read some time back that Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, among other things) took part in some of the early tests of LSD. One of the things that the doctors doing the testing wanted to find out was how the drug affected the drugged's sense of time. They would do it by asking the subject to sit quietly, and then announce whenhe/she thought a minute had elapsed.
Well, Kesey knew the rate of his pulse, so he'd put his hand on his wrist, sit quietly counting, and repeatedly say "Now" at exactly one minute. Good trick, that.
I used 186,300 mps from a NASA site, but I would defer to MaxQ's figure. If it's got more significant figures it's more impressive*. My handy-dandy conversion to real units site wasn't working (Dang Russkies) so I left it in miles.
Deferring to my figure, rotund as it is, would be extremely unwise, as I am almost omnascient. On the subject of conversion between measurement systems, I have placed an excellent little free conversion app. into my IE favorites folder, so that it is always visible when I'm surfing. The app. is called UnitConverter, and is in AWADabilia for any who want to take a look.
*People are 80% more likely to believe you if you quote numbers and 87.3% more likely if you quote more than two significant figures. And 42% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
As you note, "minute" may be an elastic term. My father once remarked that the shortest possible interval of time was that between the point where the traffic light turns green and when the s.o.b. behind you blows his horn.
I used to know a bit of electronics, but have no recollection of this unit. I know what an ohm is, and what a farad is, but can't figure out what an kilohm-farad is.
And I think it improbable that even a few board members can.
far[ad 7far4ad#, 3!d8 n. 5after Michael FARADAY6 a unit of capacitance, equal to the amount that permits the storing of one coulomb of charge for each volt of applied potential
ohm 7bm8 n. 5after G. S. Ohm (1789-1854), Ger physicist6 the practical mks unit of electrical resistance, equal to the resistance of a circuit in which an electromotive force of one volt maintains a current of one ampere ohm$ic adj. Since the unit "farad" is not the complete name of the scientist, is it truly an eponym? or a "de-tailed" word?
entomologically, it is minute... like an insect... numismatically tho, and in the larger cents, it is 360 degrees... but the perimeter, you'll find, is infinitely long - if you're an ant on a walk...
"It's not about winning... It's about having fun!" Spongebob Squarepants
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