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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2001
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How long a minute is depends upon how many knots and tangles are in your hair while you're trying to braid it.
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old hand
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old hand
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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.  cheer the sunshine warrior
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
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category error...Whoa! Could you try that again?  [truly emoticon] meter standard:frequencyHow about it, Bridge?
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
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category error...
Whoa! Could you try that again?[truly emoticon]
Try what?
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...
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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Anonymous
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How about it, Bridge?
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.
cheers
~b
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
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]
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addict
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addict
Joined: Dec 2000
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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.
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Joined: Aug 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
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. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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"And 42% of all statistics are made up on the spot. "
And statistics has been defined as the art of lying with numbers.
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