Re: spoon-discuss: Re: spoon-business: Darn zero-based Clock... (nweek 4 ballot)

["David E. Smith" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 12 Jan 2002, Rob Speer wrote:

> "Half again as many" means "1.5 times as many"? I never would have
> guessed. Here in the Northeastern US I've never heard the phrase "half
> again" used like that.

That's how I read it, which means my 2/3 number was inaccurate. I read it
rather too quickly, I suppose.

(And in the midwest US, that "half again" thing is not uncommon.)

Yeah, 3/5 appears to be correct. Should this pass, I'll interpret it as
3/5 unless it's CFJ'd to some other definition.

> Thus, based on what you interpret the "again" to mean, proposals require
> either 1/3 or 3/5 of the votes to pass. That is a very very bad
> ambiguity. Let's keep regional idioms (if that's what it is) out of the
> Rules.

To bring another thread into this: there's a regional idiom that all the
rules be written in English. (Depends on the region, I guess.)

Whether "half again" is an idiom or an ambiguity is a question I don't
think I'm qualified to answer.

...dave