deanb Posted November 3, 2011 Author Report Share Posted November 3, 2011 I pity every country that doesn't have Mars bars. Wrong one 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kovach_ Posted November 3, 2011 Report Share Posted November 3, 2011 (edited) Hahahah. Well, now i feel sorry for Mr. T because he obviously didn't know that Mars is way better. Edited November 3, 2011 by Kovach_ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted November 3, 2011 Report Share Posted November 3, 2011 Okay, I live in Seattle, and there isn't a Wal-Mart anywhere near me. There are like 20 Walmarts all around Seattle... http://www.walmart.com/storeLocator/ca_storefinder_results.do?sfsearch_single_line_address=seattle%2C+WA&serviceName=ALL&sfatt=ALL&rx_title=&rx_dest=%2Findex.gsp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrainHurtBoy...2 Posted November 3, 2011 Report Share Posted November 3, 2011 (edited) Okay, I live in Seattle, and there isn't a Wal-Mart anywhere near me. There are like 20 Walmarts all around Seattle... http://www.walmart.c...st=%2Findex.gsp I understand why you might think so, but none of those are in Seattle proper. No one who lives in Seattle goes out that far unless they have to, and none of those Wal-Marts are technically considered within the city limits. The closest one on that list there was the Renton one, which doesn't count. Renton has its own mayor, city government, etc. In short, don't believe everything the internet tells you. There ain't no Wal-Marts 'round these parts. All of them are in cities or towns nearby, but none are in Seattle proper. Note: Edited to remove unnecessary abrasiveness. It's early! I'm not thinking straight! Edited November 3, 2011 by BrainHurtBoy...2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted November 3, 2011 Report Share Posted November 3, 2011 Oh yeah, I knew none of those were in Seattle proper, when I said "all around" I meant "surrounding". I guess it's a regional thing. To me, living in Kansas, something 11 miles away is downright close by. It's normal to drive to other towns to visit their stores/services/whatever. People frequently drive 45 miles to Wichita to go shopping, or take a day trip to Kansas City which is 220 miles away. Only having to drive 11 miles to get to something is the height of convenience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battra92 Posted November 3, 2011 Report Share Posted November 3, 2011 Oh yeah, I knew none of those were in Seattle proper, when I said "all around" I meant "surrounding". I guess it's a regional thing. To me, living in Kansas, something 11 miles away is downright close by. It's normal to drive to other towns to visit their stores/services/whatever. People frequently drive 45 miles to Wichita to go shopping, or take a day trip to Kansas City which is 220 miles away. Only having to drive 11 miles to get to something is the height of convenience. Same here in New England. Hell, I drive about 30 miles each way to get to work and think little of it. I also don't have to put up with the problems of living in the city. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kovach_ Posted November 3, 2011 Report Share Posted November 3, 2011 (edited) Wow. I cannot even begin to understand that kind of lifestyle. They should start teaching driving in elementary school in America. That way you'll have less car crashes, since everyone practicaly lives in their car >_< I consider stuff being close if it's under 30-45 minutes of walking. Edited November 3, 2011 by Kovach_ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted November 3, 2011 Report Share Posted November 3, 2011 Yeah, I don't think a lot of people in Europe realize how spread out the US is. Hell, I don't think a lot of Americans on the coasts realize how spread out the middle of the country is. I have a friend who grew up in a town in western Kansas where the nearest movie theatre was an hour and a half away, on the highway (60-65 mph). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hot Heart Posted November 3, 2011 Report Share Posted November 3, 2011 The situation is not much different here for rural areas. You have to drive quite a way to get to anywhere in Somerset. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrainHurtBoy...2 Posted November 3, 2011 Report Share Posted November 3, 2011 Yeah, but if you're in a major metro in the US, excluding LA, you really don't need to do much driving. Everything's pretty nearby. Hell, I don't even own a car! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hot Heart Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 I take it this is funny to Americans as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 lol, yes, yes it is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 The situation is not much different here for rural areas. You have to drive quite a way to get to anywhere in Somerset. Even then it's on a whole different scale. According to Wikipedia, Somerset is 1/50 the area of Kansas (1,610 sq mi compared to 82,277), and has 16 times the population density (570 people/sq mi, compared to 35). And Kansas isn't even the most sparsely populated state, there are 10 others with fewer people/sq mi than we have. The whole of Somerset is only about 40% larger than the county I live in (1,132 sq mi), and there are 105 counties in Kansas. Cowley County has an even lower population density than the Kansas average; here it's 31 people/sq mi. Once you get out of town it's usually about a mile between farm houses, and often much more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battra92 Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 Yeah, I don't think a lot of people in Europe realize how spread out the US is. Hell, I don't think a lot of Americans on the coasts realize how spread out the middle of the country is. I have a friend who grew up in a town in western Kansas where the nearest movie theatre was an hour and a half away, on the highway (60-65 mph). A woman I used to work with had good friends from Scotland. They sent her an email before they were heading across the pond to visit her. They asked if they could take a day trip to go see the Grand Canyon as they always wanted to see that. My coworker lived in New England. According to Google it would require 1 day and 17 hours driving straight with no stopping to get to the Grand Canyon. Yeah, no daytrip there. You would get quite the drive through Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Springfield, Amarillo and well ... Also, Kansas reminds me of Vermont but probably with less tress and less guns. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hot Heart Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 I'm not talking about the scale or population. I just know that from the places I've been to in Somerset you have to drive upwards of half an hour to reach supermarkets or cinemas, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFlyingGerbil Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 yeah but you can run over so many more people on the way there so the time just flies by. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hot Heart Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 Lol. I remember actually, near one of my friend's places, there's a T-junction onto a road that apparently people completely speed down. Because you're almost blind to both sides, he had to wind the window down to listen out for approaching cars. You may sit there for a little while but better safe than sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 Also, Kansas reminds me of Vermont but probably with less tress and less guns. Definitely fewer trees. The only trees around here are either the ones that were lucky enough to grow next to the (few and far-between) bodies of water, or the ones that were planted for wind-breaks after the dust bowl. Actually, I say that, but towns tend to have a fair number of trees, at least in the residential areas. But again those were planted, they didn't grow naturally. As for guns, I'd be surprised if we have fewer. I'm currently working on an estate case where the only real assets the guy had were 40+ shotguns and rifles, and then a similar number of handguns. Plus way more ammo than you'd ever need. Of course that guy was crazy, but still... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battra92 Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 As for guns, I'd be surprised if we have fewer. I'm currently working on an estate case where the only real assets the guy had were 40+ shotguns and rifles, and then a similar number of handguns. Plus way more ammo than you'd ever need. Of course that guy was crazy, but still... I looked it up and Kansas and VT are about the same. Believe me, I know Vermonters like that (and they aren't crazy - guns are just their thing.) Hell the best man at my wedding has an a regular armory in his bedroom closet. It's so different than Massachusetts where people wet themselves at the idea of someone having a shotgun to hunt with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 That's amusing to me since Massachusetts is considered the birthplace of the American Revolution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WTF Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 Forgetting localised bias and considering that a lot of spend time consuming media that isn't native to our nations not to mention many of us travel across the globe for work and other stuff; what words do you prefer pronounced in a dialect/version of English that isn't native to your nation. Yes, I know that English is native to England (where I am technically from, but I've travelled a lot and I prefer certain pronounciations to others simply because it is more aesthetically pleasing to my ears). I notice that speaking to some of my American colleagues we always find ourselves speaking about language despite knowing what the other means over the course of time and we all do prefer several pronounciations outside of our nativespeak. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 I think in general I find the different words that other places use more interesting than different pronunciations. Though I will say that "aluminium" is a lot more fun to say than "aluminum". I guess that's kind of a mid-point between different word vs different pronunciation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WTF Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 Ah Aluminum the great typo that became a word. It would have been much better if Sir Davy stuck with Alumium but no, he decided to call it aluminium which resulted in a telegraphic typo that was picked up by the papers and no one noticed it for years. Ah the days before quick means of mass communication. All the stupid news that used to exist because of errors like this on every continent still amuses me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 According to Wikipedia (I know, I know) it wasn't a mistake: The earliest citation given in the Oxford English Dictionary for any word used as a name for this element is alumium, which British chemist and inventor Humphry Davy employed in 1808 for the metal he was trying to isolate electrolytically from the mineral alumina. The citation is from the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: "Had I been so fortunate as to have obtained more certain evidences on this subject, and to have procured the metallic substances I was in search of, I should have proposed for them the names of silicium, alumium, zirconium, and glucium."[60][61] Davy settled on aluminum by the time he published his 1812 book Chemical Philosophy: "This substance appears to contain a peculiar metal, but as yet Aluminum has not been obtained in a perfectly free state, though alloys of it with other metalline substances have been procured sufficiently distinct to indicate the probable nature of alumina."[62] But the same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, in a review of Davy's book, objected to aluminum and proposed the name aluminium, "for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound."[63] *Edit* - Actually, oddly enough it may have been both... The spelling used throughout the 19th century by most U.S. chemists was aluminium, but common usage is less clear.[64] The aluminum spelling is used in the Webster's Dictionary of 1828. In his advertising handbill for his new electrolytic method of producing the metal 1892, Charles Martin Hall used the -um spelling, despite his constant use of the -ium spelling in all the patents[53] he filed between 1886 and 1903.[65] It has consequently been suggested that the spelling reflects an easier to pronounce word with one fewer syllable, or that the spelling on the flier was a mistake. Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that the spelling aluminum became the standard in North America; the Webster Unabridged Dictionaryof 1913, though, continued to use the -ium version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battra92 Posted November 4, 2011 Report Share Posted November 4, 2011 That's amusing to me since Massachusetts is considered the birthplace of the American Revolution. Heh, I know it! The state is simultaneously very liberal and at the same time slightly socially conservative at times. Forgetting localised bias and considering that a lot of spend time consuming media that isn't native to our nations not to mention many of us travel across the globe for work and other stuff; what words do you prefer pronounced in a dialect/version of English that isn't native to your nation. People pick on me but instead of pronouncing café "calf-fay" I say "cuh-fay." I have no idea why I pronounce it like that ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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