Comment Re:No need to attack (Score 1) 164
How many countries has Iran invaded since the revolution in '79?
Iran, or their armed and funded proxies?
How many countries has Iran invaded since the revolution in '79?
Iran, or their armed and funded proxies?
Just out of curiousity... why exactly should Iran NOT have a nuclear weapon ?
Because of their frequently asserted world view and actions.
It's rich since the government in the region of Iran hasn't attacked another country since the 1820
Right. It's too much trouble. That's why they send material and support to others to do it for them.
Let me put it very simply: because I have no power to vote for or against American politicians, they should have NO power to influence my life.
So, should China have had any power to influence the lives of people in Japan when Japan started its whole Pacific Rim debacle some decades ago? Should the people of Eastern Europe have considered it just too rude to think about modifying the capabilities or behavior of their friendly neighbors, the Ottomans, as those neighbors gathered up a head of steam and sought to spread their friendly culture westward?
Do you live in a country that begins its legislative sessions with group chants about the destruction of other countries? Does your country aggressively support groups that state their objective of slaughtering others specifically because of their religion and/or heritage, and then indeed actually go and help them do it? Do you really think that the world isn't connected, and that people bent on an apocalyptic world view aren't a good fit for having the leverage of nuclear weapons as they seek to control, among other things, major global shipping lanes?
Do you think that just because you don't think someone else should be able to impact your life, that that will actually stop someone who thinks you should be killed for allowing your daughter to read, or for trimming your beard, etc., from not exactly seeing the world in a way reciprocal with you? Being an isolationist doesn't work when someone trapped in a brutal, medieval, theocratic mindset thinks you're suitable only for death, and thinks that isolationism by others is for the weak, and is to be exploited.
Except they aren't losing weight, they're just gaining weight at a slightly reduced rate.
But
There is nothing in there constraining SizeA or SizeB relative to anything else, just the size relative to each other.
No, no constraints in that sense. Just the larger constraints introduced by the fact that the purpose of saying anything at all, in that context, is to communicate something meaningful about A's size. And by choosing the "ten times more" construction, part of what you're communicating is the fact that B, the thing to which you're comparing A, is by implication already considered small. That format (rather than saying, "A is a tenth B's size") is a choice of words that communicates the understand that B is small, and A is even more small. The phrase "ten times smaller" is using the word "smaller" in the sense of "more small."
The words "ten times" is a multiplier. It's used, in a comparison, to say that one value is LARGER than another. In this usage, the smallness of A is ten times larger than the smallness of B. Trotting out that multiplier is a deliberate choice made to focus on smallness in both A and B, with A having ten times more of it. That doesn't describe the size of B, but it communicates that notion that B is already - in the scheme of things - considered small, and A more so.
Why would any sane person want to associate themselves with him?
For the same reason that people walk around wearing Che Guevara t-shirts while buying $5 cups of coffee.
That has nothing to do with the wording people are arguing over
No, that's EXACTLY what people are arguing about. You say "A is ten times smaller than B" when B is already understood to be small compared to something else. The implication in that sentence is that B is already known for its smallness, and A is even smaller. Except, people use that same construction even when B isn't considered small. They use that incorrect connotation when what they're really trying to say is, "B is big, but A is only a tenth as big."
A is ten times smaller than B
So what you're saying is, "B is already small, and A is even smaller."
Right?
Are you presuming that someone already understands B to be considered small? What is B small compared to?
Just like every time someone says, "Product A is $2 cheaper than Product B," I have to guess that, "Product B is $2 more than Product A." Maybe we shouldn't have slept through math class.
Math doesn't help in the absence of context. If Product A is $2 cheaper than Product B, but Product B costs $10,000
There is no confusion that it might mean something else.
Yes, there IS confusion. Are we supposed to infer that the thing that the new 10-times-smaller version is being compared to was already considered small? That's what implied, but nobody knows for sure because the person saying it is lazily using a common, and poorly thought out, construction that doesn't actually tell us that.
No, you're not. It is perfectly reasonable for someone to say something like, "The Small Magellanic Cloud is the smaller of the two Magellanic Clouds," without implying it is smaller than a breadbox or even small in general.
OK. But let's say you don't know how big the Small Magellanic Cloud is, relative to, say, the Milky Way, or Andromeda, or anything else. And then someone says, "We've just found a new galaxy, hiding behind a dust cloud, and it's three times smaller than the Magellanic Cloud." What are you supposed to gather from that use?
Fine, you don't like the wording
No, I don't like people conveying information in a way that forces you to go research something they mentioned without providing any useful context. When somebody cites a comparative size, but doesn't explain why (or if) that comparison is meaningful, then it's a waste of time. Especially when the communication is theoretically about science and/or technology.
An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.