The word “ton” is derived from the French “tonnerre,” or “thunder,” from the sound wine barrels made when rolled. But there are various standards of a ton. You get a long ton, a short ton and metric ton. A US ton, the short ton, is equivalent to 2000 pounds (907.185 kilograms). A British ton, the long ton or gross ton, is 2240 pounds (1016.047 kilograms) because there are 112 pounds in their hundredweight.
The United States, Great Britain and Canada each also had their own definition of the inch. It was only in 1958 that the inch was standardized to 25.4 millimetres exactly. A problem still exists for the foot, where the International Foot is based on the 25.4 mm inch, but the Survey Foot – aka the U.S. Survey Foot – is based on the 25.40005 mm inch. One International Foot equals 0.999998 U.S. Survey Feet. Over 100 miles (160 km) they differ by 1.05 ft (32 cm). Read more
New York City is the most linguistically and religiously diverse city in the world. The 8.4 million inhabitants communicate in some 800 different languages across the five boroughs – the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. New York is also a religious city: 83% of New Yorkers are affiliated to some organized religion. This is a rate of adherents larger than that of the state, New York State (75%), and one of the highest in the entire United States.
Christians comprise about 70% of the population; 40% of whom are Catholic and 30% Protestant. They attend approximately 2000 churches and 4000 informal places of worship such as community halls and homes, thus a total of some 6000 churches. New York City also boasts the world’s largest cathedral, the Episcopal Church of St John the Divine.
12% of New Yorker claim Jewish decent. There are more Jews in New York City than there are in the Jerusalem city limits. They have more than 1000 synagogues – 70% permanent and 30% temporary places – at their service. Read more
There are some funny words in the computer world. A brouter is a network bridge and a router combined in a single product. A glyph is a graphic symbol that provides the appearance or form for an alphabetic or numeric font. (“Glyph” is from a Greek word for “carving.”) A moof monster is a vague and indefinable source of trouble for users of information technology. A jughead is a tool used by researchers for searching information on gopher sites. Not gopher the squirrel but the old information retrieval system called Gopher, predecessor to the World Wide Web.
A kludge (pronounced kloodzh) is an awkward or clumsy (but at least temporarily effective) solution to a programming or hardware design or implementation problem. A Flying Ice Cube is what lives inside computers of scientists trying to simulate molecules. At the office, a Boss Key is the key you hit to quickly hide something when you see your boss or uninvited coworker approaching.
Although two of the most famous names in the computer world – the Internet world, more precisely – are now plainly familiar they did sound funny in their early days. Read more
Counting the inches
The word “ton” is derived from the French “tonnerre,” or “thunder,” from the sound wine barrels made when rolled. But there are various standards of a ton. You get a long ton, a short ton and metric ton. A US ton, the short ton, is equivalent to 2000 pounds (907.185 kilograms). A British ton, the [...]
