And once more my point is made. I'm not a physicist.

I know of these things, but not the detail. I know that newtons are named after a man named Newton; and I know that conventionally, we (people in general) capitalise the first letter of names; its habitual.

I was not aware that physicists had arrive at some contrary convention for when a person's name is used for a unit of measure in this way. Woe is me!

But the point I was making in my post is not in anyway affected by my lack of knowledge in that specialised sphere; indeed, it reinforces the point exactly.

To quote Richard Feynman: "We cannot define anything precisely! If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other "You don't know what you are talking about!" The second one says, "What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?," and so on. In order to be able to talk constructively, we have to be able to agree that we are talking about roughly the same thing.

Note the word "constructive". Inquiring of Your Mother whether he was attributing a typo that I could find no evidence for making, and have no recollection of correcting, is a constructive attempt to move a conversation forward. Ditto, asking why an OP feels the need to quote the word process.

Contrast with:

And that point that you've so neatly and concisely reinforced is simply this: If you know what the guy meant, take it as read and move on; if you do not understand what the guy is trying to say; then ask for clarification; not assert your (mis)understanding of his meaning.


With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". I knew I was on the right track :)
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

In reply to Re^4: Context, pedantry and appropriate response. by BrowserUk
in thread Context, pedantry and appropriate response. by BrowserUk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.