Couldn’t resist. Happy 2011 everyone from ATL. Mr. Universe. woo hoo!
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538 Refugees 
Tradition must be upheld.
That is GREAT NEWS for John McCain!
Happy New Year!
Speaking of Firsts… it’s the first day of the New Year (and, in the minds of most people, the new decade. ) Time to decide what we’re going to call it.
Will you, personally, be calling this year “twenty-eleven,” or “two-thousand-eleven?”
I’m still of the “thousand” school, I think because “twenty-eleven” has the sound of a silly made-up number, like when a little kid brags that he has “seventy-eleven marbles!”
But if enough people start using the short form, it will probably grate less on the ear after a while?
filistro,
Sometimes I think you must have come from some upper-crust (or at least excessively literate) family.
We little kids would have said “seventy-leven“.
And that’s what I’m calling this year: twenty-leven. Leven for short.
@shortchain.. Sometimes I think you must have come from some upper-crust (or at least excessively literate) family
LOL… and I enjoy visualizing the infant shortchain lying in his crib in a terrycloth sleepsuit, munching thoughtfully on a pacifier and calculating the variable time lapses between feedings, speculating whether the next interval can reliably be extrapolated from prior data, or if intervening factors might skew the projection…. 😉
I guess we’ll all tend to name this year as we did the last one… “twenty-ten,” or “two thousand ten?” When I really ponder it … you couldn’t call the one before it “twenty-nine,” and “twenty-oh-nine” sounded REALLY weird, so right from the beginning of the decade I got in the “thousand” habit, and habits are hard to shake.
So there. 🙂
Well, most people already call it twenty twelve so by extension I guess we should use twentyleven. We also called it nineteen eleven. Nothing wrong with two thousand though. Personal preference.
Well, at 49 minutes before noon today it was:
11:11 1/1/11
We didn’t call them “pacifiers”, (back then they were called “comforters” (see here) and I’m not even sure we had any.
You are correct, however — I was a very “calculating” child. It was remarked upon.
We’ll have similar events on Jan 11th and in November.
Max and Mr. Universe,
If we count in binary, we get events like that all the time.
@shortchain… (back then they were called “comforters”
I have studied your graph and concluded that you were an infant circa 1910?
filistro,
There was a dip just after WWII and up to about 1960 in the use of “pacifier” relative to “comforter” as well — I’m old, but not that old. It just seems like it sometimes.
Not sure how many watched ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ but this year is when Judgement Day is supposed to happen due to various changes in the time line. April 21, 2011 will be the day Skynet becomes self-aware 😦
But other then that, everyone have a great year!!!
shortchain… I actually betray my somewhat ambiguous citizenship when I say “pacifier”… in Canada they are universally known as “soothers” but that seems to be a usage that is uncommon below the 49th.
It’s interesting… not only a regional term like “pop” and “soda”… but time-sensitive as well.
Au contraire, pop and soda are region specific. In the south all soft drinks are known as ‘cokes’ regardless of brand. And my best buddy and his wife and I were just having the pacifier conversation (it was also a question on Jeopardy last night). They call it a Nuk (a brand name). I called it a passy. I’ve heard it called a binky, but I consider that an alternate name for blanket.