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How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

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Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#101

Post by pessimizer »

bane wrote: post #97
wyclif wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You reply as if you think I don't know what a descriptivist is. I do. The problem is that I'm not arguing that "language is fixed, and should never change." That is a rather severe misreading of the above link. The point is that people commonly misunderstand the original usage, not that the usage has changed.

I don't think anybody misunderstands the original usage. I think that most people don't care in the slightest how something Aristotle wrote in Greek was translated into Latin and then awkwardly translated from Latin into English in the 1500s, into an archaic predecessor of modern English that is almost but not quite intelligible to the modern ear. Prior Analytics is not the Bible, it doesn't have to be quoted verbati…

I've definitely never met anyone who used it to mean "I'm about to ask another question" who was aware of the original meaning of the phrase when asked, so we must live at antipodes.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#102

Post by eftpotrm »

narcissus wrote: post #7

I know it's not really related but still... this article reminded of the section in the book 'Behind The Golden Arches' that discussed that although many people think that there are too many McDonald's restaurants around, there are still more car dealerships. And how many times do you buy a car compared to a burger? So this article claims around 13,000 McDonald's restaurants, and I just found a page that claims 37,50…

I might buy burgers more often than cars, but my total spend on buying cars is rather higher.

I'm also choosier about cars than burgers. I've never inspected 15 burgers and read their delivery history before buying one. And burgers are rather easier to store in bulk, too.

So, yeah, know what you mean but I'm not surprised cars trump fast food.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#103

Post by aptwebapps »

bane wrote: post #95
aptwebapps wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nobody uses it with that meaning anymore, the phrase has taken on a different meaning. Nobody you know, maybe. I remember hearing Tony Blair use it (in the original sense) in Parliament once and I know I've read it several times in British publications. I wonder if it is still properly used in the UK, then?

I think I remember the Blair usage, and it was notable because it was probably one of the very few usages of the phrase in the original meaning. But it's commonly used in the modern meaning even in UK newspapers. A piece on it with some numbers on usage http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mind-your-language/2010/may/... "After more than 35 years in journalism I can recall precisely one occasion when "begs the question" w…

Thanks for the data, that's very interesting. It's easy to see how the meaning changed as the old usage is not at all intuitive to the modern ear.

But as for 'raises the question' I'm sure it is fairly common, I get 23 m hits on nytimes.com. I have no idea where to find a count of usage like you did for 'begs the question'. I also don't really have a problem with using it in general. I just take it to mean bringing a question to someone's attention with no particular urgency (or lack thereof) attached.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#104

Post by dasil003 »

learc83 wrote: post #82

I remember when I was a kid (late 80s early/mid 90s), and I'd visit my aunt in California (I'm from Georgia). It seemed almost like a different country--different stores, different architecture, different culture. The same was true for rural areas closer to home. Now everywhere I go, there's a Walmart, a McDonalds, an Applebees/Chilis/TGI-Fridays, a BestBuy, a Staples/OfficeMax/Office Depot, and a Home Depot, or Lowe…

It still feels like a different country because it's happening globally. I just moved to London and there's a fucking Whole Foods around the corner! Closer in fact than it was when I lived in Mountain View, Santa Fe, or Minneapolis (all big Whole Foods markets).

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#105

Post by grecy »

brntn wrote: post #44
grecy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, no. It's a 500km (310mi.) drive, and there is only a McDonalds at the start and one at the end.

I find this hard to believe (grew up in Swan Hill). Where are you heading to from Melbourne? I doubt you could stay in Victoria and be more than 250km from a McDonalds.

Ha. I have not actually been back to Oz for 6 years now.. and apparently things have changed a lot. I didn't know there was one in Horsham, or Renmark for that matter.

I was originally referring to the Melbourne->Mildura drive, but obviously I need to update my facts. Sorry 'bout that.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#106

Post by tptacek »

patio11 wrote: post #71
twoodfin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starbucks' expansion was interestingly "clumpy". Not surprising, I guess, when you realize they have to deal with the same supply chain issues as anyone else in a similar space. They didn't open a freestanding store in Tulsa until 2002, years after seemingly every other corner in Manhattan had one.

Starbucks also has a very sophisticated siting operation which predicts demand similar to how an oil company predicts oil. For green fields, you measure proxies, look at formula based on historical data, and guess. If you sink one well and hit a gusher, though, your expectation of profitable exploitability in the vicinity goes WAY up, so you start going nuts. You'd think that two Starbucks across the street would can…

For whatever it's worth: Jim Collins coverage of Walgreens in _Good to Great_ focuses on how Walgreens pioneered this siting concept.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#107

Post by bane »

pessimizer wrote: post #100
bane wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am right. There's no reason why specific disciplines can't have their own meaning to words and phrases. Vector, moment, impulse, circuit, computer, etc. all have historic uses that are largely forgotten today or have different meanings in different contexts. Just because a usage is old, or specific to a certain context doesn't mean that usage should be universal or part of the common tongue. Arguing that language i…

You are wrong. >Nobody uses it with that meaning anymore, the phrase has taken on a different meaning. I hear it used in its original meaning as often as I hear it being used in the other way. Losing the original meaning would be a bad thing, because it describes something that is difficult to describe, whereas 'asks me to ask this following question" is just a wordy, empty transition when usually the entire phrase s…

It's trivial to statistically demonstrate that the new meaning is used far in favor of the old meaning - in language that's all that matters.

You can do this experiment yourself. You will find that the new meaning is so common, so prevalent, that you'll be hard pressed to actually find an example of the old meaning in usage beyond correcting somebody using it in the new meaning.

It's not a zero-sum game. New meaning for words and phrases don't wipe out old meanings. That's why dictionaries developed this novel technique where they list alternate definitions for words -- because all of the definitions are valid because words and phrases can have more than one meaning.

when usually the entire phrase should be replaced with "so."

I don't disagree that "so" is a more concise transition. But it can get old fast when it's used all the time. It may even be better to just ask the question with no lead in at all.

I disagree that "it begs the question" categorically doesn't have a meaning beyond the one coined from a poor translation from a Latin translation of Aristotle's original Greek. Insisting that it can only mean the logical fallacy is ignorant on several kinds of levels and only shows how little the prescriptivist knows about the phrase and how language works in general. You'll find that most aren't even aware that the English phrase we use is not even a correct translation from the Latin and the Latin is not correctly translated from the Greek! It's like a perfect storm of compounded ignoramuses.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#108

Post by bane »

aptwebapps wrote: post #103
bane wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I remember the Blair usage, and it was notable because it was probably one of the very few usages of the phrase in the original meaning. But it's commonly used in the modern meaning even in UK newspapers. A piece on it with some numbers on usage http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mind-your-language/2010/may/... "After more than 35 years in journalism I can recall precisely one occasion when "begs the question" w…

Thanks for the data, that's very interesting. It's easy to see how the meaning changed as the old usage is not at all intuitive to the modern ear. But as for 'raises the question' I'm sure it is fairly common, I get 23 m hits on nytimes.com. I have no idea where to find a count of usage like you did for 'begs the question'. I also don't really have a problem with using it in general. I just take it to mean bringing a…

Despite my grumpiness about English prescriptivism (and having to wade through the seas of absurd self-reinforced linguistic ignorance that usually comes with it) I don't really have a problem if people use "raise a question" or "beg a question" or "ask a question" or much to the prescriptivist's chagrin "aks a question" since "ask" was actually "aks" at around the same time "begs the question" was translated into English and had been for at least 600 years (from "acsian")and hadn't yet been influenced by the Scandinavian form "aeske".

The most important quality of all in language is the simple question "does it succeed in communicating?" I've seen many writings, in dense, linguistically correct, nuanced English that utterly failed to communicate at all, and many writings by semi-literate teenagers that succeeded despite great irregularities in their usage of the tongue.

Every English speaker knows what "begs the question" means in the modern meaning, it is effective communication. Very few people know in the old. It is not effective to communicate using the old meaning with a modern general audience. That is poor use of Language.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#109

Post by steve-howard »

nawariata wrote: post #24
steve-howard wrote: post #4

>Which begs the question: just how far away can you get from our world of generic convenience? And how would you figure that out? I'm an insomniac much of the time. Some weeks/months I don't sleep until it's light out. Out here in suburban Chicago, the only places still open to me when it's late and I'm hungry are 7-11, McDonald's, and Burger King. So I'll take "generic convenience," because it at least makes my life…

Don't expect high energy when you munch on McDonalds, look into what proper nutrition can do for your body and mind.

My energy level problems stem from something else, because I've not had any of it since I was 12. Still trying to find the cause.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#110

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

eftpotrm wrote: post #99
graywh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there were 3 of them together in the capsule.

Apollo 13 holds the record for furthest men have been from the earth. If we're looking for the furthest any inividual has been away from the nearest second human, we're looking at command module pilots. I think that record goes to Michael Collins, from memory. Furthest from nearest humans on the earth's surface is probably unknowable; my bet would be on a liferaft somewhere in either the Pacific or Southern oceans ab…

Are you sure? I didn't think lunar orbit was more than a few hundred miles. People who cross oceans solo are much farther away from others than that.
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