Whitefire's Challenge - American Empire

[blizzrd]

They have the highest number of patents every year.

This has more to do with America having the most over-developed civil litigation system in the world than the sheer brilliance of the American populace in my opinion.

 

[Muz]

This has more to do with America having the most over-developed civil litigation system in the world than the sheer brilliance of the American populace in my opinion.

True. I was expecting the '1000 monkeys on a typewriter' response, though. I've seen a lot of patents.. most of them are undeveloped for good reasons

And you can also argue that the 'top university' ranking criteria was invented by westerners, which is why you won't be able to find any strictly non-English universities in all those lists. But I'll try to avoid countering myself

 

[onedreamer]

The 12 AM/PM problem arises from the need to describe 12:01 in the morning as 12:01 AM and hence by inference just before that is also called 12:00 AM.

I agree with the earlier post. I never use either 12 AM or 12 PM and always write 12 noon or 12 midnight.

yeah, if the new day would start at 1:00AM it would all make much more sense. But still the solution adopted in the anglosaxon countries is wrong. In countries that use the 24 hours format, or at least in Italy, noon and one minute is still 12:01 AM, not 12:01 PM. Since the AM/PM notation refers to the hours more than minutes, it's still more correct than a 12 PM noon.
Note that I assume you called "12:01 in the morning" midnight and one minute, but that should be night not morning ^^

 

[mushyman]

yeah, if the new day would start at 1:00AM it would all make much more sense. But still the solution adopted in the anglosaxon countries is wrong. In countries that use the 24 hours format, or at least in Italy, noon and one minute is still 12:01 AM, not 12:01 PM. Since the AM/PM notation refers to the hours more than minutes, it's still more correct than a 12 PM noon.
Note that I assume you called "12:01 in the morning" midnight and one minute, but that should be night not morning ^^

If you use a 24 hour format, what is the need for AM and PM? You always know which half of the day you're in.

If you think of a day as 24 hours, it should sensibly start at time 0 and finish at time 24. Thus the first half ("AM") is from time zero to time 12 (noon), and the second half ("PM") is from time 12 to time 24 (midnight). Starting at time 1 is unintuitive, since after 24 hours you are at time 25! You don't count starting at 1, do you?

From this position, once you hit noon you have enter the "PM" timeset, so you should start using the "PM" suffix - time noon to time 1pm is the first hour of the afternoon. So 12:xx PM in the afternoon is perfectly sensible. A similar argument holds for the first hour after midnight.

As for the sticky position of 12:00, time is a continuum. So you can never be exactly at time position 12:00, AM or PM - if you have reached 12:00, you must necessarily be just after it, and thus into the next timeset. So you should switch the suffix.

 

[flaming_iles]

For those of you who want to take up this challenge but don't want to wait, I have rolled a pretty good start for the USA. I've put some information about the state of the world in the spoiler.

Spoiler :

The natives are firmly in control of the North American continent. After the eastern coast cities flip to you, there are only a few English and French cities in Canada, a native New Orleans, and the Aztecs/Maya have collapsed. The Inca are doing OK, and aren't anyone's vassal.

The European civs are relatively weak and are slightly behind you in tech, but will catch up while you are building your country. The Dutch have been kicked out of Europe by Germany and are happily camped in South Africa.

In my game, the 2 main rivals for me were Germany and Turkey, whom between them held all of Europe, except England and Portugal. Later on in the game, China became a problem, and started to steal wonders from me. The rest of the civs are pretty much insignificant. Perhaps France could be a rival, but in my game it collapsed in the early 1900s.

In my game, I managed to get all of the continental United States under my control as well as Alaska and Hawaii, build the Statue of Liberty in New York, the Eiffel Tower in San Diego and Cristo Rentendor (or however you spell it) in Boston thanks to an army of early great engineers. I founded Sids Sushi and Creative Constructions, and ended up as being 'very solid' with a 5-star economy and 3 or 4 stars in the rest. (My economy was almost twice as big as my nearest Rival's!)

By the mid 1960s when i stopped playing, I was producing over 1000 EPs per turn with the slider at 0%, building Interpol in Washington and settling 5 great Spies there too.

My military was a little weak though, I was about 8th in the power graph when I stopped playing, and had nowhere near the global reach that America has IRL.

 

[Good Sauce]

America actually tried to go to an SI system awhile back (70s or 80s I think, before my time) and it turned out to be more trouble than it's worth. You seem to think that the two systems are hindering us somehow. Even in early education science classes calculations are done in SI and everyday measurements are done in Imperial. Nobody has much trouble with this. At worst it's a minor inconvenience.

 

[Úmarth]

Didn't a satellite or something end up costing a couple of billion more dollars because of a conversion error a few years ago?

 

[chococid]

Didn't a satellite or something end up costing a couple of billion more dollars because of a conversion error a few years ago?

The NASA probe that got flubbed did so because of a conversion error, yes. I'm assuming they were buying a part in imperial because I don't think they actually do any of their calculations in imperial.

 

[Good Sauce]

OK, that's maybe a little bit more than minor. :/

 

[Úmarth]

I think Americans would be more willing to use the metric system if it has a less Frenchy name, something as cool-sounding as imperial.

 

[chococid]

I'm not in class now, here's the link:
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9911/10/orbiter.02/

"An investigation board concluded that NASA engineers failed to convert English measures of rocket thrusts to newton, a metric system measuring rocket force. One English pound of force equals 4.45 newtons. A small difference between the two values caused the spacecraft to approach Mars at too low an altitude and the craft is thought to have smashed into the planet's atmosphere and was destroyed."

Umarth: the real problem is that "SI" stands for Sports Illustrated. They need to go to a TLA or to something longer that spells out something you can pronounce.

Hell, even a name like SCIENCE would work:
System of Coordinated International Equivalences and New Computational Educations.... or something.

 

[Úmarth]

Oh dear, looks like its our fault then

I was thinking more like "kick-ass super units"

 

[The Q-Meister]

Interesting how the American Empire challenge thread turned into a debate about measurement. I could see many different ways that this thread could have gone, but I didn't see that one coming.

 

[chococid]

Interesting how the American Empire challenge thread turned into a debate about measurement. I could see many different ways that this thread could have gone, but I didn't see that one coming.

This isn't a debate. Not one person in this thread has actually defended imperial units.

 

[coko]

Imperial for the win! There we go

 

[Riker]

I won't play. I will never use the Americans, sorry

 

[Whitefire]

No. But by the same logic a nation which shuns alphabet is unlikely to be considered a world leader in literature.

By that logic Ancient Egypt, China, Japan, Korea and many other nations are incapable of any significant works of literature, since they use a different system of writing.

While I understand your point, I have to completely disagree with your obvious sentiment that SI is the "best" way to conduct any sort of mechanical, engineering, electrical, whatever work. The fact remains that the SI are completely arbitrary values and were implemented to make communication among scientists easier.

And if you continue this debate I will ask a Mod to come into this thread. Keep this thread focused on playing the challenge. You may PM me anymore of your comments blizzrd.

 

[onedreamer]

If you use a 24 hour format, what is the need for AM and PM? You always know which half of the day you're in.

translation for anglosaxon turists, and digital watches/clocks which support the AM/PM notation.

If you think of a day as 24 hours, it should sensibly start at time 0 and finish at time 24.

Nope, here is the contradiction, since 24:00 and 00:00 are the same moment, so you want the day to start and finish at the same time. It is IMO confusionary because an hour lasts an hour (60 minutes) not 1 second. It would make more sense for the day to start in the first hour (01:00) and end at the last minute of the last hour (24:59). This is mathematically and intuitively the simplest and more correct implementation IMHO.

Thus the first half ("AM") is from time zero to time 12 (noon), and the second half ("PM") is from time 12 to time 24 (midnight). Starting at time 1 is unintuitive, since after 24 hours you are at time 25! You don't count starting at 1, do you?

Yes , I do start counting from 1. We're talking of a practical system for common people here, so we don't need to start counting from zero like in pure theoretical mathematics. And after the 24th hour there isn't a 25th, there is the first of the new day, silly argument, really... the 24th hour should last 60 minutes like all others, but you're saying it should last 0 seconds ?

From this position, once you hit noon you have enter the "PM" timeset, so you should start using the "PM" suffix - time noon to time 1pm is the first hour of the afternoon. So 12:xx PM in the afternoon is perfectly sensible. A similar argument holds for the first hour after midnight.

you realize that the argument is about the fact that noon in the UK/USA is 12:00 AM and one minute later is 12:01 PM ? This is EXTREMELY confusionary. If once you hit noon the afternoon starts, then noon should be 12:00 PM, but this of course makes no sense.

As for the sticky position of 12:00, time is a continuum. So you can never be exactly at time position 12:00, AM or PM - if you have reached 12:00, you must necessarily be just after it, and thus into the next timeset. So you should switch the suffix.

The system is thought especially for common people, not for Einsteins, which I'm sure use the 24 hours format. Arguments like the space-time planes really don't fit.

 

[onedreamer]

One English pound of force equals 4.45 newtons.

what ? the IS uses pounds even in Physics ? OMG...

 

[blizzrd]

And if you continue this debate I will ask a Mod to come into this thread. Keep this thread focused on playing the challenge. You may PM me anymore of your comments blizzrd.

Excuse me, but I've posted plenty in this thread about the challenge, including asking directly for your response, but apparently you haven't noticed. I questioned the "Americanness" of some points, which led to healthy discussion about what is and isn't good about America. In terms of what is OT, I could highlight at least 10 posts by 10 different users that have significantly less relevance in this thread than any of mine. I have posted directly asking for feedback about the challenge and you chose to fail to respond and to threaten me. What gives you the right? I didn't start a debate about AM or PM for crying out loud, I was debating whether America was an innovator of science and technology, which is most relevant to this thread.

I was playing the challenge until just now when I read your post above. You can stick your challenge, which is factually incorrect asking for the Channel Tunnel to be American but failing to require the Apollo Program to be American. Sheesh.