Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT: 11-15 October 2010 (1771-1775)
jwhouk:
--- Quote from: raoullefere on 15 Oct 2010, 15:57 ---If you live in the U.S., you don't have to travel nearly that far to find people who speak imperfect English, or to hear them use invented words you'll never hear in school.
--- End quote ---
Yah dere hey, ain'a?
Olymander:
--- Quote from: zadojla on 15 Oct 2010, 06:39 ---
Unless you fence sabre, wouldn't your watch be safer under the cuff of your glove?
Left wrist for me, except for several years when I wore a watch that hung from my belt. It was "upside down" so if you were sitting all you had to do was glance down to see the time, no hands involved. When I was a kid, all New York City bus drivers had watches like that. Alas, I am now too corpulent.
And, for you less-young folks, have you ever encountered young people who cannot read an analog clock face? Or are flummoxed when you give them the time as "a quarter to..."?
--- End quote ---
I mostly fenced epee and foil, and the problem with putting it under your glove is that it will still raise as a bump for a tip to catch on. Well, at least with my watch, which has a metal band. I suppose a thinner leather or resin band might be better in that respect, although if I wore it conventionally with the face outwards, then you'd have to worry about the tip catching on the body.
As for people unable to read an analog clock face, I've met a few, but most of them were tolerably old, as in twenty to thirty year-olds.
--- Quote from: J on 15 Oct 2010, 08:49 ---as i understand it, infantry soldiers wear it like that to avoid night flashes off the reflective surface of the face.
also, one would think that it would be a good idea to take the watch off entirely for fencing.
--- End quote ---
A surprising number of the places I fenced didn't have ready access to timepieces, so if you wanted to know what time it was, you'd have to ask someone who kept their watch, or be forever running back to your gear to check on the time. Your offhand is generally fairly safe, at least when it comes to formal fencing. Now, if you do SCA or Ampguard style fighting, it's a completely different story...
Schmorgluck:
Random trivia: in France, for some reason, the practice of wearing a watch with the display inside is strongly associated with nurses. It probably has some basis in reality, because if you think about it, it's convenient for checking a patient's pulse using just one hand.
Akima:
--- Quote from: raoullefere on 15 Oct 2010, 10:11 ---Left wrist for the watch, and the face on the inside of the wrist. Don't ask me why I do that, because I actually can't remember. And if possible, the watch comes off for serious typing.
--- End quote ---
I wear a wristwatch, on the left wrist, with the face on the outside. I've never thought of wearing a watch on the inside of the wrist as "girly", and indeed I don't think I've ever met a female who did wear her watch that way. I do own more than one watch, to suit different outfits, which is probably more common among girls. Like Raoul, I take my watch off to work at a computer, because the buckle/clasp scrapes and catches on the edge of the desk.
I suspect the idea that "young people" can't read analogue clock dials (or would be puzzled by a wristwatch) is just an ephebophobic urban legend. Dial clocks are still pretty common, and the toy-shops here are all well-stocked with those teaching-clocks on which we probably all learned to tell time. One thing I do find irritating is people who can't (or at least won't) understand time in 24-hour format. Twelve-hour format is fine for everyday, casual use, but not when scheduling events across multiple countries, in several time-zones, with various daylight-saving rules, in hemispheres with reversed seasons so that daylight-saving-time changes go in opposite directions. Frankly, I'd prefer to use a single fixed time reference like Zulu time, so everyone only has to worry about their own single local offset, but no... Instead I'd get e-mails from colleagues in America telling me that some system was going down for maintenance at "12pm EST". In July. And they'd get all butt-hurt when I replied asking: "Do you really mean EST, or would that be EDT seeing as it's your summer? And by the way, is that 12pm noon or midnight?" I mean OK, some of these systems only processed transactions worth millions of dollars an hour, and kept factories running (and workers in jobs) on five continents, so it's not like they were important or anything! EEE-HAH EEE-HAH! No, I'm not bitter! But I don't work for that branch of Global Despoilation Inc. any more either.
akronnick:
Breathe, Akima, breathe...
In throught the nose...
And out the mouth...
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version