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Re: Why Questars are so great

Subject: Re: Why Questars are so great
From: Paul Schlyter
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2006 09:43:05 GMT
Newsgroups: sci.astro.amateur
In article <290420061143241187%star@xxxxxxx>, Davoud  <star@xxxxxxx> wrote:
 
> Paul Schlyter wrote:
>> So in 1982, Internet had in fact reached outside North America.  But
>> SE Asia most certainly wasn't hooked up to the Internet back in 1982,
>> however it's still false to claim that "there was no Internet" in 1982.
> 
> I didn't claim that, though, did I? I said "I lived in Southeast Asia
> in 1982 and there /was/ /no/ /Internet/ ."
 
That should have been phrased as e.g.:  "I lived in Southeast Asia
in 1982, where there was no Internet at that time."
 
> A reasonable reader could easily interpret that as I meant it -- that
> there was no Internet in SE Asia.
 
Assuming that the reader can read the writer's mind has its risks.... :-)
 
> It's like saying "I lived in the Eastern Sahara in 2003 (which I did)
> and there was a water shortage (which there was.") I'll bet you would
> take that to mean that there was a water shortage /in/ /the/ /Eastern/
> /Sahara/ , not that I thought that there was a water shortage
> everywhere on earth.
> 
> Davoud
 
There's never a water shortage everywhere on Earth -- particularly not
in e.g. the oceans.... :-)   And it's been that way all the time man has
been on Earth.
 
However, only some decades ago there indeed was no Internet -- not on
any place on Earth.  As opposed to water, Internet is a quite recent
phenomenon on Earth.
 
Therefore, while the claim "there was a water shortage" is obviously local,
the claim "there was no Internet" (at some time a few decades ago) could be
valid also globally - it depends on how far back that time is.
 
-- 
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e-mail:  pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
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