On Sat, 29 Jun 2019, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
US currency is very confusing to me. All the notes seem to be the same
size and colour, so you can't readily sort them. I mean, I know
America doesn't believe in helping people when they're sick, but it
wasn't until I visited that I realised you saved up particular hatred
for the blind and partially-sighted and went out of your way to make
life more difficult for them.
USA makes a pretense of accommodating disabilities, but is actually pretty
hostile to the disabled.
The "new" paper currency, that is s'posedly good for blind people has
slightly different shades of the same colors.
USA paper currency used to be the size of punchcards. So, if one were to
have a LOT of it, you could use the same trays, and counting machines,
etc. Do you suppose that Hollerith had a lot of paper currency?
"If Hollerith were alive today, how many birthdays would he have had?"
requires being aware that 1900 was NOT a leap year.
You use nicknames for 2 denominations which most of us foreigners
don't know -- I still don't know which is a "nickel" (which is a metal
to me) and which is a "dime" (which is a Swedish chocolate-covered
sweet bar, of which I'm very fond but can't eat because I'm
overweight).
A "Dime" is one tenth of a dollar. Or ten cents. Or $10 worth of drugs.
The coin is 17.91mm diameter, and the smallest coin in circulation.
A "Nickel" is five cents. or $5 worth of drugs.
The coin is 21.21mm, and is between a penny and a quarter in size.
"Silver Dollar pancakes" are actually larger than a silver dollar, but
nobody complains.
And the base unit is a cent, but you call them "pennies", the base
unit of _my_ old country's currency, and you didn't even put the
symbol into ASCII.
Pennies used to be copper. Now, they are mostly zinc, due to copper
costing more than a penny. But, they managed to maintain the copper
color. During WW2, pennies were briefly made out of steel.
6 decades ago, pennies said "One Cent" on the back, with pictures of
wheat; then they changed to a picture of the Lincoln memorial, which is at
the end of Memorial bridge in Washington, DC.
Very weird.
Our parent country taught us to make currency weird, and we have carried
on the tradition.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
