1567 Triple Time

I get confused by numbers. More accurately, by how people use number concepts. Like when scientists say some thing or another will increase your chances of dying by 6% over people who don't eat, drink, or inhale that particular thing.
That's still quite a bit less than one. Six out of a hundred people is a bit on the lean side of one hundred. If I got a 6% discount on a pair of one-dollar sox, it wouldn't amount to much.
And I never can figure out what some wage earners are talking about when they say they're getting multiples of time and a half. I think I actually get the time and a half part. If you are getting 20 dollars an hour, then you get the 20 and an extra half of that, which is 10 dollars, so you get a total of 30 dollars an hour.
And with double time you get 40 dollars an hour. But what about double time and a half? Is the "half" part half of the double or still the half of the single. Is it 40 plus 10 or 40 plus 20? Because 40 plus 20 is 60. And I believe that's triple time.
And why do sports people say someone is "triple teamed" when in fact it's just three people ganging up on someone. If in basketball, which has 5 team members, 3 members gang up on 1 member of the opposing tem, that’s supposedly triple teaming. Given that the team is by definition 5 members, wouldn't triple teaming actually be 15 members?
Or Tripoli. Now that there’s so much destruction thee are they going to call it Double-ie?
Or the new Oreo. They call it the Triple Double Oreo. 3 cookies, 2 cream layers. 5 layers total. But isn't a triple double 6?
Now I'm doubly confused.
America, ya gotta love it.

1566 Hash it Out

Yesterday I commented on signs of our symbolic confusion when it comes to the use of same. Namely the dollar sign, which we put in front of a number, but then say with the dollar word after the number. We do not say dollars 100. We say 100 dollars.
My friend Rick pointed out after my commentary that the number sign is even more confusing. The number sign is that crosshatchy thing that looks like a bent tic-tac-toe playing field. It's official name is the "number" sign.
But that's only if you place it in front of a number. If you place it after a number, it is widely use as a "pound" sign. When you get telephone menu instructions, the robotic telephone menu reader tells you to press the "pound" sign. And if you want to write "2 pounds of fruit" you can write a 2 and the crosshatchy thing.
Even more confusing, there is a pound sign that refers to actual weight poundage and it looks similar, except the right vertical crosshatch is a lowercase b, and the bottom horizontal crosshatch is absent.
While we're at it, the British symbol for pound, as in pound sterling, looks like a capital E with DTs. Or possibly a Frenchified "L" with a funny looking hat on it.
£
And even more confusing, the pound or number or crosshatchy bent tic-tac-toe sign is now being used by the Twitter folk to do shortcuts. And in that usage is known as a "hashtag."
The symbol is known in that domain simply as the "hash" symbol. Imagine sending someone a tweet that sent them a web shortcut where they could order number 2 on the menu, 2 pounds of tic-tac-toe forms.
##22##'s
Ah…symbols of our communication success.
America, ya gotta love it.

1565 Per Dollar

So I have questions sometimes. The other day I was typing a report and I decided to use the percent sign. You know the one. A forward slash mark with a little circle on either side of it. %. If you stare at it long enough it looks like some cartoonish or Picasso-like rendering of the eyes and nose of a face.
Add a parentheses mark and it gets even more Picasso-ier.

%)

By the way is it "a parentheses" or "a parenthesis."
Why isn't one of them just a parenthe?
I digress. But then again, I digress when I say "I digress." Is that a trigress?
Where was I? Oh yeah. What brought me up short was when I wrote out the sentence, "There'll be 50% less of the $100 than people had thought."
Why is the percent sign after the numbers when the dollar sign is before the numbers? On the face of it, the percent sign is where it should be. You say 12 percent, so the percent sign should be after the 12.
When you say 100 dollars, the word dollars is after 100. But when we use the dollar sign it's before the dollars. And we don't say "dollars 100."
If we use the number sign, that crosshatchey deal, we put it before the actual number and we say it like it's before the actual number. #2 is written with the number sign right there, in front of the 2. And it's not just money stuff. When we use the cents sign it makes perfect sense too. It's after the number.
6¢ — It's very sensible.
I'd bet dollars one hundred know one knows why.
America, ya gotta love it.