what I have learned today.

[orienteer]

The problem with decimal currency is being unable to split amounts into three.

One third of a pound was 6s 8d.

Expressing today's prices in old money brings home how high inflation has been. A 1st class stamp is now about 14s 6d rather than 2½d.

[Cudzoziemiec]

UK folk still talk shillings and bob and stuff... And that's nearly 50 yrs ago now.

But only IME as a joke or as (see above) reminiscence.

You've not met my mother have you? She was about 20 at decimalisation...

She still talks about 10 bob (meaning 10 quid now) and one and six meaning some medium amount of money...

I was 23 at the time of decimalisation but still think of some stuff in old money - usually in horror, making a price comparison with then and now!

Before we moved to decimal there was some discussion that we should have a "10/- pound" - i.e. split a pound into 2 top level units of currency - which is what they, I think, did in Australia when they move to decimal and the Oz dollar.    Given that the new (split) unit would have been the equivalent of 120d (old pence) with 100p (new pence) and thus much closer to the "penny" unit then the price increases and inflation that we saw immediaetly post-decimal may have been lessened?

Not sure I follow this. Do you mean that under this plan, one New Pound would have been worth half an Old Pound? Or the Pound would have remained the same but would have been split into ten shillings, effectively introducing a New Shilling worth 2 Old Shillings? If so, what would have happened to the penny? 10 New Pence to 1 New Shilling?

[T42]

I think they were going to change the name to something novel, such as dollar - which is what Aus did in the end.  They had a perky TV character à la Microsoft Paperclip, called Dollar Bill.

There's a nice line in Cryptonomicon where Waterhouse goes to Bletchley "with outsize British currency clanking in his pockets like dinner-plates" or words to that effect.

[robgul]

UK folk still talk shillings and bob and stuff... And that's nearly 50 yrs ago now.

But only IME as a joke or as (see above) reminiscence.

You've not met my mother have you? She was about 20 at decimalisation...

She still talks about 10 bob (meaning 10 quid now) and one and six meaning some medium amount of money...

I was 23 at the time of decimalisation but still think of some stuff in old money - usually in horror, making a price comparison with then and now!

Before we moved to decimal there was some discussion that we should have a "10/- pound" - i.e. split a pound into 2 top level units of currency - which is what they, I think, did in Australia when they move to decimal and the Oz dollar.    Given that the new (split) unit would have been the equivalent of 120d (old pence) with 100p (new pence) and thus much closer to the "penny" unit then the price increases and inflation that we saw immediaetly post-decimal may have been lessened?

Not sure I follow this. Do you mean that under this plan, one New Pound would have been worth half an Old Pound? Or the Pound would have remained the same but would have been split into ten shillings, effectively introducing a New Shilling worth 2 Old Shillings? If so, what would have happened to the penny? 10 New Pence to 1 New Shilling?

The "new pound" (or UK Dollar!) would have been worth 10/- (i.e. half an "old pound") and "pennies" would have been "cents" in the meaning of the word being 1/100th of the main currency unit - thus if we had done it the old threepence, sixpence, shilling, florin and half a crown would disappear.

Pretty sure the Australian answer was a simple change to dollars and cents.

And nostalgia not being what it used to be I still have some of the old currency - a 10/- note, a green £1.00.00 note, several pennies, threepenny bits (brass and older silver), sixpenses and a half-crown.    I also have two commemorative "crowns"  (5/- or 25p) - one from the 1953 Coronation that was issued to all schools-children and a Churchill one from the 1960s.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Thanks, that's clear. It's interesting there was such a plan. Decimalisation happened before I was old enough to use money but I do remember as a small child asking my dad why they hadn't kept the penny the same and just said from now on, it takes 100 pennies to make a pound, not 240. He said that would have meant a smaller pound, and the pound was the main unit of currency, not the penny. Of course for me as a child, the penny was a real thing (8 of them for the Beano, 2 for a packet of crisps) and the pound was something grown ups had! But this plan shows there had been a third option.

[SteveC]

One of the issues was that the pound was by far the largest unit of currency around (I think the franc was about 10 to the pound and the Austrian schilling was nearly fifty, for instance) so there was a case to be made for making the pound smaller.
But, according to my dad, NCR (National Cash Register of the USA) said that wouldn't go along with that and as they made nearly all the cash registers in use that was an end to it. The pound stayed as the main unit.
Of course seeing what happened over the next ten years or so it was probably the right decision.

[Jaded]

Especially recently when Brexit has shrunken the Pound to a level much closer to FOREIGN money.

[ian]

The we have fewer genes than an onion. And that onions have deodorising properties.

That's the basis of the Onion Test. Not a test to see how much you know about onions or about how many you can eat, see also the C-value paradox (basically why the amount of DNA in a organism doesn't correlate with its complexity).

It's unfair to compare humans with onions anyway, even amoeba have far more genes than we do.

Though to befuddle your brain, no one has actually really defined what a 'gene' is.

[T42]

Drives a red Audi coupé, doesn't he?

The only other thing (well, not really) I know about onions is that the pong is not restrained by cling wrap.  MrsT put a bowl of chopped onion in the fridge yesterday, alongside the Munster cheese. The two go very nicely in a sandwich, but when the fridge is open the combined niff turns the landing wallpaper yellow.

[Nuncio]

That the word algorithm is an eponym. You probably all knew that.

[Giraffe]

Named after a former Usanian VP.

[Nuncio]

Inconveniently no. A little earlier than him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi

[T42]

That my daughter, who is 43, has had grapheme-colour synaesthesia since she was small.  She never mentioned it to us before.  She said that it's great for spotting errors in spreadsheets, but not what you'd put in your CV.

[Mr Larrington]

The word “lum”

Prepare for R Bardet to get very confused…

[Legs]

As in "lang may yer lum reek"?  Until Mrs Pingu used it in the other thread, I didn't know it was still in modern parlance (but then, I've only ventured north of the border once in my life, and that was seventeen years ago).

[Mrs Pingu]

A local art maker made a gewgaw of such lummery
https://m.facebook.com/gra.small.stories/photos/lang-may-yer-lum-reek-is-a-scottish-phrase-meaning-long-may-your-chimney-smoke-i/10155712481377797/

[Mrs Pingu]

The word “lum”

Prepare for R Bardet to get very confused…

 

[Look Around You]

That my daughter, who is 43, has had grapheme-colour synaesthesia since she was small.  She never mentioned it to us before.  She said that it's great for spotting errors in spreadsheets, but not what you'd put in your CV.

One of my many children has this. I found out one day when he was about 8 or 9 and told us that 2 is orange, and was quite bemused that we didn’t all see numbers etc like this. He doesn’t really mention it much (he’s 16 now) so I’m not sure how it effects his day to day life. I’ll have to question him again soon. One day. Maybe.

[nicknack]

That Morrisons is pretty quiet at 8am on a Saturday morning.

[Mr Larrington]

That Mick Jones off of The Clash and Grant Shapps/Sebastian Fox/Michael Green are cousins

[citoyen]

The word “lum”

I know that word via the phrase "Pipe clay up yer lum" - which supposedly means "Keep your chimney clean".

This I learned many years ago from the 1970s film adaptation of The Water Babies.

Don't think I've ever heard it in any other context.

That film also has one of my favourite ever exchanges committed to celluloid between two all-time great British actors:

James Mason: I'm Grimes
Billie Whitelaw: You're drunk
James Mason: Never the less, I'm Grimes

[rafletcher]

That the first 6 digits of a 16 digit cc number represent country, brand and type of card.

[orienteer]

The full article is here! https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200821/p2a/00m/0bu/025000c

Apparently Japan is running out of credit card numbers with the COVID-driven shift from cash to credit cards. 

Since the population is less than 120 million, how do larger countries cope?

[Mrs Pingu]

Intruigued by the payments by QR code statement...

[robgul]

That the first 6 digits of a 16 digit cc number represent country, brand and type of card.

You're on the right track but the details are :  The first digit is the system number identifier (3 is Amex, 4 is VISA, 5 is MasterCard), next 5 digits are the issuing bank's unique code,  next 9 digits identify the card owner's account (for the issuing bank) and the last number is a check digit (there's an algorithm to define that)