Discussion Groups / English Usage / June 2007

Warning!  Abuse of statistics alert!

Your statement is true only in a very limited (and for practical
purposes useless) sense.  Yes, among the N years sampled, very close
to half of them experienced rainfall greater than the median, with the
difference involved in "very close" limited to those years where
exactly the median value was observed.  However, that may not be true,
of those exact same years, with respect to the median of N+k samples
(k <> 0), for obvious reasons.

-GAWollman

As far as I can work out, "average" rainfall is the average taken since
weather recording began. Therefore, over the last 10-20 years, most
rainfall is below average. Your 50% happened before most of us were born.

alfargnoli@yahoo.com had it ...

I don't believe this is ideomatic French, but: "les" (plural temps)
and "rouler" (second verb and therefore imperative).

And it sounds better to me as "Laissez rouler les bon temps".

Interesting. Way back when, my grandparents, my father and his
brothers lived in Queen's Road, New Lambton. They lived there twice,
with a gap while they lived with Dad's maternal grandmother in
Merewether, so that Dad's Mum could care for her Mum.

Dad wrote:

   Dad bought another house in New Lambton, also in Queen's Road
   but, where the first one was at the bottom of the gently sloping
   hill, the second was almost at the top where the last part of
   the road - about six houses - rose very steeply!

   There was only one house between us and an extensive area of
   bush, between 1 and 2 square miles in area:  while at the back
   of us and sloping away, were fields.

I see that the area of bush has been somewhat tamed and now has
marked trails and walks, and a picnic area.

Any evidence for that? Maybe it's a purely local thing; I hadn't noticed
any opposition to the couple of pedestrian-only streets in Perth.

I was going to explain that these 2 streets are linked by "arcades", but
I knew this would not be understood overseas and I wondered whether it
is an Australia-wide term or just used in Perth and Adelaide.

For overseas readers, an "arcade" is (usually) a bit like an alleyway
with shops either side, but normally covered in. Some have 2 or 3 levels
- in particular the ones that link Murray and Hay Streets in Perth,
where one street is a level higher than the other. I imagine some of
these started life as a service alleyway between two large shops, but
since then, many have been purpose-built. A few are below street-level
and in some places link to an underground carpark.

It ain't in my Rightpondian vocabulary.  'Pedestrian precinct',
'pedestrian(ised) area' or similar terms are used to describe what
were once city or town streets lined with shops and open to traffic
but which are now closed to (most) vehicles. I say 'most' because the
one in my local High Street has hydraulic barriers that are lowered to
let buses pass through the town.  I'd guess that most Brits who use or
know the term 'shopping mall' would assume that it's under cover and
must therefore have no vehicles running through it. Road signs leading
to large out-of-town shopping areas are often signposted 'superstore'
or 'commercial centre'.

We don't - to the best of my knowledge - have one name for such a
thing.  The usual drill is for the merchants in the area to lobby the
city officials to close down a section of the street certain days of
the week or even permanently.  The merchants want this because it
allows shoppers to scurry to several shops without having to wait for
a break in traffic or to walk a great distance (10 or 20 yards)  to an
intersection to cross over to the shops on the other side of the
street.

Someone will come up with a term to describe the change in order to
make it more palatable to the drivers who now have to find a new way
to get to Point A from Point B because Point C is now blocked to them.

The term will imply great benefit to the people of the city and
indicate that the city officials are keen to improve their lives.  The
term could be "shopping street", "walking street", or some-such.  

The city will now be able to sell licenses to cart vendors who intend
to set up in the street.  The operators of the carts will take up the
parking places on the adjacent streets thus making it even more
difficult for people to find parking near the shops.

The merchants will then clamor for a parking garage to be erected near
the area, and the city will sell permits and licenses to the
construction people and later derive income from parking facility.  
The adjacent streets will be widened to accommodate the re-routed
drivers.  

By the time all of this activity is completed, the surrounding
neighborhood will have gone downhill, the rents for the merchants will
have gone up, and the public will have found somewhere else to shop.