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Forum namePass The Popcorn Archives
Topic subjectSomething I'd like quickly to point out.
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=23&topic_id=28110&mesg_id=28209
28209, Something I'd like quickly to point out.
Posted by Frank Longo, Sun Aug-21-05 10:07 PM

>>And the reason why the criminal underworld uses the metric
>>system is because the science world uses the metric system,
>>because they use the same tools to measure their substance
>as
>>the scientific and medical world uses to measure there
>>substances.
>>
>
>1. It's not that important. It's just showing consistency
>2. Where I live people measure drugs in ounces. Maybe for
>heroine they exclusively use grams though
>

Have you ever heard of the expression "a key"? Short for a "kilo"? Which I'm pretty sure doesn't stand for "kilo-ounces"? There are ounces too, but grams is also fairly acceptable for measuring drugs, especially larger quantities.

>>Secondly, no, requiring a metaphor to actually be a metaphor
>>is not requiring it to be a "full blown analogy."
>>
>>Again, a metaphor typically describes a concrete
>>phenomenon'object, and dicusses elements of that
>>phenomenon/object that are similar to a relatively abstract,
>>non-descript object/phenomenon.
>>
>
>not exclusively. you often hear phrases like "gallons of fun",
>"acres of knowledge"
>Shakespeare frequently used metaphors between two
>abstractions, it's practically his trade mark
>

But see, those make sense. If you said "she has gallons of fun", then she has a lot of fun. If you said "she has acres of knowledge", then she has a lot of smarts. Gallons and acres are more or less concrete in the sense that everyone knows "gallons" and "acres" are BIG to the point where we can't really understand the "bigness" of what we're being described.

The metric system as a metaphor doesn't really cut the mustard, because it's not specific enough. If morality is a metric system, what does that even mean? How much is 100 grams of morality? A lot? Are there also measurements of the level of a person's immorality, or is that just "0 grams"? Or is immorality the low end of the metric system, and there's a median where immorality switches to morality, around, say 543 centimeters. THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE, CAN'T YOU SEE?

The blind Justice lady holds the scale because it's supposed to be fair and balanced. That's why she's blind, because sight makes her imbalanced. Since the scale is straight, it shows she's not partial. It's not a metric thing.

You're thinking WAAAAAY too much into this.