left right stuff

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated Fri, 23 Sep 2005 00:25:56 -0400,  :"Joel S. Berson"
_Berson at ATT.NET_ (mailto:Berson at ATT.NET)  writes



Perhaps it's only I who would call it a cloverleaf without an  over-
or underpass.  Are there any citations where this is used?   Or "half-
or quarter-cloverleaf?  (Apparently not in OED2.)   These would likely
not have over/underpasses


No, I too refer to a ramp that makes a 270 degree or so turn to the right  so
as to make a left turn a "cloverleaf", whether or not a grade separation is
involved.  However, I can't recall ever having heard anyone else using this
usage, so I may have appropriated it from "cloverleaf intersections."  As I
mentioned, there are a number of New Jerseyans who use "jughandle" to mean both
a ramp before the intersection that veers off to the right and then swings
left  and a ramp after the intersection ("post facto" I am tempted to call it)
that  does a 270 degree (or so) turn.

I have a suspicion that I insist on a "jughandle" NOT being a 270-degree
turn because many years ago I read baseball books in which a type of curve ball
was called a "jughandle".

OT: try driving US 16A south of the Mount Rushmore monument and you will
meet a 585 degree turn (it crosses over itself on an overpass and tries to do
the same once more) as well as what I call a "bobby-pin turn" (a U-turn or
switchback in which one leg contains snake bends, giving it the profile of a
bobby pin.

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Comments on other posts:
to Joel Berson, who wrote re "cubic gallons": "
"To fill the swimming  pools of the non-poor refugees (oops,
evacuees)?  (The "dense packing"  of mathematics".)"
40 lashes with a wet noodle for getting your jargon as wrong as did
CisLunar.  There are two types of "cubic" packing in mathematics and  crystallography:
face-centered and body-centered, and only face-centered cubic  qualifies as
"dense packing".

Peter McGraw wrote "In the continuing absence of a reply from someone with
actual knowledge, MY speculation would be that when you're dealing with the
kind  of volume that
pumping stations handle, a gallon is like a thimbleful and  using it as a
measure results in numbers so large as to be unwieldy and  virtually
meaningless.  So a "cubic gallon," defined as n-superscript 3  gallons,
might be used as a more manageable unit."

That method of denoting measures is a "logarithmic scale", of which common
examples are the Richter and similar scales for earthquakes, the pH scale in
chemistry, and the decibel scale.

I called my local filling station.  The owner told me that he has  three
8,000 gallon tanks, for a total of 24K gallons.  The Farley service  plaza on the
Atlantic City Expressway has six 10,000 gallon tanks, and the  "Super-Wawa"
convenience stores that also sell gasoline typically have four  12,000 gallon
tanks.  In New Jersey an eighteen-wheeler tank truck is  allowed to carry 9,000
gallons of fuel.

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Doesn't anybody remember Uncle Scrooge and his "three cubic acres of  money"?

And a happy New Year to everyone!

           - Jim  Landau