Heard in a movie, The Fourth Protocol:

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:43 PM -0800 3/2/11, Sarah wrote:
>There are various meanings of "Chinese" in the archives (I was
>looking for "Chinese baseball" aka "kickball"), but (and again
>without context) they were talking about mass and not size. As the
>critical mass of Pu-239 is ~24lbs, needing 200lbs, even for a dirty
>bomb, is at best ridiculous and definitely "chaotic, badly
>organized" as LH said.
>
>S.

There's also Chinese handball, which was popular in upper Manhattan
in the 50's and may still be for all I know.  I can't remember the
details of how it differed from the other (usual?) kind, but the ball
was the same, just the rules were different.

LH

>
>On 2011-03-02, at 5:06 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject:      Re: Heard in a movie, The Fourth Protocol:
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  I'll have to check, but I believe we had a discussion of various
>>  meanings of "Chinese" here. It's either that or it was something *I*
>>  posted ;-) "Small" might have been one of the meanings that got missed.
>>  Others include "devious", "meaningless" and "nonsequitur". But, in this
>>  case, "small" seems to be the operative definition (more accurately,
>>  "smaller than normal").
>>
>>      VS-)
>>
>>  On 3/2/2011 7:42 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>  On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Victor
>>>Steinbok<aardvark66 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>  the object in question is far smaller than a "football".
>>>>  Standard (Size 5) ball is 71 cm (28 in.) in circumference or about 22.5
>>>>  cm (9 in.) in diameter.
>>>  By God, I think you've got it! The discussion was in re the smallest
>>>  mass of plutonium - "twice as heavy as lead, it's going to weigh about
>>>  200 lbs." - necessary for the construction of a working dirty bomb.
>>>
>>>  --
>>>  -Wilson
>>
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