noncents

[Landau, James]

I have in front of me two restaurant menus.

One is from the Bonefish Grill, which is a chain with six restaurants in
New Jersey (bonefishgrill.com).
The menu contains:
     Bang Bang Shrimp  $8.5
     Mussels Josephine  $8.8
     Ahi Tuna Sashimi    half $8.8  full $14.9
     Grouper Piccata  $19.5
     Diablo Shrimp Fettuccine   $13.2
     Tenderloin Portabella Piccata  $14.2
     Lily's Chicken  $13.5
     Fontina Chops  $13.9
     Sirloin Steak 10 ounce  $13.9  (add Garlic Gorgonzola butter $1.5)

That is, all prices on the menu are in true decimal, in tenths of a
dollar rather than in cents (hundredths of a dollar).

The other menu is from the Joy Luck Palace, a Chinese restaurant which
just reopened, under a different name (it used to be the China Buffet),
after remodeling.

All prices on the menu are in dollars with no decimal point, e.g. 
    Egg Drop Soup.............2
    Hot and Sour Soup........3
    Egg Roll......................2
    Sweet and Sour Pork.....9
    Moo Shu Pork..............9
    Beef with Broccoli........10
    Sauteed Steak Kew......15

These prices seem a little high to me, and I don't know if it's because
they are in unit dollars and I would be more comfortable with Egg Drop
Soup for $1.50 and Moo Shu Pork for $8.95

Has anyone else seen this phenomenon of not using traditional dollars
and cents?  Is this the beginning of a new trend?

(I have seen one related example: on West Wing there was an episode on
which Josh Lyman had to deal with a proposal to demonetarize the penny.)

OT to Bill Mullins:  you say

My wife, on the other hand, has about thirty words for green.  Some
things are taupe (which, like "whomever", is a made up word designed to
catch you in error).  Also mauve (which may be the same as taupe, for
all I know).

     According to MWCD10 page 1207 column 2, taupe is "a brownish gray".
Note that M-W says this flatly without saying, as they sometimes do with
colors, "chartreuse: a variable color averaging a brilliant yellow
green".  Mauve, on the other hand, is a specific color, that of the
aniline dye mauveine, discovered serendipitously by William Perkins in
1856.  (For more information see
http://dept.kent.edu/museum/exhibit/colors/3.htm).

OT to Barry Popik:  you quoted:

2 July 1957, Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), "Rodeo Has Paid Shoulders
Generously in His Career; Riding Champ Hopes to Quit By Next Year," pg.
3, col. 1:
"I've been trampin' around this suicide circuit for a long time."

That's how Jim Shoulders, the man who won more money last year than any
other cowboy in the history of rodeo, sums up a career that has paid him
better than a quarter million dollars in ten years.

     Is there a mistake here?  A quarter million in ten years is only
$25,000 per year, which was good but not spectacularly great back in
1957 (the equivalent of between $100K and $150K in today's dollars.)

    James A. Landau
    test engineer
    Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
    8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
    West Atlantic City  NJ  08232  USA

    
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