ikkyu, I didn't know what's a d10 -- an image search returned so many varieties! Wow, I had no idea:
For all to view, including Quietimes and Ikkyu:Also, ikkyu, your stones are right here :

The reason I have a ten-sided die at work is because one of my coworkers claimed that no such thing existed.

ten-sided dice are used in Dungeons and Dragons to determine damage.

Google.

ikkyu, thanks for the info. I never had the D&D experience, but I can guess from the abundance
of very pretty and fancy dice that it's much more popular than Go.

Tried that tact, didn't work. You're giving this person too much credit for intelligence. I once got into a long drawn-out argument with her about whether 3/10 and .3 is the same number or not. She claimed that 3/10 = .003. While this wasn't the only incident like this that I had with her, it was the most, "I can't believe I'm having this conversation with an adult."


In the US, I would say that this is true, though I don't know about anywhere else. I never got really into the game itself; for me it was much more about being able to hang out with my friends once we had graduated from high school and weren't able to see each other as much.

I don't know if you're old enough to remember, but D&D became very well known in the early 1980s due to: 1. the ridiculous satanic panics that were going on, and 2. a kid's cartoon show that was on at the time. So even if a relatively small percentage of the population actually plays, a large percentage has heard of it. Go's already been featured in a cartoon series, which I'm guessing was probably bigger elsewhere in the world than in the US. Maybe it would be good publicity to get silly but influential people to link it with satanism. High-ranking government officials already do this with such things as evolution and yoga, and those things have only increased in popularity over the past hundred years in the western world.

One thing I do know is that in order to even play D&D casually, you NEED a lot of things like books, character sheets, dice, etc. And the books alone are expensive. So it's a system designed to make money, especially when they come out with new versions of the rules every few years. So you have to buy new books and go online to complain with other players about the new rules. This is much more common than you might think. I don't know what proponents of Go might be able to take away from this, especially since Go isn't trademarked by a single company. But I have to think there's a lesson in there somewhere.

argument with her about whether 3/10 and .3 is the same number or not. She claimed that 3/10 = .003.

But I have to think there's a lesson in there somewhere.

ikkyu, on a related note, I have a stupid question.

In this article -- Asteroid flies by Earth --
"An asteroid the size of a small truck zoomed past Earth four times closer than the moon on Saturday..."

What does "4 times closer" mean? Does it mean "1/4 as close as," or "1/5 as close as,"
or "less than 1/4 as close as" ?
If the average distance between the Earth and the moon is x,
does this mean the asteroid got as close to Earth as x/4, or x/5, or just less than x/4 ?

If someone says "Amy is 3 times as tall as Joe," I understand Amy's height = (3 * Joe's height).
But if "Amy is 3 times taller than Joe" -- I don't understand; does it mean the same thing?

Similarly, "Amy is half as tall as Joe" -- clear.
But "Amy is two times shorter than Joe" -- (probably awkward English and nobody says that), unclear to me.

If someone says "Amy is 3 times as tall as Joe," I understand Amy's height = (3 * Joe's height).
But if "Amy is 3 times taller than Joe" -- I don't understand; does it mean the same thing?

In the 70's, when I was a young boy, my father was very particular about this (in Finnish of course, but the same principle applies): "3 times taller" is the same thing as "4 times as tall".

Nowadays everyone uses "3 times taller" actually meaning the same thing as "3 times as tall".

e: what really bugs me is that many people say "half bigger" ("puolet isompi" in Finnish) when they actually mean "twice as big". "Half bigger" should mean "1,5 times as big".

"Half bigger" should mean "1,5 times as big".