Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
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based upon factors of 10.
Applied figuratively to the brightness of politicians, it means that Senator Nerd is one-tenth as bright as Senator Wonk. They differ by an order of magnitude.
The court probably has this all wrong, but courts are often wrong and this docket has to be cleared.
Next case. Tom E. Moore of Clarksville, Va., writes that CNN recently reported that “one child is killed every two hours.” That child must be a very tough kid, he surmises, to be killed, restored to life, and killed again 12 times every day.
He moves that CNN be required to withdraw this alarming calculation in favor of, “Every two hours a child is killed.” Motion granted.
Several readers have filed a class-action against reporters who say, for example, that “This new thread is 100 times smaller in diameter than a human hair.” Or, “The new road-surfacing material will cost three times less than standard concrete.”
Numbers do not work that way.
If the thread were one time smaller than the hair, the thread would disappear altogether. Stated properly, the thread is l/100th the diameter of the hair. The same thing is true of the new paving material. If it were one time less expensive than concrete, it would cost nothing at all.
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