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UBC Engineers Reach Mileage Of Over 3000 MPG
The New Revelation writes "Physorg reports that engineers at UBC have developed a single occupancy vehicle that achieves a ridiculous 3145 MPG! From the article: 'The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Supermileage Competition took place June 9 in Marshall, Michigan. Forty teams from Canada, the U.S. and India competed in designing and building the most fuel-efficient vehicle... The UBC design, which required the driver to lie down while navigating it, achieved 3,145 miles per US gallon (0.074 liters/100 km) -- equivalent of Vancouver to Halifax on a gallon (3.79 liters) of gas -- costing less than $5 at the pump.'"
It's not a matter of grammar, it's a matter of lexicon. If you can't tell the difference, then for pete's sake pick up something like The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language , ed. David Crystal (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
I'm increasingly beginning to understand the sense in linguists' saying that basic linguistics should accompany maths and sciences in schools.
Linguists are fond of asking if the form of Spanish spoken in Mexico shouldn't be considered "standard Spanish" since it is spoken by more people than there are in Spain. They'd say if the overwhelming majority uses a phrase "incorrectly," it actually signifies that the meaning of the word has changed. Get it through your head that for most people (and thus for linguists), the phrase "begs the question" means something other than what it used to. Linguistics is descriptive, you're thinking of something else, something prescriptive.
Where did I say that I wanted to make a prescriptive fiat against the phrase "begs the question"? I merely mentioned that disputes over the meaning of the term are lexical matters, not grammatical matters as the OP said.