Hacker News Reader

Comment by mnw21cam | Hacker News Reader

Just to note that Lithium is not a rare earth metal. It is a metal that is rare on earth. Hope that clarifies everything.

Rare earths are the much heavier lanthanides, as well as scandium and yttrium.

Also, doesn't it feel a little discordant for a French web site to be using the left-pondian spelling of centimetre?

View on HN

The French default to "left-pondian" when speaking English, much to my Australian-living-in-Paris chagrin. Most aren't even aware that there is a difference between English English and American English. One step up from that are those that aware that there is a difference, to the point that they actually think that the two are very nearly distinct languages, and that people from England may have trouble understanding Americans. After that you have the people that actually understand the true difference between the two versions of the language, but even they rarely understand that the US is actually the exception, and that pretty much all other English-speaking countries use English spelling (well, there is Canada, which decided to sit on the fence between the two, I suppose).

Well, the US is the "exception" if you count solely the number of countries. It actually has a slightly larger English-speaking population than all other majority-native-English-speaking countries combined, so it makes sense that the US's interpretation of the language would be rather weighty internationally. :)

Sort of like how Brazil is the "exception" in South America because most countries on the continent speak Spanish... but when you look at the population numbers, there are actually more Portuguese than Spanish speakers in South America!

0.06% of the Earth's crust is hardly rare. What is rare is deposits having a significantly higher local concentration.

Dilbert: Rocket boosters will move an asteroid into the moon's orbit so we can mine its precious metals.

Dilbert's Boss: Why don't we mine for precious metals in Afghanistan? They have lots of them.

Dilbert: That only happens in science fiction.

[1] Edited to add:

http://dilbert.com/strip/2012-06-20

Reply on news.ycombinator.com