Perhaps I can understand it in meteorological terms, if someone says that a desert air with 10% humidity is "twice as dry" as air with 20% humidity, because both are "dry" compared to normal experiences. But if I hang up a wet towel and check it a few hours later, I don't say it's twice as dry as it was earlier, because it wasn't dry at all at the reference point. Same thing with a baby's diaper.
I'm not going to think about this any more. Gotta move on.
Picky, Picky, Picky!! Please tell me when you EVER saw a dry baby. Something juicy is always running out of those things from one end or another. It seems that their only accomplishment during the first year or two of their little lives is providing gallons of DNA samples for the rest of us to clean up. They either leak or stink.... but you gotta love 'em!
ReplyDeleteIt probably means it can absorb twice as much liquid.
ReplyDeleteOur new Bosch clothes drier (or is it dryer?) has 4 different settings for cotton: Damp Dry, Regular Dry, Very Dry, and Extra Dry.
ReplyDeleteFor me, it's not dry unless it's Extra Dry.
It may be an abuse of terminology, but they're defining "dryness" in terms of how much liquid the diaper can lock in, i.e., how much can be absorbed without the surface of the lining being wet.
ReplyDeleteI have the same problem with ads that say "thee times less", which makes absolutely no sense.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite advertising phrase is "up to X or more," which is 100% meaning-free.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest peeve with this sort of thing is "made with100% pure such-and-such." When you mix that pure such-and-such with the other ingredients...it's no longer pure!
ReplyDeleteThis post reminded me of this article from a local Los Angeles news station: "Report: 911 Response Times Are Down." It sounds like good news until you realize that by "down," they mean "up." In other words, police are now responding more slowly to 911 calls.
ReplyDeletehttp://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2010/09/06/report-911-response-times-are-down/
They could say "half as wet", but who wants to market a diaper using the word "wet"? Logic and language get mutilated in marketing to make products more appealing at a glance.
ReplyDeleteHigh risk of appearing ignorant here, but hey.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to the relative humidity analogy: the air can only get "twice as dry" as it is if it is currently at 50% relative humidity, no? Going from 80%-dry air to 90%-dry air isn't doubling the air's dry-ness.
And if it goes from 20% to 10%, isn't it half as wet?
Amirite?
Or is it just that late and have I not been sleeping enough recently?