• ChiefCrazyTalk (unregistered) in reply to My $0.02 worth....
    My $0.02 worth....:
    The US screws this up with its $0.25 quarters...

    That's because a shave and a haircut costs 2 bits (25 cents)

  • Anon (unregistered)

    [quote]Seriously Europe, you really need a ¢2 coin?[\quote]

    Think about it, that's a 50% saving in the number of coins you need to carry. Brilliant!

    I still remember when Britain had 1/2p coins. Those were the days...

  • The Undroid (unregistered)

    Don't sneer at the phone wipes. Remember the planet in the Hitchhiker series that deported its marketing types, telephone sanitizers, etc., and then was wiped out by a telephone-borne plague.

  • bramster (unregistered) in reply to WhiskeyJack
    WhiskeyJack:
    webhamster:
    Zygo:
    Funny, last time I asked the nearest Canadian (myself), we called the $2 coin a Twonie.

    The $2 coin followed shortly thereafter. Since it was worth exactly two Loonies, it became known as the "Twonie."

    I remember the "name-the-coin" contest when it came out in 1995. I was always partial to "Bearly" since it was "barely" worth a dollar $US at the time (61 cent dollar).

    When Canada had "Silver" dollars, along with the one-dollar notes, The design was a couple of voyaguers in a canoe.

    It was intended to use this for the 0ne-dollar coin when the paper note was to withdrawn from circulation in 1987.

    Unfortuanately, the dies for the coin were "lost in the mail" (really). To prevent the possibility of having those dies used by counterfieters, the design was changed a Loon on the coin. And, the rest, is as they say. . .

    The Toonie was introduced in 1996. In about 2005, a whole bunch of bright shiny 1996 Loonies were put into circulation. I would think perhaps there was a mis-projection of loonie requirements when the toonie came on the scene.

    I was always partial to "doubloonie", myself.

    I have never actually seen it spelled "twonie" other than in this thread. Everywhere else I've seen it as "toonie" like Alex wrote.

    (When these coins first came out I remember going with a friend to a costume event for a kids' thing we were doing. The costume theme was "Looney Tunes" so most people did Bugs Bunny, etc. My friend and I dressed as a Loonie and a Toonie coin, and we danced around singing "We're tiny, we're toony, we're all a little loony..." :-) )

    Well, I cheaped out and PayPal'd Alex a few bucks. I suppose I could have dug around for some cool stuff, but .. oh well. I liked the logo on the return address part of the envelope when my stickers arrived. There was no mistaking who that letter was from!

  • The Mob (unregistered) in reply to Dan H
    Dan H:
    Our "crazy British money" isn't just seven-sided: each edge is curved so that the coins have constant diameter, which property being useful for people who make vending machines &c. As for silly denominations of money, our continental friends not only have the eminently sensible two-eurocent coin, but also notes up to the value of EUR500 (slightly more than USD650). This, I understand, is primarily to please the Germans, who like carrying large sums of money on their persons.

    At least our money feels like money, rather than the play money the US uses as currency. Seriously, the USA, try using proper paper for your notes.

    I thought the EUR500 was to make it the preferred currency of people hording money, thus taking it out of circulation.

  • Sobachatina (unregistered)

    Good grief! The Drakes Cakes site made my eyes bleed!

  • B. b. (unregistered) in reply to Dan H

    EUR500 notes are actually nice for people making deals in the black market. You can put an incredible amount of money using EUR500 notes inside a briefcase. That should explain why most of those notes are thought to be in Spain, not Germany.

  • (cs) in reply to B. b.

    Well...I'm glad Alex has reinstated the potpourri series, albiet in a wierd manner no longer related to popups...damn /me starts crying to see potpourri be ruined

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Dan H

    That's a mathematical impossibility: If a coin has constant diameter, it's round, not seven sided. You can get really close to having a constant diameter by increasing the number of sides that a shape has, but if there are seven sides, the diameter will have to change (although the change will be really small, possibly small enough that for people who make vending machines and such they will not have to worry about this).

  • Aaron (unregistered)

    Did anyone else go to http://www.drakescakesonline.com/ and try to right click? Apparently it's disabled.

  • gary k (unregistered)

    DRAKES CAKES ARE THE BEST!!! and that area code is from long island... suffolk county. Damn I want a Devil Dog now...

  • (cs)

    Clearly the coin must be seven-sided to demonstrate that the British have developed more sophisticated construction methods than the compass and straightedge. Even the Greeks knew how to make a five-sided coin.

  • (cs)

    Salmiakki is like coffee. First it's horrible and then you can't get enough of it.

  • Squirrel (unregistered)

    Funny-shaped coins help blind people identify them.

  • Bleroy (unregistered) in reply to Dan H

    MMh, isn't the real WTF the American quarter? Having all money in all multiples of 1, 2 and 5 makes change algorithms much simpler... You know, base 10, all that stuff...

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Seriously Europe, you really need a ¢2 coin?

    Think about it, that's a 50% saving in the number of coins you need to carry. Brillant!

    I still remember when Britain had 1/2p coins. Those were the days...

    ... but not nearly as those-were-like as the days when we had 1/4d coins (with a friendly little robin on the reverse). 960 of them to the pound: what joy! (Or, more usefully, 1008 of them to the Guinea.)

    Basically, nobody does screwed-up coinage like Britain does screwed-up coinage. And notes/bills.

    Leaving aside the fun of Scotland and Northern Ireland being able to print their own notes/bills, which are generally refused by retailers in the rest of the country, nobody has come up with an act of genius like the Cartwheel Penny, circa Georgian days. Drop one of those muthas on your foot and it would turn black and break off, right at the ankle.

    Joe Luser:
    Romanian notes are plastic with a transparent section. This probably makes them hard to counterfeit by copying.
    What, there are seriously people out there who want to counterfeit Romanian notes? WTF?
  • A. Z (unregistered) in reply to B. b.

    You should really once go to Switzerland... We have notes up to 1000 swiss francs (roughly 908 USD or 620 Euros)

  • Chancy (unregistered)

    What is http://www.drakescakesonline.com anyway -- a ripoff site? Drake's official site is http://www.drakescake.com; at least, that's the professional-looking site that Google found for me.

    Maybe I should do a site registration check ...

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    That's a mathematical impossibility: If a coin has constant diameter, it's round, not seven sided.
    He said constant diameter, not constant radius. The following shape could be said to be of constant diameter but not constant radius (disregarding pixelization):

    [image]

    Any diameter of that object -- which is to say, any line segment passing through the "center" of the shape whose endpoints are two other points within the shape, such that no extension of the segment could have both endpoints lie within the shape -- is, if I counted right, 89 pixels or so. The radii in the places with the "tooth" are of course different from around the rest of the circle, but the diameter is still constant. I'm not going to bother doing any calculations or measurements, but I wouldn't be surprised if regular polygons exhibited the same property.

    (Nitpick: for the above figure, I'm not using "center" to mean "geometric center". Actually I'm using it to refer to the geometric center of the circle, without one of the diameters shifted. This was for demonstrative purposes only, and that nitpick doesn't apply to a regular polygon, whose geometric center is where the center of a circle of corresponding diameter would be.)

  • AdT (unregistered)

    Another reason for 2 cent coins (in addition to the "3 coin theorem" mentioned above ;-) ) is that much less 1 cent coins are required for circulation. This means you need less copper which is expensive. The current 1, 2 and 5¢ coins already have steel cores and are only plated with copper. Admittedly one reason for this is durability but reducing the amount of copper per coin is an important side-effect.

    And, yes, I know: The real WTF is using a comparatively expensive material like copper for the coins of smallest value.

  • Ozymandias2 (unregistered) in reply to Dan H

    If it has corners, how is it the same diameter all the way around, and um... US money is pretty much the best money paper I have seen....

  • Matthew (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    That's a mathematical impossibility: If a coin has constant diameter, it's round, not seven sided. You can get really close to having a constant diameter by increasing the number of sides that a shape has, but if there are seven sides, the diameter will have to change (although the change will be really small, possibly small enough that for people who make vending machines and such they will not have to worry about this).

    No, it is possible. Check this out:

    http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/cwidth.shtml

    It's not actually a regular polygon: the edges are slightly curved.

  • Gedoon (unregistered)

    I guess you'll never learn to appreciate the salmiakki unless you've grown into it. Finns who have moved to abroad will appreciate nothing more than a box of salmiakki sent from the folks back home. I can imagine how you might be feeling about it, having once tasted Estonian candy. (totally YUK!) But being a salmiakki-loving Finn I also have to say that it's a shame it hasn't spreaded around the world like chocolate or democracy.

  • Ozymandias2 (unregistered) in reply to Bleroy

    $.25 is um.... a multiple of 5

  • (cs)

    TRWTF is that the three lowest value Euro coins have the exact same design, colour, and almost the same size.

    After seven years I still have to check the numbers on the damn things, because the 2 cent coin in particular becomes arbitrarily similar to the 1 and 5 cent coins as store lighting decreases to zero.

    I assume all the committee funding went towards the neat two tone 1 and 2 euro pieces.

    Oh, and the big 500 euro note is purple and lavender. I know we're Europeans and we're supposed to be artsy and metrosexual, but... come on.

    [image]
  • Bruce (unregistered)

    America seriously needs to abandon both the penny and the dollar bill. Pennies are worth too little to be worth bothering with, and I just hate try to feed dollar bills into vending machines. The new dollar coins are adequate; they're at least visually distinctive from the quarter, unlike the Suzie B.'s.

    The only place dollar bills remain useful is strip clubs!

  • my name is missing (unregistered)

    Salmiak Licorice is an acquired taste, which I have apparently acquired. WTF, I like it.

    If I had had some, maybe I would have sent in some Brillant Paula Bean coffee for you...

  • (cs)

    Salmiak 4 t3h w1n!!1!eleven!

  • Teh Optermizar (unregistered) in reply to sweavo
    sweavo:
    Coxy:
    Australian banknotes are apparently waterproof. <stereotype>probably so it doesn't get ruined if they get drunk and fall in the pool at a barbie</stereotype>

    It's so that when your hat (where you keep your wonga) is eaten by a croc, and you wrestle the croc to get it back, you can still buy a round of stubbies for your mates afterwards.

    Hurrah for post-croc-wrestle beers!

    Being waterproof is seriously the best thing about Aussie banknotes... its a magical feeling not having to worry when you realise that you left cash in your pockets and you are hanging out your washing, and out come the notes, perfectly intact (and squeaky clean as a bonus!)

  • Henry Miller (unregistered) in reply to my name is missing

    It has benen found (but I know longer know the source, feel free to check if I'm right) that people learn their coins as a kid and have a hard time learning latter in life. I've never found the Susan B. dollar anything like a Quarter, but it wasn't until this was pointed out to me that I realized that I learned my coins when the Susan B. was introduced, so I learned to tell the difference. I like to use Susan B. dollars when I can get them, not to mention two dollar bills. However finding them is hard unless you ask for them at the bank (my credit union is an hour away from anyplace I travel).

  • Christophe (unregistered) in reply to ChiefCrazyTalk
    ChiefCrazyTalk:
    My $0.02 worth....:
    The US screws this up with its $0.25 quarters...

    That's because a shave and a haircut costs 2 bits (25 cents)

    Hey buddy, can you spare a dollar so I can get a byte to eat?

  • Expatriot (unregistered) in reply to Tsela

    Salmiak liquorice is also popular throughout Scandinavia. Last time I went home to Norway, I brought some "Turkish Pepper" (hard liquorice candies filled with salmiak salt) back for the office candy stash.

    The responses when people tried it were hilarious. In the ensuing discussions over the edibility of this (in my opinion quite delicious) sweet, I discovered that the English for salmiak is "ammonium chloride". Did not help my case.

  • Rui (unregistered) in reply to Dan H

    Of course no one beats the USA when it comes to silliness:

    http://usrarecurrency.com/WebPgFl/C00015446A/1934$1000FRNSnC00015446A.jpg

  • e. (unregistered) in reply to Tuuli Mustasydän

    And if you don't get the salmiakki from nature you can synthesize it by mixing hydrochloric acid and ammonia. Then, make candy and booze. Truly evil stuff.

  • Tuomas K (unregistered) in reply to Dan H

    Actually both of the salmiak countries have applied a method originating from the Marabou land known as "Swedish rounding" in order to deal with the inefficient 1 and 2 cent coins. EUR500 notes are commonly referred as Bin Ladens thorough Eurozone. Everyone knows they exist, but very few have seen one.

  • Simon (unregistered) in reply to Dan H
    Dan H:
    At least our money feels like money, rather than the play money the US uses as currency. Seriously, the USA, try using proper paper for your notes.

    Indeed - making those notes, you know, of different colours and sizes would be "a good thing"(tm) as well. I never know how much cash I've got on me at any time without counting it... At least in the UK the difference between £10 and £20 notes is bloody obvious.

  • Icehawke (unregistered) in reply to Teh Optermizar
    Teh Optermizar:
    sweavo:
    Coxy:
    Australian banknotes are apparently waterproof. <stereotype>probably so it doesn't get ruined if they get drunk and fall in the pool at a barbie</stereotype>

    It's so that when your hat (where you keep your wonga) is eaten by a croc, and you wrestle the croc to get it back, you can still buy a round of stubbies for your mates afterwards.

    Hurrah for post-croc-wrestle beers!

    Being waterproof is seriously the best thing about Aussie banknotes... its a magical feeling not having to worry when you realise that you left cash in your pockets and you are hanging out your washing, and out come the notes, perfectly intact (and squeaky clean as a bonus!)

    I don't think the Ozzies have figured out the true meaning of "money laundering"...

  • European (unregistered) in reply to Dan H

    Would you be a real engineer you would value the 1-2-5 10-20-50 etc. sequence the Euro currency comes in. Hint: it is the simplest approximation of x2 one can do when having to deal with the decimal system.

  • (cs) in reply to Rui
    Rui:
    Of course no one beats the USA when it comes to silliness:

    http://usrarecurrency.com/WebPgFl/C00015446A/1934$1000FRNSnC00015446A.jpg

    Fortunately those are no longer in circulation. It would be interesting to try to pay for candy or a bottle of water with one.

  • Blue (unregistered) in reply to Tsela

    My wife is Finnish, we go back every few years. I do not mind salmiakki... I eat it when her parents send it home.

    What I can not stand is the salmiakki ice cream. Salty, cough syrup flavored ice cream is where I draw the line.

    However, regular black licorice ice cream was fantastic! I have been trying to find it here ever since.

    perkele sääski

  • petri Melaja (unregistered) in reply to Dan H

    Actually, most of the 500 euro notes have ended up in Spain. I believe this was credited largely to the custom of paying in cash to avoid taxes, especially in the construction business.

  • Jouni (unregistered)

    The really difficult-to-get souvenirs are the Finnish one and two cent coins, since the Finnish government decided that the shops should round the grand total of your bill to the nearest five cents.

  • Harrow (unregistered)

    The big round aqua rubber thing with the Drakes Cakes addy on it is meant to be wrapped round a screw top for a better grip. It is most commonly known as a "tool used to increase torque", or TUIT. These tools are made in many shapes, usually of soft elastic rubber, and most have some kind of promotional text on one side and the letters TUIT on the other.

    You are very fortunate that your TUIT is a round one. You see, any shape TUIT can be used to open a stuck jar, but a round TUIT can also enable you to rake the leaves in your yard, wash your car, take out the garbage, or even call your mother. In fact, there's probably no end to the tedious work you can do, once you get a round TUIT.

    -Harrow.

  • Kozz (unregistered) in reply to Bruce

    What with people complaining that the strippers can't take the 1USD coins, we (USians) could instead substitute the 2USD bill. Sure, you have to go to a bank to request them special, but the ladies (or men?) will definitely remember you!

    And with inflation, most will expect the 2USD bills soon anyhow, right?

  • hans12 (unregistered) in reply to Brother Laz
    TRWTF is that the three lowest value Euro coins have the exact same design, colour, and almost the same size.
    as the values of 1 and 2-ct-coins is very low and handling-costs are high, some of the european countries (afaik BENELUX and FIN) did not give them out to the people. If someone pays cash, the bill will be rounded to the next 5 ct. Only payment by plasticcards will be done by the exact ammount. I think, that´s a good idea and should be made common everywhere.

    On the other hand the italians didn´t even know about using coins before getting the euro, as their former money "lira" was at least that worthless, that a 1000 lira note (the was the smallest one) was app. 1 $. No need vor 1-lira-coins or the "centisimi".

    ciao, H.

  • European (unregistered) in reply to Coxy
    Coxy:
    English money's great. You know by feel and by sight exactly how much a coin is. Go to the continent and 10, 20 and 50 cent coins are almost identical apart from a hard-to-perceive difference in diameter and the writing on them (which means getting each coin out individually and inspecting it).

    And it's even better for blind people.

    Look at the border of the coins from the side, not at the writing. They have different cuts to distinguish them. That and the diameter differences makes it easy to distinguish them. Even better for blind people ...

    In a 1-2-5 series it is the 2 which has a completely different border, while the 1 and 5 are distinguished via their diameter.

    E.g. the 2ct looks from the side as if coined from two sheets of the same metal. 2ct, two sheets, you get the idea. While the 1ct and 5ct have blank borders but significantly different diameters.

  • Angry Finn (unregistered)

    zomg! WTF!?!

    U DARE TO MOCK SALMIAKKI?!

  • Ursus Americanus (unregistered) in reply to Bruce
    Bruce:
    The only place dollar bills remain useful is strip clubs!
    At strip clubs I've been to, dollar bills are the quickest way to get ignored.
  • Ametheus (unregistered) in reply to keigezellig
    Seriously Europe, you really need a ¢2 coin?

    Dude, your economy sucks worse than ours.

    Yes, it does.

  • greenup (unregistered) in reply to sweavo

    When I was a kid, I judged the value of Everything in terms of how many tootsie rolls I could otherwise buy. (at $0.01 each)

    Tootsie rolls can still be found for that price, more than 20 years later. (less if you buy in bulk :-) )

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