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Had our fill
OK, as many of you point out, the nitpicking on half-fullness isn’t quite over. As Raj Patel suggested, half of empty is still empty, so it must be half full.
‘I was interested to read your conclusion following the observation of Raj Patel. Even this is incorrect,’ writes Mark Bryce at Siemens Enterprise Communications, whose problem is with the grammar… we think.
‘Full is an absolute in the same way as empty. As anything in the glass means it is not empty, anything less than full is not full. The glass is partially (possibly half) FILLED.’
Talking of absolutes, that’s absolutely it.
No: it all depends on the history of the beer in the glass. If the beer is being poured in, then it's half FILLED; if it was previously poured in, and is now being consumed, it is half EMPTIED.
Posted by :clive stirling | September 6, 2007 9:23 AM
The problem with this is that a glass is only half filled when it is being poured - filled implies the intention of filling to full. Hence, a glass whose contents are being consumed (for example, a pint of finest British ale), will reach the state of being half EMPTIED on the way from being full to being empty!
Posted by :Matt Harris | September 6, 2007 10:50 AM
A glass at 50% capacity might be said to be half not full or half not empty, to provide the alternative spin to an inherantly biased question.
This becomes useful when the glass is at 75% capacity, and could be said to be quarter not full.
But much more important is that a glass is always full; liquid, air or vacuum fills the volume defined by the glass, and it is only the relative ratios that are under discussion.
Posted by :Tom Lawton | September 7, 2007 11:56 AM
The glass is neither half full nor half empty. It is merely the wrong size...
Posted by :Sue | September 13, 2007 1:34 PM