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Why are handbags so cheap? Or watch straps so expensive?

Edward53
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Lucasssssss Lucasssssss
Went searching the internet about this one, this is what turned up; "Those with a poor mathematical education or reasoning capacity recognize 'less' is the antonym of 'more' but, not that it is only correctly used when applied to addition that is, "I have 3 less," can be equivalently stated as, "you have 3 more." To express this another way, the inverse operation of addition is subtraction, whereas for multiplication it’s division. It's sloppy and incorrect however, it is found in common usage."

I love the way that person talks about others with a poor education then goes on to use the word "less" instead of "fewer". I knew society was disintegrating but not that things were quite so bad.
Larry S Larry S
Dennis these are a badge of honor. I wear mine proudly and as a caution to others.😁

You too, eh? I'm just the same with my handbags.
 
FreelanceWriter
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Edward53 Edward53
I love the way that person talks about others with a poor education then goes on to use the word "less" instead of "fewer". I knew society was disintegrating but not that things were quite so bad.
I also noticed that, because it's so common, even among well-educated people, that it's become one of my grammar peeves; but I'm not in the habit of commenting on anybody's grammar online or elsewhere except when someone with his own questionable grammar or word choices presumes to raise it as an issue.

On the substance of your observation, "fewer" vs. "less" is one of those mistakes that seem to be so ubiquitous that it's not even a function of educational level anymore. In the last few months, I think I've heard "fewer" used correctly exactly ONCE on TV (last week), and I usually have MSNBC on in the background all day long. I live in the #1 media market in the world, so I'd expect the "cream of the cream" of spokespeople and talking heads to be relatively well-educated, not to mention doctors, lawyers, and all of our Ivy-educated politicians and legislators in DC. None of them seems ever to have even heard of the distinction you highlighted. The exact same seems to be true of the distinction "that" for things and "who" for people.
 
ConElPueblo
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FreelanceWriter FreelanceWriter
I also noticed that, because it's so common, even among well-educated people, that it's become one of my grammar peeves; but I'm not in the habit of commenting on anybody's grammar online or elsewhere except when someone with his own questionable grammar or word choices presumes to raise it as an issue.

The "X times as small" or similar is one of my peeves. Also when used when speaking about accuracy; IMO, you don't measure how accurate a watch is, you measure how much it deviates, ergo you measure how inaccurate it is! Hence, a watch isn't "X times as accurate" as something else, but rather "X-tenths (or whatever) as inaccurate"...
 
STANDY
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Back on track it costs a chicken a day for 2 and a half years to make a Hermes bag.
3 or 4 crocodiles are kept in seperate pens to avoid damage to the underbelly skin. ( which are breed from crocodiles removed from Darwin harbour approximately 300 a year )
All the leather comes from a few kms from where I live.
 
FreelanceWriter
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ConElPueblo ConElPueblo
...IMO, you don't measure how accurate a watch is, you measure how much it deviates, ergo you measure how inaccurate it is! Hence, a watch isn't "X times as accurate" as something else, but rather "X-tenths (or whatever) as inaccurate"...
Not sure that I agree with that, although my disagreement might just be just as much with the underlying premise that it's appropriate to use fractions that way to compare two watches in the first place.

There are only two possibilities: Either (1) "accuracy" is understood to mean "relative" along a range of possible measures, or (2) "accuracy" is understood to mean "absolute" (perfect) accuracy.

If accuracy is understood to mean relative, then, I think you'd describe watches as simply being more or less accurate relative to one another for much the same reason that you'd refer to one vehicle* being "twice as fast" as another and never "half as slow." Therefore, I think one would refer to one watche as simply being twice as accurate as another watch and not half as inaccurate.

If accuracy is understood to mean "perfect" accuracy, then, apart from the concept of "perfection" necessarily being dependent on the scale of measurement -- and apart from any Heisenberg and/or limitations-of-mechanical-devices arguments -- accuracy would be understood to refer to an absolute concept (just like "perfect" and "full"). In that case, the awkward but technically-correct terms would be "more nearly-accurate" and "less nearly-accurate" for the exact same reason that it's incorrect (technically) to say "more perfect" and "less perfect" or "more full" and "less full."

IMO, it's understood that the accuracy of watches means simply relative to one another. So, I'd argue (1) that it's not preferable or helpful to discuss watches as being any fraction of one another's accuracy in the first place, instead of simply referring to them as being more or less accurate; and (2) to whatever extent watches can or should be referred to as being fractions of one another's accuracy, it makes more sense and is much simpler to just say that one watch is twice as accurate than it is to say that another watch is half as accurate. (The vehicular-speed thing.)
 
eugeneandresson
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Tony C. Tony C.
Why do dogs dislike it when people blow lightly into their faces, yet insist on putting their heads out of car windows while traveling at relatively high speeds? 🙄

Maybe because most peoples breath stinks so bad to dogs that any portion, even the tiniest, deserves heads being bitten off whereas fresh air smells so nice (and squirrel scented) no matter how large the dose?
 
michael22
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Accuracy is a measure of reproducibility. By nature it is a comment on a collection of data, not a single reading. Commonly confused with Precision.

A timepiece that loses 10 seconds a day, every day, is accurate, but never precise. The owner could easily calculate the precise time, though.
A timepiece that fluctuates by +/- 20 seconds a day will probably give a precise time once a month, but never be accurate, & the owner will never calculate the precise time, & not know which day of the month had the correct time.
 
Tony C.
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eugeneandresson eugeneandresson
Maybe because most peoples breath stinks so bad to dogs that any portion, even the tiniest, deserves heads being bitten off whereas fresh air smells so nice (and squirrel scented) no matter how large the dose?

So let me get this straight – your hypothesis rests on the idea that dogs are repelled by things that stink?

I'm guessing that you've never owned one. 😉
Edited:
 
eugeneandresson
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Tony C. Tony C.
your hypothesis rests on the idea that dogs are repelled by things that stink?

Nope, just peoples breath 😉 Have plenty of experience with dogs...enough to know that they can and do things like roll around in s—t etc...that must say a lot for peoples breath!!!! I guess it’s just plain wierd for dogs. They don’t like it if a face comes close to theirs, and then the act of said face blowing wind out of it (which they most likely can not understand) is what drives them over the edge. But until we can learn to speak dog and actually ask them I guess we will never know...
 
FreelanceWriter
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eugeneandresson eugeneandresson
Nope, just peoples breath 😉 Have plenty of experience with dogs...enough to know that they can and do things like roll around in s—t etc...that must say a lot for peoples breath!!!! I guess it’s just plain wierd for dogs. They don’t like it if a face comes close to theirs, and then the act of said face blowing wind out of it (which they most likely can not understand) is what drives them over the edge. But until we can learn to speak dog and actually ask them I guess we will never know...

I agree that the whole butt-sniffing thing disproves the bad-breath thing; but as a lifelong dog-lover, I'll offer a serious hypothesis:

They don't necessarily mind human faces next to theirs, provided they know and trust the human; they just don't like strange human faces too close. If they know you well, they're usually fine with it and perceive it as affection, such as when you kiss their faces or nuzzle yours up against them. Blowing on their faces just frustrates them, because on one hand, they recognize that it's playing; but on the other hand, they can't play back because they know they can't mouth or nip at your face the same way they can when it's your hands (assuming you haven't specifically trained them never to do that at all, which I've always considered totally unnecessary, because they know the difference between just mouthing or play-biting and really biting a hand).

That's why they do that head-shaking or barking or mock-lunging thing: they're just frustrated that they have no way to play back when you blow on their faces.
 
tritto
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I've played around making my own straps for a few months now. In my experience, the materials are a very small part of the total cost. Now I'm not using exotic hides - unless you count kangaroo as exotic - so based on the roughly $20 per square foot I can buy a section of unstained cow hide or a bit more for some lovely finished kangaroo, the leather only costs me a couple of dollars per strap. Amortised over the number of straps I could get out of glue, thread, dye, bees wax sealer etc, and the capital cost of some basic tools, I reckon it's costing maybe $5 per strap. The real cost is labour. It might take me 3-4 hours in front of the tv of an evening to make a strap to my satisfaction. I could probably do things faster if I did tasks in batches.
Obviously, my experience relates to hobbyists, not big manufacturers, but my guess is that there is a similar amount of labour cost in a quality strap that retails for $200 as there is in a regular handbag that retails at about the same price. That's why straps that use small amounts of quality leather cost as much as bags that use a lot more (possibly lower cost/quality) leather.
 
asrnj77
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On a related note: what are the opinions on watch straps made from expensive handbags? I’ve seen straps made from Louis Vuitton bags (presumably damaged bags that can still produce a dozen straps) for $150 give or take. I personally don’t want a LV logo watch strap but I can see the appeal to some. I wondered a little about the copyrights on that. You can’t sell fake LV logo leather but repurposed leather for retail sale is a different animal, right?
 
roadsternet
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Material for a strap is only between 10-30$ on the expansive straps.
 
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