Are Americans Mad?

[Laurence Stein DDS]

Phoenix,

Can you explain to me, an American, just how, exactly does your mail address system work? It appears to be counterintuitive.

Here in the US, most addressed are based on a grid of a city. It may be divided into quarters and thus, we have NE, NW, SE, SW designations. There are 100 number per block but a structure takes up enough room that there may only be 5-10 addresses on a particular block. The numbers are even and odd--dictated by the side of the street. The street the address is on appears in the address and the number is its position along that street. The compass designations simply tell you where it is located from a fixed set of cross streets that divide the city.

Some other cities choose to divide in half by East or West, or North or South. They have only one street dividing one half of the city from the other.

Admittedly, we have some strange places where no one can explain how to find an address.

But in Great Britian, how does SW2, London get to the person? And this appears to be a somewhat logical address. I have seen some real doozies though and have no idea how they can work.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Larry Stein

 

[Phoenix]

Larry, thanks for your comments and queries

I'll touch on the dental system at a later point

As for addressing structure, our Post Codes (Zip Codes) are usually quite logical until you get to London

Most towns, villiages, small little houes in the middle of no where, and other cities that are not of londons proportions have simple post codes, the exact method of allocating them I am however not sure of

Post codes for the UK generally follow a
AAxx xAA notation where A is a leter and x is a number

The first block of letters is a wide area generally, covering a whole city in some cases, the numbers after that split the region up into sections, the final three characters refur to small units, of housing (again the ammount of units can vary) for instance I have a seperate three characters to someone the other side of my apartment complex (really not that big)
The first part generally allows you to work out the area, and the final part narrow down on where in that area it is (generally a road, apartment complex "block of flats") etc

when you come to london things are not so simple, bear in mind London is over 1000 years old, and its postal system seems like its almost as old
London would of originally been 4, or even 8 areas, the SW, NE, etc you see in british post codes all belong to london
there are the standard ones denoting which side of the city you were on, along with some special ones such as WC

the problem happened when london grew in size, areas had to be split, and when this split needed to happen again numbers came out of sequence, for instance SW2 is next to SW16 and SE19 i believe,

so yes, london post codes are quite strange

Remeber that London didnt and wasnt based on a grid system, its far to old to be based on such logic, modent architecture and city planning tries to follow some order, but with london being pretty much as large as it can be (649 square miles) without crossing the M25 (Londons Orbital Motorway (Freeway)) and / or destroying the greenbelt (Grass ring surrounding london that is protected from development) and with the population ever on the rise (Official figures put it at over 11 million, un official figures over 20 million) it is one of the Largest and most dense cities in the world, AND it didnt get the much needed -revamp- after WW2 that many other european capitals got, simply because it didnt suffer as much as others did and hence didnt require the rebuilding and modernisation.

Aha, just found this
http://www.city.ac.uk/accommodation/postcode.htm
it may explain a few things, notice the size of the areas generally gets larger toward the outskirts, due to the decrease in density and addressing requirements, we all learn from others mistakes, and early adopters of technology and systems often cant afford to then re vamp them when people realise it wasnt the most efficient manner in which to do something, I of all people know this being an IT Consultant!

WC and EC are the special ones, i believe it simply means West City and East City, i could be wrong!


now, not much to say on the tooth matter after all that
I know my teeth are far from perfect, the front ones however are pretty decent, I had braces for a few years but after the retainer came out they started to bend again slightly (ill pay you a visit when I am in florida and have some insurance to burn, lol)
my problem is my back teeth, not all of them, but i think I have three moulars that are completly screwed, I havn't been to the dentist for ages, since the last one screwed it up worse, I had a dead tooth, for one reason or another (I had other teeth pushing through behind it etc), and anyway this tooth was dead, and had rotted a bit, she tried to remove it with some pliers of the medival era, and ended up cracking the tooth to the extent that all that remained was the root that she couldnt get at without slicing my gums open (something i wasnt really in the mood for)
so yeah my back teeth could do with serious work, front teeth seem ok so far though, *touch wood*

Oh well have to live upto my stereotype don't I!
but thanks for explaing why you guys are the only ones who notice, lol!

 

[Phoenix]

Just a quick thought!

SW2, London, wouldnt get to me, not on its own anyway
It just gives people a general idea of my location in this mammoth of a city


although i could simply put

Housenumber
SW2 xxx (Full post code)

and it would probably get to me

 

[Laurence Stein DDS]

Phoenix,

Is your Postal Code the same as your street address you might give to someone trying to find you home?

Due to American's fixation on "reality programs" some of the Greatest police chases have taken place on the M-25. I think they loaded the film backwards though. I mean, everyone drives on the wrong side of the road (hehe--kidding).

My brain is telling me "there has to be an easier way!"

In the US, the Zip+4 code can actually deliver a mail item directly to your door without any street address, apt # or suite #. Only the postal computer knows how though. I really don't care as long as it gets here.

Now back to teeth--see even you didn't dissappoint me. You have a British mouth. Did you mean that your dentist elected to leave the broken piece of tooth in your mouth? Are you all daft? That's an infection waiting to happen!

Larry Stein

 

[Laurence Stein DDS]

Phoenix,

Any relation to the musician and composer, Eric Coates?

Larry Stein

 

[Phoenix]

Lol, no relation

The dentist? well it was an NHS dentist what do you expect, they are not the most brilliant (although I would not say the same about our doctors, they are generally quite good, even if hospital standards themselves are not brilliant)


no you probably couldnt get a mail here with just the Postal Code
you would need atleast a house numer

the Postal Code, even at its most precise level, still covers more than one house unfortunatly (although this may not be the same for rural areas but I am not sure of this)

It's not really something they could reform though to be honest, enough confusion occurs when they change phone numbers around a bit!

 

[Laurence Stein DDS]

Phoenix,

It sound like you know of Eric Coates. See, Americans aren't so dumb. Except, they've removed my classical station from the air 6 months ago. Now I'm going nuts in traffic.

I still have my CD collection though. It's nearly impossible to find a Coates album. It's not all my taste but he has some neat stuff--especially some of the music he wrote for his children. Also like Peter Warlock.


Larry Stein

 

[booga_roo]

Wooweeeeeeeeeeeee haven't some of us had a complete sense of humour failure!

The beauty of the human race is the ability to laugh at ourselves. Don't let go of that because if you do start to disappear up your own backside with an inflated sense of self importance all sorts of nasty things start to happen.

Global Village folks, Global Village. No nation is perfect or a template for others.

Peace and love to all

Booga
(Thread starter!)

 

[o2 clean]

American's Mad? Nope.

American's Money Hungry? Yes.

When it comes down to suing McDonalds for a hot pickle landing on your lip and it "blisters" or spilling coffee that was "hot" on your lap and getting burned, it's quite stupid.

Common Sense!

 

[cat]

this thread has turned into. We're all Mad, or we wouldn't have come here. :kitty:

And, all arguments about inadequate training to the contrary, we are certainly almost all certified (except a few still waiting to finish OW).

As this thread has already got more ins and outs than an Escher, I'm going to add to the confusion by taking this opportunity to tell Dr. Stein, DDS how much I admire his choice of avatar. Nearly had a "clean the screen" moment when I realized it was a *dentist* using Audrey II.

All generalizations are false. (Including this one).