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By the Numbers

posted by martyb on Tuesday September 12 2017, @07:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the your-days-are-numbered...-Drei,-Zwei,-Eins dept.

jman writes:

Anu Garg at A Word A Day posted this story of an upcoming mayoral election in the small town of Völklingen, Germany (near the French border, south of Belgium), wherein one of the candidates gave a spectacularly bad answer to a question in a recent debate.

Representative Uwe Faust of the political party Die Partei jokingly asked, “According to the building code, paragraph 126, each owner is obliged to label his property with the number given by the municipality. I find it alarming that in Völklingen many house numbers are displayed in Arabic numerals. How would you like to take action against this creeping foreigner infiltration?”

To which Otfried Best, running with the far-right NPD party, fell for the joke, replying, "You just wait until I am mayor. I will change that. Then there will be normal numbers."

Mr. Best apparently does not know what Arabic numerals are.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday September 12 2017, @09:45AM (1 child)

    by shrewdsheep (5215) on Tuesday September 12 2017, @09:45AM (#566651)

    Wait, he is just anticipating the AI revolution. Putting normal numbers [wikipedia.org] on the houses, will provide never-ending job opportunities.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday September 12 2017, @11:52AM

    by VLM (445) on Tuesday September 12 2017, @11:52AM (#566691)

    I thought he meant Roman Numerals. When I was a kid I thought those poor kids in Rome had to do their arithmetic using Roman Numerals. The school encouraged that belief with discussion and artwork explaining Roman Empire children actually did so.

    Crack open a modern Roman Missal and the prevalence of Roman Numerals does nothing to discourage that peculiar opinion.

    I'm not as familiar with German Lutheran works but I'm gonna take a guess they're either also full of Roman Numerals or in their typical rebellious nature, just to annoy the Pope, German Lutheran works are all numbered in octal, hexadecimal, or something else.

    Not having been to .de I feel given decades of over the top lederhosen and cuckoo clocks in German-themed American bars and restaurants and beer-gardens that all signage in .de is in Fraktur font with Roman Numerals.