Naturalist Theory of Mere

When you have 8 days until the lan, are you really going to say it is “mere weeks” away? No, no you’re not.

However, upon reading the article by my esteemed colleague in mere, Mr Cabe, I would like to declare my allegiance to a radical new splinter group.

I would like to propose, ladies and gentlemen, that although the concept of expansionist mere may be correct, the boundaries are not.

I think we agree that 8 days from the lan, despite being “mere weeks” in the metric system, would naturally be referred to as being “mere days away”. However, if it is Monday and the lan commences on the Friday evening of the following week, even the most die-hard imperialists can see the sense in describing this as “mere weeks”.

In order to resolve this conflict between regulation and sense, I would like to present to you The Naturalist Theory of Mere.

The human is not an instinctively decimal animal. One wouldn’t say something that cost £1.01 cost “a couple of quid” but one probably would say that about something that cost £1.99. Humans instinctively round off values in order to simplify things. The metric theory of mere would describe both values as “mere pounds”; the imperial, both as “mere pennies”. Clearly neither theory fully satisfies the way humans handle decimals.

The Naturalist Theory of mere states that there is a conflict between the technically correct use of the plural in the English language, and the “common sense” choice of units of time. As such, the Naturalist Theory proposes that:

When there remains less than 1.5 larger units of time until the event, then mere is to be called in the next smallest increment of time. The use of the smaller increment is prohibited before this landmark.

Thus 8 days from the lan is “mere days!”, however 12 days (or 1.7 weeks) from the lan is still “mere weeks”. To take a working example: the earliest acceptable call of “mere days” for i30 (assuming start of the lan is EAS Thursday) would have been last Monday at 6am.

Deborah “Strych” Cutchey