Where's Your Threshold?

My life seems to be all about thresholds. A big part of my work (and probably the most interesting part of it for me) is modeling business logic... when x meets some configurable threshold (let's say y), then trigger z. Even outside of work, thresholds don't escape me... when a big puppy-dog (let's call him “Miha”) whines and stomps his paws enough to get me to take him to the park...

And the word itself is kind of fun to say... Threshold! It creates a rare sequence of linguistic acrobatics that aurally flows through the monophthongs encapsulated by their bounding digraphs... when pronounced properly, of course (in case you couldn’t guess, linguistics is one of my passions).

So whenever I hear about thresholds, I have my own special appreciation. There were some interesting news stories recently about reaching thresholds (just to be clear, I'm not talking about door thresholds, I'm talking about one of the other meanings*).

• The resident population of the US recently exceeded 300,000,000 (check the current population).


• The English language is expected to adopt its one-millionth word in November, as reported by the The Times. †


• And then there's this...

The factory workers at this plant in Braunschweig, Germany, were not provided with coffee. Instead, they were allowed to each bring in their own coffee maker. As a result, the electrical system had to be upgraded in order to accommodate this (see photo below). Common sense might try to convince us that a shared approach might provide a better solution for everyone. I was wondering if there was any threshold in sight that might influence them to change their minds. Probably not. Not only does the company save money by not purchasing & maintaining equipment, purchasing coffee-making supplies, and hiring staff to run and maintain it all; they are actually able to make money off of their own employees by selling them their coffee makers (made by their home appliances division) and sell more electricity (produced by their power generation division) to their unions.



And you thought American labor issues were tricky.

*	threshold — (4) the point that must be exceeded to begin producing a given effect or result or to elicit a response (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved October 26, 2006, from Dictionary.com).
†	“As of 1:16 pm (Pacific) on the 21st day of March (the vernal equinox) in the year 2006 AD (or CE, whatever your preference), there were approximately 988,968 words in the English Language, plus or minus a handful. Choose well among them.” – Language Monitor.