I just switched from Timberland to Adidas shoes, and noticed a horrible trait of the Adidas tread: instead of being composed of externally-protruding bumps like the Timberland, it is composed of channels striated internally. This has the horrible trait of trapping and making difficult to remove small pebbles, mud, and other foreign objects that one might inadvertently step on.

Assuming that one were to step on an unusually aromatic organic viscoplastic, would the 'strength' of the smell depend on the surface area of the exposed agglomerate, or of its mass? My instinct leads me to think that the surface area would be the major factor, but empirically I see that larger massed agglomerates, even if wedged deep within an Adidas tread with little exposed surface area, seem to be more easily detected by human olfactory organs. However I contend that my sensing apparatus and testng methodology are not scientifically sound, nor do I have access to facilities which would allow me to make more objective observations.

Of course, the principle of "a month in the lab could save an hour in the library" applies, so I searched online but found surprisingly little (read: none) literature on the subject.


Question: Should it be an "unlike" or "dislike" button on Facebook?
Answer: In the modern world, and particularly in the world of computers, the un- prefix is increasingly used to denote an opposite or reversing action.

As in install/uninstall, register/unregister, and delete/undelete. Not to mention the undo facility we rely on in many applications.

In short, people quite reasonably expect the Facebook functionality to be called unlike because that follows the pattern they're used to. There's no danger of confusing such terminology with the dissimilar meaning, so why not?