Based on the principal component analysis of placement test data consisting of composition, vocabulary, grammar, phonology, and dictation, he stated that language proficiency was unitary and undividable into different skills and that it could be measured in its entirety, using cloze and dictation tests.
It could be measured in money.
Or it could be measured from the Hutchinson River Parkway, which passes about 100 feet below the site.
He chose this characteristic both because it could be measured and because it seemed to explain much of normal human variation.
It was 16-bit, which means each tiny chunk (or sample) of sound has 65,536 different volumes it could be measured at.
Most of it could be measured using a stopwatch or a radar gun: I could run, I could catch, I could throw and I could put a round bat on a round ball with accuracy.
And yet the distance between the athletes on their expensive road bikes, with their American coach following, iPhone stopwatch in hand and the world that they tore through seemed as though it could be measured in centuries.
For Sal Medina, a newsstand operator from the Bronx, it could be measured by the number of frozen water bottles that he slipped into his pants this week to stay cool (three).
And yet the distance between the athletes — on their expensive road bikes, with their American coach following, iPhone stopwatch in hand — and the world that they tore through seemed as though it could be measured in centuries.
They say that the boy was showing off for the urchins who followed him around as if he were some sort of divinity, the kind of boys who thrive on pain, who live to inflict and extract it as if it could be measured and held, as if it were precious, the kind of boys who carve hieroglyphs into their skin with razor blades and call it fashion.
