Can you really argue that you shouldn't call a pizza a pie, when you call the top crust a lid?

Tsk tsk tsk... After all the UK-isms we let go here, you're busting our chops over pizza "pie"? Look at the shape! We all know that fruit "pies" AND pizza "pies" were named after pie charts.

Or at least that's what my manager tells me.

I'm with Rob on this one. The only way I can reconcile such usage in my mind, is to think of two completely different words, which just happen to be spelt and pronounced the same way. Because there's no way that a pizza is a proper pie.

Richard.

The only time I've ever heard a pizza referred to as a pie is by Italian caricatures, usually on cartoons, or by people referring, obliquely or not, to those caricatures. Certainly never in any serious context.

Allright, this is from Webster's collegiate dictionary...

Main Entry: pie
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English
Date: 14th century
1 : a meat dish baked with biscuit or pastry crust -- compare POTPIE
2 : a dessert consisting of a filling (as of fruit or custard) in a pastry shell or topped with pastry or both

So the "or both" of meaning #2 refute's Rob's Communist notion that all pies must have lids.

Anyway I think this explanation gets at it... (from http://homecooking.about.com/library/weekly/aa073100a.htm)

"Pizza is actually modern Italian for pie. The origin of the term is murky but is said to be derived from an Old Italian word meaning "a point," which later evolved to the Italian word pizzicare, meaning "to pinch or pluck." A Neapolitan dialect of the word first shows up in print in 1000 A.D. in the form of picea or piza, assumably referring to the way the hot pie is plucked from the oven. Early forms of pizza were most likely what we call focaccia today, since the tomato didn't reach Italy until the 16th century, hence no tomato sauce for the pie we know as pizza. The addition of mozzarella cheese (initially made from buffalo milk) did not come about until the 19th century. The standard tomato, basil and mozzarella pizza is first credited to Raffaele Esposito of the Pizzeria di Pietro, who dedicated the creation to Queen Margherita in 1889. The colors nicely coincided with the colors of the Italian flag."

Amazing what Google can do for you.

Top half or bottom half?

Hugo

Besides... I don't think I could call anywhere and order a tart to be delivered to my home without giggling hysterically.

Pies have a lid. If there's no lid it's a tart.

Yeah. That's why we eat lemon meringue pie... uh, excuse me, lemon meringue tart.

And the last Pumpkin Tart I ate was delicious.

tanstaafl.

The OED's definition of tart does say that tarts have no lids and that distinguishes them from pies, but its definition for pie allows for both uncovered and covered pastries. So I'd say that either is a pie, but calling an uncovered one a tart is more precise.

I thought tarts were made with whole or sliced fruit, whereas pies were more creamy.

Whew! I was hoping someone would "bite" on the "half off" comment!

OK... here we go...

http://www.ivillage.com/food/ckschl/bake/qas/0,11749,165819_88733,00.html

According to the OED, both tarts and pies can be filled with fruits or meats (or other stuff, probably -- nuts and puddings come to mind). I didn't look up cobblers, though.

"An old cobbler" is also a slang term for a male geriatric. So I guess it depends on how desperate for cash the tart is.

These guys know about pie! Trust them

LOL. That brought a chuckle to my morning..

lemon meringue tart

In British English pie implies a top crust. The names of some traditional North American dishes, such as Pecan Pie, have been imported into the English language untranslated, much as Tarte Tatin still gets spelt with an 'e'. If pecans, pumpkins, or lemon meringues grew in the wild in Britain then those things would have been called tarts.

If a cobbler has a thick enough crust, of course, it becomes a crumble.

Peter

lemon meringue tart

On thinking about it a bit more, perhaps the meringue on a lemon meringue pie counts as a lid, rather like the potato on a shepherd's pie or cumberland pie.

Peter

Mmm.... me want pie.

I liked the old days when everyone was either British or French. You knew where you stood, and you sure knew what constituted a pie.

Rob

Yup...we bastard yankees must be the cause of everything wrong in the world...I suppose I'll just have to become a expatriate so I can be "cool".

You knew where you stood.

Usually in two lines, watching the other guys coming up the hill...

Usually in two lines, watching the other guys coming up the hill...

Yeah and probably wearing red so that you were nice and inconspicuous...

.I suppose I'll just have to become a expatriate so I can be "cool".

I can't decide if I want to be an expatriate Canadian so that I could long for the gun control back home or an expatriate Briton so that I could have a drier, more sarcastic sense of humour.

...because us expat Brit's aren't allowed to long for the gun controls back home...

Since we're already talking about SIM clones/security....

I am about to sell a Nokia 8290 on eBay. It doesn't have a SIM card installed. Is it safe to show a picture of the label under the battery? There are two barcoded strings. One starts with IMEI and the other one starts with Code:.

And if anyone would like to make an offer on it, I would be willing to part with it for not that much money. I do not have the charger or a SIM. It is meant for VoiceStream (TMobile) so it is GSM.

For selling a GSM phone, the #1 question any buyer might have is whether or not it's "locked" (i.e., it won't work with somebody else's SIM card). You can test this, easily enough, by finding a friend's GSM phone (preferably from a different network, i.e., trying a Cingular SIM card in a T-Mobile phone), doing a SIM card transplant, and seeing whether it works.

After doing some recent research, I understand that the IMEI number is also stored in the handset's flash and is, from the provider's perspective, your handset's unique identifier. It is broadcast to the network thereby giving them the potential ability to bar (amongst other things) that handset from their network.
AFAIK, over here, Orange is the only provider to use this facility to network lock (as opposed to handset lock) stolen handsets. This is something of a missed opportunity but perhaps the other providers turn a blind eye to handset theft in return for call revenue but that's another matter entirely!

To circumvent these locks and to disguise stolen handsets, people re-write the flash and IMEI number using a cheap dongle cable and PC software. So, coming back to your question about showing the label with the IMEI number, I think it's potentially a bad idea.

Edit: Clarified network lock