Greetings, All!
Back in the days when the Egyptians were the world's great
builders, the standard unit of measure was the cubit. This was
defined as the length of a man's forearm to the tip of his
outstretched middle finger, making it that rarest of units of
measure - one that can also be an obscene gesture. At first,
workers must have just used their own arm as a convenient
measuring device. But it didn't take long before someone
realized that having 'Shorty' Ramal using his arm on one side and
'Moose' Thetar on the other produced a pretty weird-looking
pyramid. So the Egyptians eventually settled on using just one
arm: the one attached to his exalted highness, the Pharaoh. As
it happened, the Pharaoh's arm was about 18 inches (45.72 cm).
The Roman cubit, though, was a little shorter (about 17.5 inches
or 44.4 cm), which leads modern scholars to think that either the
Romans were a little on the short-armed side or that they just
used a shorter unit to make their buildings seem more impressive.
Use of royal anatomy for size reference was pretty common back
then; even our modern foot is derived from the actual foot length
of an English King. Lucky for us, that royal ruler's foot just
happened to be 12 inches long.
Which leads us, of course, to the 'smoot.' Though he isn't
by any means royal, Oliver Reed Smoot, Jr. is still officially
accepted as a unit of measure. Smoot was a pledge to Lambda Chi
Alpha fraternity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
1958 when his pledge class was ordered to determine the length of
the bridge that links the MIT campus with the city of Boston.
Lacking any conventional measuring tools, the other fraternity
brothers elected Ollie Smoot ruler. And that is exactly how they
used the 5 foot 7 inch (67 inch or 170.18 cm) Smoot, laying him
end-to-end all the way across Harvard Bridge while marking each
smoot-length in chalk.
Why was Smoot chosen? "Out of the 14 pledges I had the
distinction of being the shortest," he said later. Obviously,
the ancient Roman's trick of using a shorter length for a more
impressive number is still with us.
The chalk marks were later immortalized in swimming pool
paint, which lasted until the bridge's sidewalk was being
replaced in the 1980's. Fortunately, the city of Boston
determined that the smoot marks had become part of the city's
folklore, so the new sidewalk was permanently scored in smoot
lengths, rather than the conventional 6-foot length. For the
record, the bridge is exactly 364.4 smoots and one ear long.
This brings up a critical point: all measurements are
strictly relative. They are only a way of expressing or
reproducing a given condition. Many people seem to get attacks
of vertigo from simple changes in units. And while the metric
system's units are much easier to convert, they are just as
arbitrary as smoots or cubits. It really doesn't matter. The
actual amount of gas my car burns is exactly the same whether it
is expressed in miles-per-gallon, kilometers/liter or hogsheads
per furlong. It is only a number. On the other hand, it can be
an important number. If I'm flying on an airplane, I certainly
hope that the thousand gallons of fuel it takes to get from point
A to Point B wasn't misunderstood as 1,000 liters.
Friends and supporters who measure up this week include:
Michelle Kiss, Kiyomi Kanazawa, Jerry Taff, Beth Butler, Carol
Becwar, Ben Conrad, Howard Lesniak, Prof. Eva Lu Yu-Hwa, Rosana
Leung, Caterina Sukup, Kerry Miller, Yasmin & Meredith Leischer,
Tim McChain, Peter J. Adler, Jan Michalski, Chuck Maray, Larry
Sakar, Brian Siegl, Jack Gervais, Jim Neuner, Daniel Butler,
Joshua Brink and Fumiko Umino. Now there's a Thank You of
impressive length! OK, enough of these weighty matters and on
with the measurements.
Have A Great Week,
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
UNIT COST?
---------
In 1993, then Cleveland Federal Reserve President, Jerry
Jordan, said: "we have not yet reached an environment where
households believe that the rate of inflation in the future will
be lower than it is today." He went on to say "we would like
people to think about the U.S. dollar in the same way as they
think about the number of feet in a mile or ounces in a pound."
Now I think I finally understand what the government is
trying to do. They want us to think of the dollar as an archaic
unit of measurement that doesn't convert easily, is not widely
understood and is no longer used internationally.
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT
------------------------
When is an inch not an inch? Check this notice I found on
the packaging for a JVC television set made in Mexico:
27 INCH DIAGONAL
29 INCH OUTSIDE OF U.S.A. AND CANADA
Is it the amazing shrinking inch? A metric mistranslation?
Well, not quite... It turns out that U.S. and Canadian law
requires TV makers to measure only the lighted part of the
screen, not including the hidden part of the glass. In other
countries, you can include even the parts hidden behind the edge
of the cabinet.
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
POLITICAL HEAVYWEIGHTS
----------------------
These days, it seems, we prefer to have big guys as the big
guys. President Clinton, it is clear, has had more McDonald's
French fries than salads. Same for his ex-foe Newt Gingrich.
The same is true for many of the other world leaders, including
one of the most recent to join the ranks: burly rugby-playing
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.
Not that he's all that comfortable with being known as the
portly prime minister. When shaking hands with voters recently,
he ran into one campaign question he ducked.
"How much do you weigh?" asked one middle-aged man.
"State secret," the hefty prime minister quickly answered
with a laugh. (Reuters)
[ SUNFUN's sources in Japan confirm that
Mori's actual weight puts him in the same
weight class as Clinton: 213 lbs. / 97 kg. ]
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
UNITARIANS OF THE WORLD, MEASURE UP!
-----------------------------------
The exact unit of choice to measure a given thing depends on
many factors, including convenience, custom, even random chance.
Widely accepted units of measurement make it possible to express
things in many curious ways as widely varied as time in
fortnights (14 days) and distance Parsecs (3.26 light-years).
Using the internationally accepted prefixes micro- (10 to the
-6th power) and atto- (10 to the -18th), we find that a moderate
walking rate of 2 miles-per-hour (about 3 km/h) can also be
expressed as 2.9 attoParsecs/microFortnight. Not that you'd
necessarily want to, but you could.
Units are usually chosen to make it easier to measure an
object or idea. Advances in both science and society often make
it necessary to invent new units to express new ideas. Until
Bell invented the telephone, there was no real need - or method -
to measure sound loudness, for example. So, just as his
invention led immediately to the use of decibels, we need new
units of measure to better fit our society. Here are some of the
latest proposals:
- 1 million bicycles = 2 megacycles
- Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33
(that's 99-58-84 in centimeters).
- Amount of beauty required to launch 1 ship = 1 milliHelen
- One half large intestine = 1 semicolon
- 1 Billion dollars of budget deficit = 1 Gramm-Rudman
- 3 1/3 tridents = 1 decadent
- 2 monologues = 1 dialogue
- 5 dialogues = 1 decalog
- 0.2 episode of Star Trek = 1 Captain's log
- 2 monograms = 1 diagram
- 1 million microphones = 1 megaphone
- 1 million billion piccolos = 1 gigolo
- Force needed to accelerate 2.2 lbs of cookies = 1 Fig-newton
per meter per second
- 1000 grams of wet German socks = 1 literhosen
- 8 nickels = 2 paradigms
- 2000 mockingbirds = two kilomockingbirds
- 52 playing cards = 1 decacards
- The rate at which a disease spreads through a corn field
= the speed of blight
- 1 millionth of a fish = 1 microfiche
- 453.6 graham crackers = 1 pound cake
- Speed of a tortoise breaking the sound barrier
= 1 machTurtle
- 1 trillion pins = 1 terrapin
- 60 seconds of late-night TV advertising for essentially
worthless products = 1 ronco
- 365 Days of drinking Lo-Calorie beer = 1 Lite-year
- 16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Serling
- 10 rations = 1 decoration
- 100 rations = 1 C-ration
- The ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter
= Eskimo Pi
- 2.4 statute miles of surgical intravenous tubing at
Yale University Hospital = 1 I. V. League
- 60 minutes of preaching by a television evangelist
= 1 billigraham
- Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement
= 1 bananosecond
- The basic unit of laryngitis = the hoarsepower
- 1 lie per unit promise = 1 politic
- 1 millionth of a mouthwash = 1 microscope
- The amount of speed used in computer ads to 'prove' that one
computer is faster than another = 1 machoflop
- 16 oz. of Alpo = 1 dog pound
- 2 baby sitters = 1 gramma-grampa
- Time it takes to sail 220 yards at 1 nautical mile per hour
= 1 knot-furlong
- 1000 beers served at a Minnesota Twins baseball game
= 1 Killibrew
- 1,000,000th of a movie = 1 microfilm
- 1 word = 1 millipicture
- billions & billions = 1 Sagan
- 1,000 pains = 1 kiloHertz
- One half-bath = 1 demijohn
- 10 millipedes = 1 centipede
- 6 curses = 1 hexahex
- 3500 calories = 1 Food Pound
- 1 mole = .007 secret agents
- 2000 pounds of Chinese soup = won ton
- 2 wharves = 1 paradox
- 6.023 x 10 to the 23rd power guacamoles = Avocado's number
- 100 senators < 1 decision
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
PROFESSIONAL MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES...
----------------------------------
What a measurement is often not as important as how you view
it. That is often a matter of personal philosophy:
The optimist: This glass is half full.
The pessimist: This glass is half empty.
The engineer: This container is twice as large as it needs
to be.
----------
A group of managers were given the assignment to measure the
height of a flagpole. They went out to the flagpole with ladders
and tape measures, and spent most of a morning falling off the
ladders, dropping the tape measures - the whole thing was just a
mess. By lunch time, they decided that the task was impossible.
About then, an engineer came along and saw what they were
trying to do. He simply walked over, pulled the release pin at
the base of the flag pole, laid it down flat, and measured it
from end to end. Then he quietly gave the measurement to one of
the managers and walked away.
After the engineer had gone, one manager turned to another
and snorted, "Isn't that just like an engineer! We're looking
for the height and he gives us the length!"
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
FAILING TO MEASURE UP
---------------------
There are a few people who take this whole measurement
business very seriously. Like Philadelphia's Department of
Licenses and Inspections, which in February of 1994, served a
notice of violation of rules on exotic dancer dancer Crystal
Storm, who was doing her show at Thee Doll House, a local strip
bar. Now, the primary job of the Inspection department's weights
and measures division is checking the accuracy of meat-market
scales and such, but they also are charged with checking the
accuracy of the weights and measurements in used advertising.
Ms. Storm had been advertised in local newspapers as having a
bust measurement of an incredible "127."
When challenged, the dancer claimed in her defense that the
advertised measurement was in centimeters, which works out to a
slightly more believable 50 inches. But officials said her
excuse failed to measure up.
"That's deceptive advertising," announced department
official Frank Antico.
[ I guess you could say she was busted for
inflation. ]
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
© 2000 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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