Metric system dumbs us down.

[buzzstar]

In sum total, metric, imperial, and traditional, it is still donkey dust.

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by StuM

Touché !

Let me rephrase that:

"Which pony are you talking about, the real man's 5 oz or the poncey 1 oz?"

There's only one size pony. A good martini is 3 ponies The Botonist gin and one pony Noily Prat, lots of ice, shaken (not stirred) and a hefty twist of lemon.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by carstenb

There's only one size pony. A good martini is 3 ponies The Botonist gin and one pony Noily Prat, lots of ice, shaken (not stirred) and a hefty twist of lemon.

No there is not.... that is a continental pony... for spirits.

The Australian pony is a poncy little 5 oz glass of beer.

Three Australian ponies of gin plus one of Noily Prat would have you talking in braille for a fortnight....

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Three Australian ponies of gin plus one of Noily Prat would have you talking in braille for a fortnight....

Well you down under types never have been able to hold your likker

[Jason Flare]

The Smoot:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-scs_yF59YE

[buzzstar]

Originally Posted by Jason Flare

The Smoot:

If you have not watched, this is the best post of the entire thread! It is terrific.

[carstenb]

I'm not sure what the reaction will be when I clear in to a foreign country and tell them my boat is 7.164179 Smoots long, 2.321072 Smoots wide and a draft of 1.233988 Smoots.


Fantastic story

[buzzstar]

Originally Posted by carstenb

I'm not sure what the reaction will be when I clear in to a foreign country and tell them my boat is 7.164179 Smoots long, 2.321072 Smoots wide and a draft of 1.233988 Smoots.


Fantastic story

Foreign country? Probably even other places in Boston. I sure hope to try it out on the coast of California at my next opportunity. Perfect story, made even better by truth.

[Emerald Sea]

Ive got a ruler onboard in Tenths of an Inch. Thats gotta just confuse you Americans!
I do get a hee haw from that!

[Jason Flare]

Originally Posted by Emerald Sea

Ive got a ruler onboard in Tenths of an Inch. Thats gotta just confuse you Americans!
I do get a hee haw from that!

We're the ones who understand the hard to understand Imperial System so, no, we're not confused by the easily understood metric system.

[buzzstar]

Originally Posted by Emerald Sea

Ive got a ruler onboard in Tenths of an Inch. Thats gotta just confuse you Americans!
I do get a hee haw from that!

Full hee haws cost more. You get less than a tenth, more like a sixty-fourth. Write back when you figure it out.

[buzzstar]

Any real physicists or perhaps astronomers here. Are wave lengths of light or radio consistent? If so could a wavelength of, say red light, or a particular radio frequency be used as the standard of measurement, and we could use it to define any measurement we select, at least as far an distance, and by manipulation, volume, etc? Even Smoots?

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by Emerald Sea

Ive got a ruler onboard in Tenths of an Inch. Thats gotta just confuse you Americans!
I do get a hee haw from that!

Hell, I can beat that - I have a ruler that has 1/3 of inches (used in the old days for measuring printning spaces on forms)

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by buzzstar

Any real physicists or perhaps astronomers here. Are wave lengths of light or radio consistent? If so could a wavelength of, say red light, or a particular radio frequency be used as the standard of measurement, and we could use it to define any measurement we select, at least as far an distance, and by manipulation, volume, etc? Even Smoots?

I'm not a "real" physicist or astronomer, but I do know that radio waves can and are affected by atmospheric conditions (propagation). Doesn't mean that the actual length of the radio wave is affected, but I suspect that temperature will affect it.

Light can be stopped as was proven several years ago when a team of physiciss did actually stop a light beam. I suspect that light has a different wave length in a pure cold vacuum versus near the sun

[TrentePieds]

Quote: "Hell, I can beat that - I have a ruler that has 1/3 of inches (used in the old days for measuring printning spaces on forms)"

Well, no :-)! I doubt that it's not marked in 1/3s of inches. More likely it's marked in "double pica"s. There are 3 of those to the inch, but that's sort of incidental. The "pica" is a measure of length, specifically of line height, of which there are 12 to the inch. There's that magic number, 12, again, the one that the metric fanatics find so hard to tolerate :-)

My typographer's ruler is marked in 6 & 12 (points), i.e. in "half-picas" and picas, and just to put the icing on the cake, it is also marked in "agate" points, also known in the Sceptered Isle as "ruby" points, which are somewhere in the region of 5.5 "typographers points". There are dozens (literally) of other font sizes, and each size, in the old days, had to have it's own, appropriate "stick" for setting the type.

My stick has inches also, of course, since column widths are measured in inches while line heights are measured in points.

And I'll wager that even on Swiss and French computers the line heights in "word processors" are given in points. I'd hate to have to compose a newspaper page using only the "metric" system. Prolly not even doable - it would certainly drive you bananas!

There are days when I long for that smell of hot lead wafting in from the Linotype machines :-)!

TrentePieds