OT What is this? #

[Mr Macaw]

That must make school hell. We can change from one thing to another, like metres to kilometres simply by multiplying or dividing by 1000.

Meter, metre.

Wise words.

[Gordon Shumway]

You are one arrogant asshole. You asked what we Americans called it and when we answered you told us we are wrong. You sound a lot like our hubris asshole-in-chief in D.C.

[Muggles]

lb is one way we abbreviate pound, but # is a symbol we also use for pound.

[rbowman]

Octothorpe.

[Don Y]

Dash, pinch, tsp, tbsp, jigger, gill, etc.

Why? 2T = 1oz 2oz = "double" 2 doubles = gill 2 gills = cup

2 cups = pint, 2 pints = halfG, 2 halfG = G, etc.

But, most folks don't care. They buy things in a "familiar size" and think of that thing *in* that familiar size.

E.g., flour comes in 5 lb sacks; sugar (recently) in 4 lb. OJ comes in (nominally) 56 oz containers.

Do you buy your ketchup by the liter? (I suspect ketchup, here, is sold in a dozen or more different "sizes") What about your horseradish? And, are your spices sold in 1g, 10g and 100g units? Never "3g" or "7g"?

We also don't need to drag out a *scale* to bake things as we KNOW that chemistries tend to require common rations (e.g., 2:1, 4:1, etc.) and can use volumetric measures (instead of laddling ingredients onto a scale).

How big is an "egg"? Do you have metric dozens of eggs? Do you have 100 minutes in your hours? 100 days in your years?

"That must make school HELL!" -- having to remember TWO different schemes of measurement, one that deals with radix 10 and others that deal with 12's, 24's, 60's, 365's, etc.

Really? How many stones in a kg? How many 0's in a Billion?

[Mr Macaw]

Way too complicated. Metric is made that way for a reason. You seem to have chosen things that have 2 of something else in them. That is hardly ever the case. Yards in a mile? Pounds in a stone?

Easier when everything is in the same measure, either litres or kg.

All sorts of sizes, but we know what a gram is. The UNIT is always the same.

We can do that if we like. But a scale is easier to get that 4:1 ratio correct instead of guessing by how big the pile is.

It would be easier.

At least we made some of it easier.

Why would we use stones and kg?

[Mr Macaw]

That's the official name, but I've never heard anyone actually use it in everyday language.

[Mr Macaw]

And this one? =E2=80=BD

-- =

HELP WANTED: Baiters. Local fishing boats need 4 baiters to bate hooks for tourists. = Must have strong hands and work hard. Good pay-$15 per hour, and benef= its. After 6 weeks, 2 best baiters will be promoted to masterbaiters. Apply = in person to Jon at the Gulf Marina.

[Don Y]

Do you really think people *care* how many yards are in a mile? We buy *fabric* by the yard. We drive our cars *miles*. The fact that they are related is a consequence of the fact that they are both used to measure distances.

If you build a picket fence, are the slats 0.1 meters apart? Are each of them 1.0 meters tall?

Why do you have all those pesky other integers between 1 and 10? And, 10 and 100? Why not just label your "rulers" with a logarithmic scale: it's either 1mm, 10mm, 100mm or 1m. Anything else must make school HELL!

Why? If I tell someone I bought a "half gallon" of OJ, they know exactly what I mean! They can visualize the size, shape and weight of the container in their mind. The fact that it

*isn't* a "half gallon" isn't even important to them!

They buy a "sack of flour". Probably know that it is 5 pounds. But, that's beside the point. Esp as flour tends to be consumed in quantities of *cups*! Do you think people know how many cups of flour are in a 5 pound sack? Do you think they care? "I need to buy flour" or "I've got enough flour for this recipe" That;s all it takes. We don't weigh the remaining flour and check to see if it's enough for the next Rx we intend to make.

I guess our brains are capable of more complex assessments than expecting everything to "end in zero"...

Metric chickens?

Do you even *know* that there is "no such thing" as a "large egg"?

How do you grade your fruit? Measure the circumference and sort based on the nearest decimeter? Or, are "large oranges" no more precious than "tiny oranges"??

And, when you have a third person show up for dinner, do you scale the recipe (that "feeds two") up by a factor of *10*?

I guess we have learned to use *all* the numbers, on this side of the pond. Not just the "easy ones"!

[Don Y]

interobang.

Stop trolling. Go play in the street (or, would you prefer "roadway"?)

[Mr Macaw]

How big is an acre? Try to imagine it in terms of square yards. Not ea= sy.

It's when you're comparing a large size with a small size it gets diffic= ult. For example how many pints of milk can you get from a 7 gallon dru= m?

There's the problem again, you buy a sack of flour. How many cups can y= ou get out of it?

You need to know how much of your recipe you can make with each sack.

Our numerical system is base 10, it makes sense to do calculations based= on 10.

Obviously everything can't be made metric.

WTF=E2=80=BD Of course there is. There will be measurement for it to q= ualify as such.

You buy them by the kg.

We use the same numbers, but we don't have to remember how many of each = thing goes into each other thing.

-- =

Peter is listening to "Pogues with Sinead O'Connor - I'm a man you don't= meet every day"

[Mr Macaw]

e:

I didn't think anyone had ever heard of that. I've certainly never seen= it used before.

It was just a question. Why do you consider it trolling?

Road for a route between towns. Street in a residential area. Don't yo= u know anything?

-- =

Reason to smile: Every 7 minutes of every day, someone in an aerobics cl= ass pulls a hamstring.

[Don Y]

We don't imagine acres in terms of square yards. I doubt many people want to cover their lawns with FABRIC!

How many liters in a swimming pool? How many liters does your BATHTUB hold? (presumably most homes HAVE bathtubs -- wouldn't their owners want/need to know how much water they can contain??)

Why are water heaters 40G, 50G, 80G, etc. Why not 150liters? (Ooops! Make that 100 liters cuz 150 is such an "odd" number!)

I don't know anyone who buys milk in 7 gallon drums. But, there are 8 pints in a gallon, so I'd guess 56.

How many thumbtacks in a kg of thumbtacks? How many sheets of paper in a kg of paper? How many sheets would you need to cover your back yard with paper??

We don't care. How many servings of french fries can you salt with a kg of salt? How many hotdogs can you dress with a liter of mustard?

How many nails in a pound of 6d nails? Or, do you buy nails "per each"? Ditto screws? Other hardware?

I have *one* recipe that uses 5 pounds (plus 2C) of flour. Every other recipe uses some handful of cups (typ 3).

Yes. 3 * 7 = 21 radix 10. What's so hard about that?

No, there isn't. There is a large *dozen* but not a large *egg*.

And, you don't sort "large" (premium) from "small"?

Bye, troll!

[Don Y]

[rbowman]

0x23 ascii. Programmers get a little strange in their everyday language.

[Mr Macaw]

The last four words in your sentence were unnecessary.

[Mr Macaw]

Don't toppost.

ote:

-- =

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides = gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

[Mr Macaw]

:

It is convenient when comparing how many times bigger someone's land is = to yours, when one of you has a lot more of it.

Those are very useful when working out how long it will take to heat or = fill one.

I've never heard a water heater called any of those things.

So much easier when it's 10 or 100 for everything.

Why are you confusing weight with numerical amounts?

You would if you owned a restaurant.

We buy a pack of 100 or 1000 nails. Why the f*ck would we weigh them? = I know for a project I will need a certain number of them. So many per = plank of wood etc.

Much easier when everything is in g and kg.

Remembering how many of each thing is in each bigger thing.

o qualify as such.

Yes there is. I can buy small medium or large eggs.

I pick up the ones I want from the shelf and put them in a bag, then wei= ght them. I pay so much per kg.

Premium oranges would be on a different shelf.

And here I was thinking you were at least capable of a sensible discussi= on, even if you are wrong.

-- =

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides = gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

[bob_villain]

...your being here is unnecessary.

[Dean Hoffman]

A bunch snipped.

I don't know how city people measure lot sizes. We measure farm ground in terms of sections (640 A) , half sections (320 A) , quarter sections (160 A), then 80s and 40s. A parcel of ground for sale might be advertised as a quarter but containing 156.83 acres. The odd numbers are because the roadways are included in the general description I gave at the start. Oh, almost forgot. A section is one square mile.

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