Conference thebay::joyoflex

    Re .0:
    
    From _American Heritage_:  "1. A cask.  2. An English measure of
    capacity equal to about 68 liters, or 18 gallons.  [ME < MDu.
    kindekijn, dim. of kintal, hundredweight < Med. Lat. quintale < Ar.
    qintar [accents omitted], ult. < Lat. centum, hundred.]".
    
    
    				-- edp 

Swell. But who used the measure?  And what for?  Was it popular in the 
winemaking trade?  Was it used for molasses?  Obviously it can be used 
for anything measured in gallons, but does it have an association with a 
particular trade?
					>>>==>PStJTT

    In "Captains Courageous" the catch of fish is weighed out in Quintals.

    	Beer has traditionally been measured in firkins, which are
    obviously close kin. A firkin was a common size for a beer barrel.
    There is a group of pubs in Britain that all brew their own beer,
    and all have names like "The Fox and Firkin", "The Goose and Firkin",
    ...

re: .4  That sounds firkin ridiculous!  ;-)

-- Sam

    	Anyone care to tell us how many Gills to a Firkin then???

    The length of the Harvard Bridge at M.I.T. is measured in smoots.
    
    John

    Furlongs per fortnight.  I think this was from a list of 
    corollaries to Murphy's Law (any measurement will be in units
    of least convenience...or something like that).
    
    JP

    re .7
    
    A smoot is the circumference of the body of a chubby MIT student whose last
    name was Smoot.  He was so drunk one night, he couldn't make it
    back to his frat, so his fraternity brothers had to roll him across
    the bridge, thus measuring the bridge in smoots.  The length of the 
    bridge, by the way, is 364.4 smoots plus one ear.  
    

    re .9:
    
    Actually the story is a bit more involved than that.
    
    Mr. Smoot was a freshman at the time and had an assignment to measure
    the bridge in an obscure unit. Being a freshman, he procrastinated
    until the night before to do the assignment. However, that night
    there was a party in the frat and Mr. Smoot got totally sh*tfaced.
    Being in a frat, brothers are supposed to take care of each other
    so they decided to help him out, but since he was only a "pledge",
    they used him as the unit of measure, rolling him across the bridge
    and marking off smoots as they went.
    
    Now every year the incoming pledges have to roll an effigy of Mr.
    Smoot across the bridge while repainting all the marks (at increments
    of ten smoots).                     
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /                                                     
    
    P.S. I've heard that they didn't actually roll him all the way, but 
    	instead measured his waist and marked it off in a more rational 
    	manner.
        

    There's a VMS SYSGEN parameter called �fortnights, which 
    supposedly determines the amount of time the system waits 
    at a password prompt.
    
    MATT
    
    PS - RE: Smoots
    
         Isn't there a footrace accross the bridge every year or
         something?  I noticed a few "colorful" phrases at some
         of the markings, apparently meant to urge on competitors.

At least two footraces cross the Harvard Bridge (at Mass. Ave. near MIT):

-- The Tufts 10K for Women (n�e Bonnie Bell)

-- The Freedom Trail

They all use the street, however.

For a real mind blower, ask your favorite E.E. type to explain "Ohms per 
Square".  The neat thing is that it's not ohms per square inch or ohms per 
square milimeter or ohms per square mile or ...

Re: .12

Why did you feel the need to explain the location of the HARVARD Bridge.
Everyone knows it's near MIT!

    How about a _rod_?
    
    A rod is 5.5 yards or 16.5 feet.
    
    It was (is?) used as a measure of highway widths among other things.
    

The rod is one of those measures that I like because it carries some
history with it.  Surveyors used the unit rod because they used a
physical rod of standard length to do the measuring.  Likewise, they
used chains, so there is a unit called a chain (66 feet), and a unit
called a link (0.66 feet). (The links looked like short rod segments
with a loop at each end.) Engineers have a different sized chain unit
(100 feet) but I don't know why. 

The British have a measurement called the "rood" which is a quarter 
acre.  Any of the British folks out there care to tell us, why a rood?

					>>>==>PStJTT

    WAG.
    One of the meanings of the word "rood" is "crucifix", or "Cross
    of Christ". If you draw a cross on an acre you divide it in four
    pieces, each a quarter acre ?
        

The stuff back there about "firkin" reminds me of a silly pseudolimerick:

	There was a young man named Dirkin
	Who always was jerkin' his gherkin
	Said his wife to Dirkin
	Stop jerkin' your gherkin!
	You're sherkin yer firkin' you bastard!



/Eric

    I remember reading somewhere that British liquid measures were all
    binary units: that is, each larger unit was double the last.  This
    applied to no matter what was being measured, as long as it was
    liquid.
    
    I can't remember or find the table now--but it was things like:

    	2 oz. = ?
    	2 cups = pint
    	2 pints = quart
    	2 quarts = gill?
    	2 gills? = gallon
    	2 gallons = firkin
    	2 firkins = half-hogshead
    	2 half-h = hogshead
    
    	etc.

    Re .19:

    I can still remember some of this from early childhood:
        
>   	2 cups = pint
>   	2 pints = quart
>   	2 quarts = gill?	} Hence, 4 quarts = 1 gallon ...
>   	2 gills? = gallon	} ... quart == quarter-gallon
    
    But the part about the gill (pronounced jill) is wrong. Depending on
    your place of origin within the British Isles you believe (and will
    assert with your dying breath) that a pint contains either two or
    four gills.

    re .20:
    
    > ...that a pint contains either two or four gills.                    
    
    I realize that this is not up to a vote, but I'd vote for a gill being
    a half-cup rather than a cup.
    
    re .19:
    
    then how do you account for a tablespoon (TBS)?
    
    	1 TBS = 3 tsp (teaspoon)
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
    

    	Cups, tablespoons and teaspoons were always relatively inexact
    cookery measures.
    
    	A tradesman selling cream by the gill (yes, it was less than
    a pint, and so more appropriate for cream) could be prosecuted if
    his measure was innacurate.
    
    	On the other hand, a ha'penny was exactly an inch in diameter,
    and a penny was exactly a third of an ounce, so you could measure
    most things with your small change if you could remember a few
    conversion tables.

A (U.S) gill is 1/2 cup.  2 quarts are a pottle.

Martin.

    A tablespoon is about the amount that fits into the cupped
    palm of your hand which may be why it took three teaspoons
    to make one table spoon.
    

    Re: .20  I don't know which part of the British Isles you have to
    come from to think there are 2 gills to a pint.  There are 4, and
    always have been.  It is also a legal measure, so not subject to
    regional variation.  Spirits in UK bars are dispensed in measures
    of 1/6 gill.
    
    Jeff

    Re: .25
>   I don't know which part of the British Isles you have to
>   come from to think there are 2 gills to a pint.  There are 4, and
>   always have been.  

    Well, I did say that proponents would assert their favourite value
    with their dying breath ...
    
    My  recollection is that the 4-gills-to-a-pint measure is valid
    in the south of England -- specifically in London -- and that the
    half-pint measure is prevalent in the midlands and points north.

    Not sure about Scotland or Wales, though; and it certainly is possible
    that the London-based bureaucracy has by this time managed to force
    the 4 gill measure down the throats of the entire populace ...     :^)

    ... and on behalf of the readers of this conference, since I will be 
    in Reading at the end of this month, followed by a side trip to the 
    north of England, I shall conduct a little practical research into 
    the question of regional variations in the size of the gill measure.
    
    Assuming that the burdensome task of exploring a statistically valid
    sample of bars, inns and taverns does not prove overwhelming, I
    will report my results to you at a later date.

    forget the gills, and stick to the firkins. beer is better than
    spirits in the north of england. while we are on measures, normally
    there is not more than a furlong between pubs in a lancashire town,
    though if you are swaying enough, it can seem a nautical mile.

From VNS, 16-Mar, reporting an article in the Boston Globe of 13-Mar-1987:

> Suddenly, a Metropolitan Police helicopter appears overhead. While the pilot
> nimbly bobs above the scene, one officer shines a 3-million candlepower
> searchlight on an accident, making it bright as day.

Candlepower, no less!  I wonder how many bushels of beeswax one that big
takes?

OK, the purists will say that light output cannot be directly equated to
power input (watts),  but when did _you_ last shop for a 100 candlepower
lightbulb?  In any case, I thought the unit of light output was 'lumens'.

Jeff.

There is an International Standard Candle.  In terms of spherical 
output, it's 12.6 lumens.  I've never seen an ISO candle-making 
standard, but who knows?
				>>>==>PStJTT

    I always thought "Jeroboams per Millibar" would be a
    good measure for something, but could never figure what.

    re -.1
    
    ... the increase in the amount of fire-water needed to withstand
    a futher change in atmospheric conditions?
    

    ...the number of bureaucrats needed to create a tempest in
    a teapot?
    
    --bonnie

    My undergraduate chemistry textbook estimated the vapor pressure
    of Tungsten to be approximately "1 molecule per unverse".

    re .34:
    
    I always thought an "unverse" was what you got when you took an
    epic poem (such as _The Odyssey_) and transformed it into prose.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Back in my college years when we still used slide rules, very small
    measurements were estimated in RCH's.  I don't know if this unit
    of measure is still common at engineering schools or whether it,
    too, had gone the way of the slide rule.

    Re: .36:
    
    If that's the same measure as I learned in the Navy, some study claimed
    that the diameter of human hair differed depending on what the color
    was.  Red was found to have the smallest diameter. 

    Okay, so what's an RCH? Red Colored Hair? 
    
    	Jon

    
    >        Okay, so what's an RCH? Red Colored Hair? 
    
    
    You many be sorry you asked, but the answer is a qualified yes,
    but not the usual interpretation.
    
    This sort of reminds me of an old Gary Moore "To Tell the Truth
    Program".  The three contestants all claimed to be an airline pilot.
    Bill Cullen asked one of them if he belonged to the _Mile High Club_.
    Afterwards, Gary Moore asked Bill Cullen what the Mile High Club
    was.  Cullen replied, "If you want to stay on the air, you'd better
    not pursue that one!"

    The "C" in RCH stands for a four-letter word of Anglo-saxon origin,
    that could be taken as sexually offensive and therefore not repeatable
    in mixed company such a Notes file.

    "Red Crotch Hair" drops it to a PG rating.
    
	When I was in Engineering School (Drexel) we mused that
    the National Bureau of Standards should adopt a national
    standard RCH.
    
        I distinctly remember a BMW commercial a few years ago which
    attempted to demonstrate the BMW's maneuverability by showing an
    accident in which the BMW narrowly escaped disaster by swerving
    and otherwise avoiding all the other cars which wree taking aim
    at it. As the BMW drove out of the scene, its rear license plate
    was visible. The license number was "RCH 123". Honest.
    
    jim
    

    re:.37
    
    "Red [hair] was found to have the smallest diameter."
    
    My first thought upon reading this was: "But red has the longest
    wavelength in the visible spectrum!"
    
    Strange how some minds work.
    
    --- jerry

    So what would you measure in "mickeys" ?

Re: .43
		Beer consumption, e.g.  "I had six mickies and decided 
to go for a drive..."
					>>>==>PStJTT

    Fractions of mice ?

    Finns?
    
    Talking of drinks, in the early '60s the Milk Marketing Board used the
    word 'Mickey' (or maybe 'Micky') for a chocolate flavoured milk drink.
    I could imagine someone having 'a five-Mickey stomach ache' from
    over-indulgence therein.
        
    b
     

    re: .35 i thought the unverse of poetry was merely prosaic?

    
    This note tweaked somethng in my very dim memory. I went to my archives
    and found it: an article from Scientific American on toxicology.
    
    The article opens with a page of 9 pictures of a Blue Jay eating
    a moth. The first five show him in various poses, tearing apart
    the moth and swallowing it. Frame no. 6 shows the Blue Jay with
    feathers erect, in an expression of surprise. Frame no. 7 shows
    the Blue Jay puking over the side.
    
    The article (serious - honest!) is about the way toxicologists
    assess the toxicity of various plants. The measure is
    (are you ready?) the Blue Jay Emetic Unit, or BJEU, defined as
    
    	The Blue Jay Emetic Unit represents the number of Blue Jays
    	that will be made ill by the poisons in one monarch butterfly
	raised on a given plant.
    
    The symbol for the unit is a puking Blue Jay.
    
    This article appeared in Scientific American in the early '70s,
    although I neglected to copy the exact date of issue, I have several
    pages from the article.
    
    -Glinch_who_collects_weird_medical_papers
    
    

re: < Note 321.48 by CHARON::MCGLINCHEY "Get a Bigger Hammer" >

>                         -< Blue Jay Emetic Units >-

   Anyone not wishing to read more about BJEUs should probably press
   'NEXT UNSEEN' now...


>      	The Blue Jay Emetic Unit represents the number of Blue Jays
>    	that will be made ill by the poisons in one monarch butterfly
>	raised on a given plant.

   How intriguing...  However, I need a clearer definition on this before I
   run off and start using BJEUs to measure things.  (It seems a wonderful
   measurement for the "relative disgustingness" of various bugs we run into
   around here.  ALL-IN-1 in particular should rate highly on the BJEU
   scale...) 

   Is it a percentage-of-population figure?  That is, "the percentage of
   bluejays in a given sample that will get sick when fed a butterfly".  Or
   is it the number of bluejays a single butterfly will sicken?  If the
   latter case, how does one divvy up the butterfly?  Is there a standard
   for the minimum amount of butterfly per bluejay?

>    The symbol for the unit is a puking Blue Jay.

   Yes, but how do we "iconify" this symbol?  Is there a standard PBJ 
   character in the typesetting industry?

   Please respond!  Inquiring minds want to know!  (I think we may be onto
   something here - a whole new product quality rating system!)
   
   -- Sam  :-)

    
    The puking Blue Jay is shown as an icon in the article I've
    mentioned.
    
    I will gladly send a copy of the article to all who wish one.
    Please send me mail at CHARON::MCGLINCHEY.
    
    Enquiring minds will be informed.
    
    - Glinch.

    
    re: .48
    
    	I've found it, folks. The original Puking Blue Jay article.

    	Brower, Lincoln Pierson: "Ecological Chemistry", Scientific
    	American, February 1969 (cover Article), pp 22-29
    
    	Incidentally, P. 13 of same issue has a Digital ad for the
    	PDP-8: "Hit a button and a glorious, 4096-word, core memory,
    	integrated circuit, 1.5 uSec fast, FORTRAN-speaking general
    	purpose computer pops up."
    
    
    	-Glinch.

    	Something is wrong. The PDP-8 used discrete transistors, not
    integrated circuits. The PDP-8/I was the first one to use 74 series
    TTL integrated circuits. Also, you needed at least 8192 words of
    memory for Fortran.

    
    The ad is for the PDP, as a product line, include 8/I, 8/M, etc,
    not for a specific PDP-8 model. Nothing is wrong.
    
    -Glinch.
    
    

    micro-year = 31.5576... secs
    
    furlong/fortnight (fine for snails, but a bit slow for full-duplex
    carrier pidgeons).

    Furlong = 'furrow long' (they had longer fields in those days).
    A bit much for a snail, I'd've thought. But what's wrong with
    furlongs: 40 rods poles or perches - what could be more intuitively
    apt?
    
    Re: fortnight
    
    What about the old "se'nnight" (or week)?
    
    b

Here's something culled from another file:
    
              <<< ICO::$1$DUA4:[NOTES$LIBRARY]FOLK_MUSIC.NOTE;1 >>>
                                -< Folk_Music >-
================================================================================
Note 227.3                       Iain MacIntosh                           3 of 6
WARDER::BATTY "Tone Deaf Technologist"               42 lines  16-NOV-1987 05:15
                           -< Albums and Mars Bars >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    .
    .
    .
    I remember a newspaper over here in the UK used a candy bar whose
    price had kept exact pace with inflation as a comparison medium
    for changes in value over the years, ie a washing machine in 1966
    cost 3000 Mars bars, in 1986 it cost 1000 Mars bars, therefore in
    relative terms the cost of the washing machine had dropped by 200%.
    Maybe we could use the Hershey Bar as a common denominator, or maybe
    I should post this discussion somewhere else.
    
    Mike

    I tend to use 52-page comic books.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Re .56: If its price had dropped by 200% they would be paying you
    to take it away.

Percentages can be figured many ways.  For example, when I was in school 
and an instructor was showing the class how to price their goods, he 
taught us if we wanted to make a 50% profit on an item that cost $1 to 
make, we would charge $2, (not $1.50 as springs to mind) because the $1 
(profit) is 50% of the $2 final price.  This is the "mark-up" method of 
figuring.  But if we wanted to have a sale and say "prices marked down 
50%" we'd reduce the price to $1.50 since 50� is half the mark-up.

					>>>==>PStJTT

    Re .19
    
    > I remember reading somewhere that British liquid measures were all
    > binary units
        
    Even Brits replied to this one, but no one ever corrected it?
    
    > 2 cups = pint
    
    2.5 cups = pint

    The U.S.A. is slightly more binary than the British, for liquids.
    
    Even the U.S.A. keeps the British measures for certain non-liquids,
    such as strawberries and blueberries.  The U.S.A. invented its own
    liquid measures, though, by increasing the size of an ounce (cup,
    teaspoon, etc.) by about 4% and reducing the size of a gallon (pint,
    hogshead, etc.) by about 16%.
    
    Curiously, the barrel remains unchanged.
    
    Don't know about the gills.  I'll have to recommend 2 gills per
    fish.
    
    I once complained to a newspaper that ice cream is fraudulently
    labelled (in the U.S.A.).  Ice cream is sold in dry form (frozen,
    'cause if it were sold in liquid form, then the trapped air would
    escape and they'd have to give you more product for your money).
    But instead of delivering half of a dry gallon, they only deliver
    half of a liquid-measurement gallon.  Some standards bureaucrat
    replied that this practice conforms to regulations.

    Land in Japan is measured in tsubo.  However, the size of a room
    is measured in (I think) jo, the size of a standard tatami mat.
    (In English we say a 6-mat room, so I'm not sure if I rendered
    the Japanese correctly.)  One tsubo is exactly twice the size of
    a mat.  Why separate measurements?
    
    How about units of weight?  In Hong Kong, a unit weight of gold
    is a tael.  In Thailand, the traditional unit was a baht, though I
    think they've switched to grams.  The unit of currency in Thailand
    is also baht.  So shouldn't gold prices be stated in baht/baht?

    re: .30

    There is in fact a standard candle.  It's 5/8 inch diameter,
    and the materials in the wax and the wick are specified.


    Q: Which weighs more, a once of feathers, or an ounce of gold?

    A: An ounce of gold.  Gold is weighed in troy ounces.

    -Jeff Bell

    G'day
    
    and a standard day is I recall
    
     1013.1 kilopascals @ 16C at sea level
    
    
    I think I would prefer to be hit on th ehead by an ounce of gold than
    an ounce of feathers, provided it was not dropped fro mtoo far away...
    
    
    derek

    WRT: Ounce of gold and ounce of feathers --  the other question
    is "Which is heavier, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers?"
    
    The feathers -- although a troy ounce is heavier than an avoirdupois
    ounce, there are only twelve troy ounces in a pound, versus sixteen
    avoirdupois ounces.
    
    					andrew

    Which takes up more space, a pint of water or a pint of wheat?

    (This question is meaningful only in the U.S.A. and its colonies.
    It shouldn't even be understandable in most of the world, though
    alas it still is.)
    
    (Spoiler, with anecdote, follows)
    
    I once complained because vendors of ice cream in the U.S.A. put
    false sizes on their products.  The container sizes would be
    correct for liquids in the U.S.A., but not for dry goods, which
    are the same sizes as imperial measures.  (And of course ice
    cream is sold in dry form because they can charge for the air
    that's whipped into it, whereas if it were sold in liquid form,
    they'd have to deliver more product.)  I was told that legal
    regulations require these frauds.

    I just heard of a new measurement.
    
    Cluelessness (or braindeadness) is measured by the "Odie"
    (that canine dude that keeps driving Garfield crazy)
    
    -Jody
    

    Ooooh, I LIKE, I LIKE!
    
    I have a neighbor who'd have to be measured in kilo-odies.
    
    --bonnie

    The amount of beauty required to launch one ship?
    
    the milli Helen

    The amount of talent required to lose one award?
    
    the milli Vanilli

    The amount of water required to submerge one PDP-8E?
    
    One millipond

    g'day,
     re -.1
    not a microkettle?
    
    djw

    The number of puppies in the White House?
    
    
    A Millie-Litter

Hey, Tom - 



If	One Helen = A face that will launch a thousand ships

and	One Millihelen = A face that will launch one ship




Does	-1 Millihelen = A face that will sink a ship?

> Does	-1 Millihelen = A face that will sink a ship?

No, that's one Dangerfield, or Rod for short.  Familiar uses of the term:

rodents are a particularly ugly race of trees in Fangorn, Middle Earth.
You build a ship out of rodent wood - it sinks itself.

the Idiotarod is that Alaska sled race for the mentally and facially deficient

a doo rod rod rod, a doo rod rod

... that should be enough

    Maybe negative millihelens represent how many ships
    have been put into drydock rather than actually sunk.