It’s been said that Americans will measure in anything but the metric system. While it’s not strictly true, news journalists and others love measuring things in football fields, washing machines, and large boulders the size of small boulders.
Now, we have a new thing for you to measure in. Yesterday, Lewin wrote about how the gas tank of a Geo Metro has more energy than a GMC Hummer EV’s battery. That’s all fine and good, but Abdominal Snoman has a great way to measure things:
Personally I prefer to convert everything to calories… A gallon of gas has the same calories as 49 big macs and the metro burns 1.2 big macs per mile.
Many of you have been reading our work for long enough to know every little thing that’s happened over the years. It wasn’t that long ago when David Tracy had alternators under trees and a backyard mud pit. Now he’s cleaned up and oh yeah, quoted by the Times.
Nsane In The MembraNe gets it:
From shower spaghetti to being in the goddamn Times style section….the hollywoodification of our dearest boi is finally complete!
Don’t worry friends, we have others to continue the chaos! I’ve taken over the hoarding while the Notorious SWG is the wrencher extraordinare.
Earlier today, Matt asked in his Morning Dump about what would help an affordable EV sell. V10omous has a good idea:
I’m sure there’s a fancier formula than this out there, but to me 100 miles of range per $10,000 MSRP seems reasonable for a next-gen EV.
Also if the Express can just hang around a bit longer, it is eligible to run for President in 2032 (born January 1996). Can’t be worse than our current options.
I’m not going to touch that last bit, but it’s hilarious to think of a Chevy Express in the Oval Office and flying on Air Force One.
Here’s your random AirVenture photo of the day. Have a great evening!
What could possibly be more American than the smoot?
“a unit of length, defined as the height in 1958 of Oliver R. Smoot who later became the chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and then the president of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).”
If that isn’t an example of American measurement ruling (ha!) international standards of measurement, I don’t know what is,
The Smoot!!! I got to see the memorial plaque years and years ago! Fun fact: the markings are maintained every year, and Cambridge PD uses them as official references when reporting on incidents that occur on the bridge.
I also keep forgetting to add it to list of favorite MIT hacks, including one of the first, when some students reworked the blackboard pulley system to operate according to what could best be described as slapstick comedy rules
I know a,guy who jokingly quotes gas mileage in rods per hogshead
What’s the conversion factor? And what in the Sam Hill is the unit of hogshead??
A hogshead is 1/4 of a tun, in modern usage, 54 gallons of beer, or 63 gallons of wine (go figure). A rod is 1/320 of a mile or 16 1/2 feet so it’s an incredibly irrational measure.
Not to be confused with a butt-load.
A butt is two hogsheads 🙂
Also plutonium should be considered the worlds best pre-workout at 20 million calories or about 52.6 million mcdoubles per 1 gram but nooooo there’s such things as radiation sickness and apparently it’s not healthy. Smh man i just want my G A I N S
Write in Chevy Express. (At least then the candidate will be selected by voters)
It’s a ride-in write-in
When describing the size of something it is important to use a banana for scale, and if it is a very big object, to use a giraffe for scale
This is suitably Dull.
In a recent report in The Times newspaper (the London one) some big round stones that had been flung from a trebuchet at a castle were described as weighing about the same as an adult giant panda. Although some smaller stones were roughly the weight of three cabbages.
Once my son was regularly buying lunch in school, he would measure the cost of things in $6 sandwiches. If it was a t-shirt that cost 4 sandwiches or more, he would pass.
There are several home grown units of measurement in the USA that most of us are familiar with.
The Shitload. That’s any number more than you can count without moving your lips.
The Crap Ton. Usually refers to a quantity of heavy objects.
The Fuckload. When a Shitload just doesn’t do it justice.
Ah yes, that reminds me of the old trick question: which is heavier, a crap ton of feathers or a crap ton of bricks?
A crapton of feathers. Not only do you have the weight of the feathers but you also have to carry the weight of what you did to all those birds.
Don’t forget the hybrid unit: metric shitload.
Not to be outdone by the metric fuck-ton.
Username checks out.
Wasn’t that usually reserved for nuclear science? “That was a one metric fuck ton explosion”.
One of my favorites that I probably use daily.
That should be a metric f*ck-tonne.
Spelling was never my strong suit. That’s why I teach shop.
It’s just the difference between the imperial ton and the metric tonne. From what I understand the US ton is 2,000lbs, whereas the metric tonne is 1,000kgs or 2,204.62lbs. So you get more for your money.
That’s how NASA crashed that probe into Mars a while back. One contractor used metric shitloads, while another used Imperial shitloads.
Where as the Geo Metro is really 2.3 Smoots long, but the Smoot get’s no respect outside of Boston
Plus one ear.
I know more than a few (current & former) Cambridge residents who would vigorously disagree.
And they’d make fun of you for that, too.
Should have made my comment a reply to this, but Oliver R. Smoot later became the chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and then became the president of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) so I’d say that Smoot has international recognition.
Oh man I’m all about changing from mpg and mpge to BMpm(Big-Macs per mile). Meet the new freedom unit!
Would you like a side of freedom fries per mile with that?
Always
Super-size, of course. (How many BMpm would that be?)
Vacationing in Mexico, I gave up trying to convert dollars to pesos and started using the Margarita exchange rate. If a t-shirt was 2,000 pesos that was 3 Margaritas or about 15 bucks.
Ok, the monkey in the Tiny Tug is fucking adorable.
Yes it is, we need an article about that Tiny Tug,
I second that!
I want to see the aircraft that Tiny Tug is pulling. I suspect it is also adorable.