Google Maps rolls out the Mesopotamian nil-cubit

Those among you who recently adopted the new Vulture Central standards of volume, length, area and, critically, the speed of sheep in a vacuum, might be interested to learn that Google Maps has decided to offer a few alternatives of its own. So, if you were ever wondering just how far it is from Dallas to New York in Babylonian …

[Sam]

further questions

How many Gives to the Monkeys?

And if you really want to go down this road, if friction causes heat, how many fucks does it take to boil a kettle?

[toby powell-blyth]

More interestingly

Most interestingly, after being pivotally involved with creating the non-standard smoot,

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot)

Oliver Smoot later became Chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)[3] and President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). [4]

A beautifully poetic circle, IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Observation

I could argue that some of these units are obsolete, but that would seem to be a Smoot point.

[Cian Duffy]

@Sam

That would require extensive research in to the amount of heat energy released by a fuck, which would be extremely tedious if not rather fun.

[Torben Mogensen]

What mile?

I noticed that the list has "mile" as a measurement. But which mile? There are dozens of different miles around, so if they make so much effort defining half a dozen different cubits, why only one mile?

[Dan]

Chinese Imperial Cun

Fantastic, you couldn't make it up.

[Silo Spen]

Never forget...

...furlongs per fortnight.

Best unit ever.

[Adrian Jones]

Google convertor

Can convert speeds into Furlongs per fortnight.

Just type:

speed of light in furlongs per fortnight

into Google and hit Search.

It does less useful conversions like meters into feet and lbs to kgs too. Although I don't think it can cope with standard grapefruit and linguine yet.

[Zech Lim]

Chinese Imperial Cun

The word is pronounced as "chun" as in Wing Chun kungfu. In Chinese phonetics (HanYu Pinyin), "c" has the properties of "ch" as in "chair".

Admittedly, I couldn't help sniggering at the word either.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh I got it...

so a James over an Isaac over a Heinrich is only .587 Olivers??

Jeeze he was tall... or they were very short...

(Google: 1 Watt / 1 Newtons / 1 Hertz in Smoots )

[Daniel Bennett]

Chinese Imperial cun

I just keep adding a T on the end.

[Steve]

µFortnights

One of the VAX/VMS system parameters was officially listed as having units of "microFortnights", which according to the online help were approximated to as seconds (it's within 20%)

[Maty]

geeky? why?

Hellenistic military historians everywhere are swooning in rapture at finally getting someone else to work out distances in cubits. How long before we get it in proper stades as well? (Though when you think about it, the length in football pitches should do it. Stade=stadium geddit?)

[Anonymous Coward]

@Sam

Dunno about the friction but the calories burned by the participants are reckoned to be 200 dietary calories or 200,000 calories for half an hour which is almost enough for the standard kettle how many fucks that gets you is highly variable.

[Rob]

I drink a lot of tea...

... so you lot better start, think of it as practice for when the Olympics comes to town, they reckon we'll have a power shortage.

[Anonymous Coward]

Geeky

Extreme geekdom does not use furlongs per fortnight as unit of speed. Real geek would use hertz per diopter or Hz/dpt. You know you are troughbred geek if you:

a) know why and b) find it funny.