back to article Pints all round as Register Special Projects hacks hack off feet

It's official: El Reg's Special Projects Bureau will henceforth be operating almost exclusively in SI units. Yup, it's pints all round today as our imperial versus metric poll found readers overwhelmingly in favour of permanently chopping off feet and consigning quarts and ounces to the dustbin of history. No less than 1,773 …

COMMENTS

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  1. Code Monkey
    Thumb Down

    But but but

    [insert usual protest at the lack of jubs, elephants per second and Waleses]

  2. Mike Tree

    four by two?

    Even four by two isn't 4 inches by 2 inches!

    I would expect The Reg to continue using the least appropriate unit.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: four by two?

      Depends how pissed the sawing individual and their saw is! ;)

      1. Omgwtfbbqtime
        Boffin

        Re: four by two?

        The correct unit in this case is just a length of clue by four.

    2. Mage Silver badge
      Flame

      Re: four by two? 101.6 by 50.8.

      101.6 by 50.8.

      That's the un-planed size. So the "real" size is always significantly smaller.

      It's a minefield buying wood. Unless it's for the stove.

    3. Lars Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: four by two?

      is commonly used in metric countries too.

    4. Graham Wilson
      Facepalm

      Re: four by two? - - WRONG!

      Of course, it's only square, un-hip, old fashioned 'British Empire' places such as the UK and Australia that use "four by two" anyway.

      Cool, more with-it places, usually those on the western side of the Atlantic, would only ever say "two by four".

      And if you're a Woodie, then you'd never assume you'd be getting more than 45 x 95mm--err I mean 95 x 45mm--anyway! Even less if the timber is properly/finely dressed (not that IT types would ever want to know anything about such an erudite subject of course)!

      ;-)

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    5. Marshalltown

      Re: four by two?

      On an archaeological project in Israel, we needed wood to build screens (sifters to you Brits) and discovered that "1X4"s and "2X4"s (in the US the smaller number is listed first) were actually full sized rather than nominal. Here in the US the cross section of a "nominal" 2X4 is slightly less than two-thirds of the area of a fully dimensioned piece. Our Israeli screens actually were deeper than the equivalent US version built from "nominal" lumber. We had to sand the wood since it was all rough sawn, but that doesn't make that much of a change in dimension.

      The "explanation" usually given for the undersized lumber is that smoothing lumber to S4S requires removing 1/2 an inch in width and 1/4 inch in thickness. Humbug, I think. The parent "rough-sawn" pieces were under-sized to begin with.

      1. Pen-y-gors

        Re: four by two?

        Sifter???? The only time I would use that term is in "sugar-sifter", a sort of large salt-cellar for sugar, or in the context of sifting flour (to get the lumps out). Why would you need 2x4 (or 4x2) to make something to sift sugar/flour? Do you perhaps mean 'sieve'? ("Two peoples separated by a common language"....)

        1. jake Silver badge

          I remember sifting ... (was: Re: four by two?)

          ... boat-loads of soil at various digs between Yorkshire & the Antonine Wall on numerous weekends during my O & A-level studies. We used sifters, not sieves, and called ourselves "shifters & sifters".

          Perhaps "sieve" is a Welsh thing? (Yes, I'm assuming, but given the handle ...)

        2. davemcwish

          Re: four by two?

          @Pen-y-gors @Marshalltown I think you really mean a riddle.

    6. ian 22

      Re: four by two?

      "three metres of four-by-two"

      Oh God! We are doomed!

      1. Alan Edwards
        WTF?

        Re: four by two?

        > "three metres of four-by-two"

        > Oh God! We are doomed!

        That's nothing. Years back I did some work for a company that imported rock, by container, to make headstones and like out of.

        It was rated in something like "kilograms per square inch" for the container, thoroughly mixing imperial and metric...

    7. jake Silver badge

      Re: four by two?

      Here in the USofA, 2x4s are uniformly 1.5x3.5 inches, in many standard lengths. These days. I rarely reference Wiki, but see their article on "Lumber" for a fairly decent, if rough & minimal, overview.

      For example, this house is framed with standard 2x4 wall studs & attendant plates, sills & other crap that makes for a nice, tidy, square-cornered, box shaped rooms, with 8-foot ceilings, and convenient wall lengths with 16-inch on center studs that minimizes the number of 4x8 sheets of sheet-rock and insulation waste. Except here in the office/attic/dormers/shed-dormers space, which was a bitch to insulate, rock & mud. I still have nightmares ;-)

      On the other hand, the house my Great Grandfather built (1880s) is built from hand hewn Redwood timbers, like a barn. No two are alike. Most are between 6.5" and 8" square. The spaces between them were filled in with non-structural boards split from logs, inside is lath & plaster, outside is hand-split redwood shakes. There isn't a 90 degree corner in the place. Later, in the 1920s, a "modern" addition was built with full dimensional lumber. In other words, real 2"x4" and 4"x4" and 2"x6" boards (etc.). In the 1970s, my father & I added yet more floor space with the above mentioned "modern" 2x4s. Today, repairing the old girl is an exercise in "measure all angles & distances four times, draw it out, double check it in ACad[tm] (if I have that section in the computer yet), spill a drop to $DEITY, and hopefully cut once".

      1. Terry Cloth
        FAIL

        Back when an inch was an inch

        We had to repair the porch of our 1896 house---it was worn badly by a century of folks tramping in and out. So, it being made of 1" tongue & groove, the builder went out and bought some more. You can probably see this coming: looked at edge-on, the profile of the floor is now roughly

        ------------- \_______________/---------------

        ---------------------------------------------------------

        due to the fact that for modern timber, 1" nominal (isn't that a lovely phrase?) is actually 3/4". Shoulda shimmed it before installing, but who knew?

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: Back when an inch was an inch

          Next time, ask. There is a reason that I have a couple sizes of planer ...

          Probably the most important tip I can give to wannabe DIY folks: IF YOU DON'T FUCKING ALREADY KNOW HOW, ASK A PROFESSIONAL before you fucking cock up the entire project!

          As with IT, the devil is in the details ...

      2. The First Dave
        Pirate

        Re: four by two?

        Should probably just have used some Plasterboard, instead of sheets of rock...

  3. Jayce and the Wheeled Chairs
    Pint

    I shall celebrate with

    I shall celebrate with multiple 91.44cm of ale

    1. Lee Dowling Silver badge

      Re: I shall celebrate with

      So not just an unnecessarily accurate metric conversion, but also the wrong unit for the dimension involved anyway. Nice.

      P.S. Ignoring the mixture of units, "an eight by four sheet of 20mm MDF" and "three metres of four-by-two", would translate more to an 8km jaunt for a 2.5m by 1.2m slab of 20mm MDF, and three metres of 100x50mm, which are all perfectly manageable units, within the accuracy of wood-cutting (which is generally atrocious anyway), and actually used just as much, if not a lot more than "2 by 4" by anyone in the trade nowadays.

      P.P.S. if you really want to get finicky, you'd have to ask for 13/16ths MDF, which is just as silly as stating metric conversions to hundredths of millimetres for a 2.5m bit of wood.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I shall celebrate with

        "So not just an unnecessarily accurate metric conversion, but also the wrong unit for the dimension involved anyway. Nice."

        It is what we, on my planet, call "humour", at a guess. In the UK, we still have a thing call "a yard of ale", beloved of drunken stag night pub crawls and the like. Google it.

        1. Tom 13

          Re: I shall celebrate with

          He's a bleeding SI goon! What did you expect? Possibly the best reason of all to tell them to sod off regardless of poll results is that none of them have a sense of humor (or should that be humour?).

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: I shall celebrate with

            OI, I am the AC who told him to piss off, and I am a bleedin' SI goon too, so watch it, matey. I'll have you know that I actually laughed in public, once.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So you will be talking jubbly goodness in cm

    112cm DD lacks the punch of 44 DD

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Richard 120
      Happy

      but

      it sounds so much bigger so it can't be all bad.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "three metres of four-by-two"

    Think that is a perfectly ok description as seem to recall a ruling that "four-by-two" was considered to be descriptive name of the type of wood (and no-one really expected it to be exactly 4" x 2") which was sold by length - and it was the length that was controlled by weights and measures legislation and so had to be expressed in metres.

    1. Kevin Johnston

      4x2

      My understanding was that the 'raw - 4x2' size was the dimensions for sawn timber and if you went for the planed you would lose a little in size.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 4x2

        +/10% depending on where you're getting it from and how good (or caring) the operator is!

      2. Not_The_Droids
        Pint

        Re: 4x2

        A 2x4 is actually 1-5/8" x 3.5" - err, 41.28mm x 88.9 mm.

        And the last 4x8 x 20mm sheet of MDF I bought wasn't 48" wide either. I don't recall the exact width, but I do believe it was slightly larger.

    2. mccp

      "three metres of four-by-two"

      Most places I buy timber (in the UK) sell it by the metric foot, i.e. 0.9 M, 1.2 M, 1.5 M, etc. Therefore 'three metres' would be perfectly acceptable, but any other whole number of metres not divisible by 0.3 would not.

      Seems like a good compromise for the Imperial apologists.

      1. BoldMan

        Re: "three metres of four-by-two"

        I shall now be basing all my measurements on the "metric foot", utter brilliance!

    3. Graham Wilson
      Happy

      Perfectly so.

      Only recently, I had cause to measure and mark the ends of a 5M-long sling of timber. The sling was nominally marked 4" x 2" but I measured and end-marked each length of timber with a marker pen in millimeters, for example '5045' or '5020' etc. It's mm because that's what the standard says and what the building industry uses here in Australia.

      Technically--a la standard--this size would be 100 x 50 x 5000mm (unseasoned), 90 x 45 x 5000mm (dressed/finished), but even the dumbest would instantly know what '4 x 2 x 5000' or '4 x 2 x 5M' would mean. As with anyone with the vaguest clue about the subject, I'd interchange any of these terms without a second thought.

      BTW, a 'sling' is the term used for bundle of timber strapped together, the sort one often sees on the back of trucks etc.

  6. Sporkinum

    Interesting...

    I didn't know you Limeys said 4x2 and 8x4. Us 'Muricans say it the other way 2x4 and 4x8.

    1. mccp

      Re: Interesting...

      It's the same with sheet film formats for view cameras, Yanks say 4 x 5 and Brits say 5 x 4 (inches of course), same for 10 x 8, 7 x 5, etc.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Please rotate 90 degrees before exporting.

    3. Eddie Edwards
      Boffin

      Re: Interesting...

      Actually, 2x4 is not the same as 4x2. You need a left-handed saw to work with 2x4; right-handed for 4x2. Of course, most pros will have both, but for the money-conscious DIY enthusiast it's a bit of a pain at times. That's why the UK officially standardized on 4x2 after the B&Q scandal of 1987, although you can still find the occasional timber yard willing to sell you 2x4 "under the counter".

      1. jake Silver badge

        @Eddie Edwards (was: Re: Interesting...)

        "Actually, 2x4 is not the same as 4x2. You need a left-handed saw to work with 2x4; right-handed for 4x2."

        The exact opposite in Australia & NZ, of course. Same for reverse muffler bearings (chromed, or otherwise). I won't get into Melbourne Turned threads .. nobody can figure 'em out. I usually use an inverse angle grinder to remove 'em ... nearly any fast-ener is better & safer.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    missed the poll

    But surprised to see that height and weight are also not preferred exceptions to the metric rule - even my kids give their height and weight in feet/inches and stones/pounds - as does everybody else I know.

    On the same note, how many people actually know or state their clothes sizes (waist/chest/inside leg, etc) in cm? Again, none that I know.

    Oh and collar sizes too. :-)

    1. Greg J Preece

      Re: missed the poll

      But surprised to see that height and weight are also not preferred exceptions to the metric rule - even my kids give their height and weight in feet/inches and stones/pounds - as does everybody else I know.

      I don't. I try to use metric as much as possible these days. No idea what my weight is in either measure, but I've known for years that I'm 178cm tall.

    2. auburnman

      Re: missed the poll

      I'm kind of half and half on this due to metric being pushed in school when I grew up. I prefer people's height in feet and inches, but work weight in kilos almost exclusively. In fact I struggle to remember how much stones and ounces are in any meaningful terms.

      I think measurements of people mostly stick with the old imperial measurements because the numbers are easier to visualise, eg I can picture a man who is 5"6' but I struggle with 178cm. Maybe if Decimetres had been clearly labelled as one of our options when the metric conversion was on the go.

      1. Danny 4
        Headmaster

        Re: missed the poll

        @auburnman

        "...a man who is 5"6'..."

        Do you really mean 5'6"? As 6'5" is 196 cm.

        Go and (re)watch This is Spinal Tap (1984) for the consequences of mixing up minutes and seconds symbols.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: missed the poll

          You're not as confused as him - it's not your job to be as confused as him

      2. Rob Carriere

        Re: missed the poll

        OK, I can see that. Over here, we would describe this person as being "one metre 78", which may roll off the tongue a bit easier.

    3. mccp

      Re: missed the poll

      "how many people actually know or state their clothes sizes (waist/chest/inside leg, etc) in cm?"

      My wife and daughter for two - they can convert from any sizing system to their own dimensions in a couple microseconds.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: missed the poll

      Well all my clothes tend to have size 'M' in them, whatever that is

      1. Charlie van Becelaere
        Boffin

        Re: missed the poll

        "Well all my clothes tend to have size 'M' in them, whatever that is"

        That would size 1,000 if you're in Imperial clothing, but size 1,000,000 in SI garb.

        Glad to be of help.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: missed the poll

      Actually, I express my height and weight in both as needed, depending on who I am talking to. My Nordic SO finds the whole concept of inches baffling, too, which is a good incentive to be able to switch at will.

      That said, I do generally buy clothes in the UK, so I look for 44 inch chest rather than 112cm or whatever, and have to use google or similar as an ad-hoc unit converter otherwise. I suspect that is just because I find clothing sizes confusing.. As for collar sizes.. wot? They always confuse me, as the thickness of your neck seems loosely coupled with how long your torso is, or how wide your shoulders, so I often have to get people to measure me, if I am shirt shopping and they size them like that..

      1. Marshalltown

        Keeping the SO baffled

        ... is not a bad idea. Keeps the interest y'know.

        As regards collar sizes, I have long suspected that they are "nominal." I find that while my measured collar size is 19 inches, the "19 inch" size in a shirt collar when buttoned would cause strangulation.

      2. Irony Deficient

        baffling inches

        Anonymous Coward, is your Nordic SO unfamiliar with a unit called tomme, tommu, tum, or tuuma, depending upon the particular mother tongue? Call the inch a thumb, and it might make things clearer.

  8. pepper

    Londen Bus

    A distinct lack of London Busses if you ask me..

    1. Anomalous Cowturd
      Headmaster

      Busses?

      Don't worry laddie/lassie, you're not the only one in class to get that wrong.

      Saw it spelled that way on a road sign near my home. How I laughed.

      It's buses, by the way.

      1. keith_w
        Facepalm

        Re: Busses?

        Are you sure he wasnt looking for a kiss from a London lass?

    2. Stoneshop
      Coat

      Re: Londen Bus

      Just wait a little longer, and there'll be three at once.

  9. Elmer Phud
    Pint

    Pints!

    I trust we will be drinking U.K. 20oz pints and not the paltry U.S. 16oz 'pints'.

    I'll drink to it but only if . . .

    1. Code Monkey
      Pint

      Re: Pints!

      Those will be proper 568ml pints.

      Fluid ounces are one of those measurements I never have and never will understand (and I'm no whippersnapper).

      1. a cynic writes...

        Re: Pints!

        eh? Fluid ounces are a doddle - a fluid ounce is the volume of one ounce of water at room temperature. Pity they're not a lot use...too small for beer, too large for cooking.

    2. jake Silver badge
      Pint

      Actually, Elmer ... (was: Pints!)

      The liquid measure "pint" here in the US is 16oz, true. Thankfully, however, beer comes in 22oz bottles.. Who is paltry now? Regardless, as long as there is another homebrew in the fridge, who cares about the size of the transport?

      This round is on me :-)

      1. Not_The_Droids
        Pint

        Re: Actually, Elmer ... (was: Pints!)

        Yes, and the 22 oz is a 'bomber'. So, bomber > pint.

        Now, how about the forty? That's fine livin' right there. Grip & sip.

        1. jake Silver badge
          Pint

          @Not_The_Droids (was: Re: Actually, Elmer ... (was: Pints!))

          I have never seen anything that I would consider "beer" in a 40oz bottle. I've never heard the 22oz called "a bomber", either, but I have hear it refereed to as a "long pint". What side of the Sierra Nevada[1] are you on?

          [1] Mountain range, not beer.

        2. FrankAlphaXII
          Pint

          Re: Actually, Elmer ... (was: Pints!)

          You can only get fortys in certain states. Like go to Florida and ask for a Forty. You'll get a quart, or a 32 ounce bottle for those of you who are US unit challenged. True 40 oz bottles are illegal here.

          FL Statutes Title XXXIV

          ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES AND TOBACCO

          Chapter 563 - "BEER"

          Sub-Chapter 6

          Section 6

          All malt beverages packaged in individual containers sold or offered for sale by vendors at retail in this state shall be in individual containers containing no more than 32 ounces of such malt beverages; provided, however, that nothing contained in this section shall affect malt beverages packaged in bulk or in kegs or in barrels or in any individual container containing 1 gallon or more of such malt beverage regardless of individual container type.

          However, we call those 32 Oz. bottles "fortys" colloquially for some unknown reason because we're "spercial" (read: dumb as fucking rocks) like that, but its 8 ounces short. And given how stupid alot of people are here, they probably think a quart is 40 ounces.

          Its a damn shame the nearest place Ive ever seen a forty ounce to here was in Tennessee, where I bought one and proceeded to drink it in a field by a Wal-Mart while on my way back to Fort Sam Houston from Fort Campbell. Come to think of it we had them in Texas too.

          I dunno if we had them in Georgia because when I lived there we lived in a formerly dry county (it isn't anymore, the Navy skewed voting toward allowing drinking) by the Submarine Base, and then later moved across the State Line to Florida before my father left the Navy. Nobody bought booze in Georgia anyway, everyone just drove to Florida, taxes were lower (at the time anyway, that probably isn't true anymore) and you could buy booze on Sunday, after 9 AM anyway.

          So here's a beer, as long as it isn't 40 ounces. I don't need my door getting kicked in.

  10. Steve Evans
    Pint

    Didn't BMW try this once...

    ...with tyre sizes?

    Didn't work... So here we still are with width (mm) profile (%age) rim diameter (inches).

    And long may it continue!

    1. annodomini2

      Re: Didn't BMW try this once...

      And Austin-Rover, probably some of the french manufacturers too at the time, the reason the switch never stuck was simply cost, when metric tyres are twice the price of the nearest imperial size, which would you go for?

      You buy the imperial wheels from the previous model or some aftermarket alloys that fit the car in question and easily cover the price difference.

    2. John Arthur
      Thumb Up

      Re: Didn't BMW try this once...

      I think you have to blame the French, and Michelin in particular, for this piece of nonsense. They persuaded car makers to fit wheels with metric diameters to various vehicles, Montegos and Saabs as well as BMWs, and thus tied you buying replacement tyres from Michelin. Expensive they were too. I think the car manufacturers got the message from angry customers and dropped the idea tout de suite as they say.

    3. MJI Silver badge

      Re: Didn't BMW try this once...

      Normal tyres + aftermarket wheels cheaper than metric tyres

  11. John H Woods Silver badge
    Unhappy

    I miss the ounce...

    Having grown up in Germany I'm metric through and through, but it's god-awful for cooking - grams is useless for anything but salt and spices, and kilos anything but potatoes.

    I tried to lobby for a new ounce, being exactly 25g and having 20 to the new pound of exactly 0.5kg, but it never caught on :-(

    1. mccp
      Thumb Up

      Re: I miss the ounce...

      Great idea.

      Add 25mm to the new inch, 10 new inches to the new foot and 4 new feet to the new yard of exactly 1 metre.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I miss the ounce...

      Yeah, funny how something worked on for more than a thousand years and tested on ordinary people doing ordinary things every day of the lives turns out to actually work quite well. Just luck I guess.

      1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

        Re: Robert Long 1

        "Yeah, funny how something worked on for more than a thousand years and tested on ordinary people doing ordinary things every day of the lives turns out to actually work quite well. Just luck I guess."

        For varying definitions of "worked"? Almost every current imperial unit has had several different definitions over the period of time you suggest, many of them concurrent, for example. Fortunately the SI era brought some stability to the inch as it has has, since the early-mid 20th century, been defined in terms of SI units. A number of units of volume and weight are still different on either side of the Atlantic.

    3. Edwin
      Trollface

      Re: I miss the ounce...

      In Dutch shops, it's quite common to order by the ounce (100g) or pound (500g). Maybe blighty should slowly change the value of miles, pints and stone (wtf kind of unit is that???) so that in 50 years a metric transition can be made easily.

    4. John Arthur
      Happy

      Re: I miss the ounce...

      Same in Italy. Un etto is 100 grams and is used in grocers where we would use 4 oz or quarter of a pound. And even the French often use un livre which is a direct translation of one pound as a way of ordering 500 g or half a kilo.

    5. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: I miss the ounce...

      >and kilos anything but potatoes.

      That explains a lot of German cuisine then

    6. A J Stiles

      Re: I miss the ounce...

      31.623 g. would be a much better amount for an ounce. Because then, there would be exactly the same number of grams in an ounce as there were ounces in a kilo.

  12. Tim Worstal

    But, but

    There is an El Reg unit guide. As above, jubs and wales and so on. So why not go the whole hog?

    1. David Given
      Stop

      Re: But, but

      Is that an African or a European hog?

    2. Stoneshop

      Re: But, but

      So why not go the whole hog?

      As opposed to just the hog's head?

  13. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Squeeze hard

    > consigning quarts ... to the dustbin

    Or even putting them into a pint pot

  14. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    Long live imperialist dogma!

    What we actually need is not to try to fight but to embrace metrication and imperialism. In future averything should be 'ant' based with 100 ants to the foot, 10000 ants to the pound, 10^6 ants to the elephant ... The metric ant solves the problem ...

  15. Alan Esworthy
    Boffin

    sliding how fast?

    Aircraft altitudes, meanwhile, are commonly given in feet, as any pilot will tell you. Sure, there's a slow slide towards metres...

    That slide is only half-slow (or half-fast if you will). My estimate is about two score furlongs per fortnight.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Having first converted to decimal currency in 1966, metrication in Australia took place between 1970 and 1988:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia

    It was not at all painful, and we all managed to adjust.

    If we can do it, I suspect that anyone can.

    All it requires is the desire to do so.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Presumably because reducing the size of a pint of Australian "beer" is a benefit.

      "They don't spell it XXXX out of ignorance Lewis"

      1. Martin Budden Silver badge

        We don't all drink XXXX.

        Good pubs still sell good beer in proper pints (alongside the mega-swill available in some local measurement e.g. schooner).

  17. Alan Esworthy
    Coat

    There's an opportunity here

    Don't want to convert pints to half-litres? Then convert to .6 litres.

    We'd get a little more and we could call them "points" instead of "pints."

    1. Martin Budden Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: There's an opportunity here

      The Irish already ask for "a point o' the black stuff".

    2. jphb

      Re: There's an opportunity here

      Would those be metric pints by any chance?

  18. Sandtreader
    Joke

    Wood yard?

    Don't you mean an 8km drive to the wood 0.9144m?

    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      Re: Wood yard?

      Indeed. The sun was way over the 0.9144marm by the time I wrote that, so I was already on my third pint.

      1. jake Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Wood yard?

        "0.9144marm"?

        Is that what you lot call our elementary school "0.9144Mduty" in Primary School?

        Have a fourth, on me ;-)

  19. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Meh

    Pah!

    I still (and will continue to) use whatever measurement system is appropriate for the job. I got a new kitchen sink today, to my surprise it turned out to be exactly 1 broken stick long. Wasn't that convenient?

  20. Steve Todd

    Aircraft altitude is frequently quoted in feet

    But pressure is quoted in either inches of mercury or millibars. Hence the following radio exchange between a US aircraft and UK air traffic control:

    AT: Descend to altitude 10,000 feet on a QNH of 1015

    AC: Can you give me that in inches

    AT: Certainly, descend to an altitude of 120,000 inches on a QNH of 1015

    1. Steve Todd

      Re: Aircraft altitude is frequently quoted in feet

      (QNH is the air pressure at sea level for those not in the know)

  21. Lonesome Twin
    Coat

    I resemble...

    ... having to work out fuel consumption in Miles per Litre. It always leaves nasty decimal places.

  22. Irony Deficient

    lessons from Pastor Niemöller

    First they came for the ell,

    and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a seamster.

    Then they came for the rood,

    and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a surveyor.

    Then they came for the scruple,

    and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t an apothecary.

    Then they came for the pint,

    and there was no one left to draw one for me.

  23. Schultz
    Pint

    Objection!

    I uphold my objection to the pint.

    You are celebrating with this when you could instead party like that!

    I say the choice has not been outlined properly. And don't get me started on the temperature of said drinks.

This topic is closed for new posts.