Announcing the official Reg-approved measure of social distancing: The Osman As you nervously shuffle away from your close-talking neighbour who always stood too near at the best of times, tutting and muttering "social distancing", you may wonder to yourself just what two metres or six feet should really look like. Luckily, El Reg's Standards Soviet is here to help. The BBC – Britain's responsible …
Who on earth downvoted this? It is by far the best program on TV, even if so-called 'music' questions never ask questions about music, but only to name a song by some recent bod.
Nothing on Beethoven, Britten or Bach for example. But then again, is that a reflection of the wider ignorance of the general population, I wonder. Consider Haydn's op76 no 3, second movement. I wonder how many people would recognise that. :-)
I've been revelling in the opportunities to stick two fingers up at all my work colleagues and managers.
As soon as they start walking towards me I give them the two fingered salute, and then blurt "Two metres!"
The look of shock on their faces is priceless, and I'm getting away with it. Well, I was until they sent me home with a laptop last Friday.
I'd like to believe 2 metres was decided upon for this very reason. Churchill, Blitz spirit and all the jingoism that goes with it.
V for victory or rather fuck off for germ free.
It explains it on the page
"To maintain our own high standards, we've had to shave a teensy bit of accuracy off everyone else's. For instance: there are 8 furlongs to a mile, which means 25 miles should convert to 200 furlongs. But it actually converts to 199.something furlongs. As our technical wizard explains: "To turn a mile into anything else, it first needs to be converted into linguine". "
It is a linguine rounding error.
Two meters might be 6.5 feet (well, 6.5616798 feet) but I would assert that "six feet" is a better convertion as it is simpler thus easier to remember/understand.
The point is that the recommendation of "two meters" is a guideline, it is not a matter of scientific accuracy such as "2 meters and you are safe, 1.85 meters and you are at much greater risk of catching it".
Australia have settled on "the Kylie" as their metric of social distancing - which is considered by scientists to be highly dangerous.
Personally I prefer the Morgan. I imagine that everyone I see is Piers Morgan, and keep as far away as I would from him. However this is of dubious benefit, as I've so far punched 15 pedestrians, two chemists and a GP...
You can always tell when the Yanks get involved...and start imposing "their" ways on everyone else.
It's not 2 meters - it's 2 metres...for gawds sake...the clue was in the title of this post !! Where will it end?
So, FYI: A METRE is an SI measurement of distance.
A METER is an actual physical device for measuring say a weight or a voltage or a current (for example).
At the Sainsbury's store near where I live, they have rationalised it to "Two trolley lengths". This seems to work, most people can estimate that there is room for an extra trolley in front of the one they are pushing, although I observed that at least two people in the queue added about another four or five trolleys to that gap, until the "Queue Warden" asked them to close up to two trolley lengths. One of them was so incensed that he left the queue and went back to his car.
Ah, but which one? And after which accident?
They friends should remain approximately 150Mhz apart. If they ask what a megahertz is, drop a grand piano or shark on them. Simple really.
In other news, was waiting in a line outside Sainsburys earlier, with queue spaced 2m apart, for various definitions of m. Was thinking it'd be a lot easier to manage social* distancing if we were all issued halberds.
*Ok, possibly anti-social, but fun. May also need changes to offensive weapons laws to permit a blade length of >2". But on the plus side, potentially useful for fending off any future French invasion.
"...Was thinking it'd be a lot easier to manage social* distancing if we were all issued halberds.
*Ok, possibly anti-social, but fun..."
One of my colleagues recently suggested that if social distancing didn't work, we should move to anti-social distancing - it's much the same but with weapons and swearing.
Just require all people to wear a two meter hula hoop at all times.
Hmm.. Aha! Or a 2m Zorb ball. Has the benefit of being positive pressure, thus further reducing the risk of infection. People would be safe* inside their own bubble!
*Safe-ish. Also would potentially reduce deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents, unless drivers aim for them. Would also provide vital moral boosts, especially in high winds. Downside is this solution would probably be incompatible with mass halberd adoption.
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Generally, distance from fingertip to fingertip, with arms spread, is equal to height. The average adult male height is about 5'8". So, if you can hand someone an object of reasonable size (banana, piece of paper, etc) even with both of you fully extending your arms, you're too close.
"Generally, distance from fingertip to fingertip, with arms spread, is equal to height."
Sadly, generally is not nearly always. Some people have long arms and others have short arms. So don't rely on this. That's why it is SO helpful to have independent, objective units like the Osman.
> social distancing, that lovely phrase describing how far away from strangers you need to be
It depends on the strangers of course, but in my experience most of the time the unit should be astronomical (as in, you here, them somewhere on the sun).
(Mumble, mumble, lawn, kids)
Which NHS would you be using for the comparison? There is not just one. There’s the English one (and various private providers), the Welsh one, the Scottish one (we invented it btw) and the Northern Irish equivalent.
Are you lumping the cost of them all together? or just assuming the English one is the only one? And if so what do you do with Branson etc’s bits of it? The privatisations in the English NHS make the thing rather too movable to act as a standard.
If you could spit on them, they are too close. There is a very good reason for the phrase "within spitting distance" and preventing the spread of diseases is it. If they are downwind then that distance is more than 2 metres. The spitting world record is 9.766 metres, so perhaps we should be keeping 10 metres apart?
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