At least
it's still more consistent than American measurements.
The absolute stupidest measuring unit ever invented has got to be the British Thermal Unit. That's enough heat to make 0.454kg. of water 5/9 of a degree C hotter, or about 0.000293kWh., and clearly was invented for purely political rather than utilitarian reasons.
Now, before anybody asks, here's a patch for the popular "units" program. I've also added in the under-used prefix "sesqui" meaning 1.5x.
--- units.dat.orig 2007-08-28 13:53:06.693388720 +0100
+++ units.dat 2007-08-28 14:09:31.963604880 +0100
@@ -161,6 +161,7 @@
hecto- 1e2 # Greek hekaton, "hundred"
deca- 1e1 # Greek deka, "ten"
deka- deca
+sesqui- 1.5
deci- 1e-1 # Latin decimus, "tenth"
centi- 1e-2 # Latin centum, "hundred"
milli- 1e-3 # Latin mille, "thousand"
@@ -4546,6 +4547,34 @@
° degree
#
+# Units from The Register
+#
+
+gf grapefruit
+grapefruit 523.6 cm^3
+walnut .16 gf
+chickensegg .35 gf
+bulgarianairbag 1.1 gf
+bulgarianfunbag 3.27 gf
+football 11.07 gf
+olympicpool 4780114 gf
+
+lg linguine
+linguine 14 cm
+ddb doubledeckerbus
+doubledeckerbus 65.85 lg
+brontosaurus 15 ddb
+campbell 231 lg
+
+wa wales
+wales 20700 km^2
+footballpitch 194.89 nanowales
+belgium 1.47 wales
+
+ssx sheepsec
+sheepsec 5995 km|sec
+
+#
# Localisation
#