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UK diy (uk.d-i-y) For the discussion of all topics related to diy (do-it-yourself) in the UK. All levels of experience and proficency are welcome to join in to ask questions or offer solutions. |
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#1
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length created as part of an MIT
fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot, a fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha, who in October 1958 lay down repeatedly on the Harvard Bridge (between Boston & Cambridge, Mass) so that his fraternity brothers could use his height to measure the length of the bridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot |
#2
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On 19/03/2019 19:17, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , wrote: The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot, who in October 1958 lay down repeatedly on the Harvard Bridge (between Boston & Cambridge, Mass) so that his fraternity brothers could use his height to measure the length of the bridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot What does: "a fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha" mean? Is it even English? https://www.google.com/search?q=frat...&oe=utf-8&aq=t |
#3
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
"Tim Streater" wrote in message .. . In article , wrote: The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot, who in October 1958 lay down repeatedly on the Harvard Bridge (between Boston & Cambridge, Mass) so that his fraternity brothers could use his height to measure the length of the bridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot What does: "a fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha" mean? https://people.howstuffworks.com/fraternity2.htm Is it even English? Yank, actually. |
#4
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On Tue, 19 Mar 2019 14:08:19 -0400, davidp wrote:
The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot, a fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha, who in October 1958 lay down repeatedly on the Harvard Bridge (between Boston & Cambridge, Mass) so that his fraternity brothers could use his height to measure the length of the bridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot Nice that Smoot went on to head ANSI, and then ISO. -- My posts are my copyright and if @diy_forums or Home Owners' Hub wish to copy them they can pay me £1 a message. Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org *lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor |
#5
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More Heavy Trolling by Senile Nym-Shifting Rot Speed!
On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 08:45:05 +1100, Jac Brown, better known as cantankerous
trolling senile geezer Rot Speed, wrote: https://people.howstuffworks.com/fraternity2.htm Is it even English? Yank, actually. Are you in Streater's killfile, "Jac Brown", you senile Ozzie troll? LOL -- Bill Wright to Rot Speed: "That confirms my opinion that you are a despicable little ****." MID: |
#7
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 08:05:40 UTC, Brian Gaff wrote:
I remember once when I was young we had a cat who seemed to always lay down the same way, I measured it and suggested we used it as a unit of measure, called the pussy, so the garden was 135 pussys long etc. I'm sure I read once of a retired patent specialist who registered a whole system of measurement based on the "Ginger" which was his cat's name - a Ginger in length was the length of the cat from nose to tail tip, in weight was the weight of the cat at a specific time on a specific day etc... I'm frustrated now that I can't find it on a search engine. |
#8
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On 20/03/2019 09:04, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 01:21:19 -0700 (PDT), wrote: On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 08:05:40 UTC, Brian Gaff wrote: I remember once when I was young we had a cat who seemed to always lay down the same way, I measured it and suggested we used it as a unit of measure, called the pussy, so the garden was 135 pussys long etc. I'm sure I read once of a retired patent specialist who registered a whole system of measurement based on the "Ginger" which was his cat's name - a Ginger in length was the length of the cat from nose to tail tip, in weight was the weight of the cat at a specific time on a specific day etc... I'm frustrated now that I can't find it on a search engine. There's a whole world of unofficial units. http://wiki.c2.com/?WhimsicalUnitsOfMeasurement No ginger pussies, although the RCH is there under unit of distance, which must be related (the smallest measurement known to man. The width of one "red c*nt hair"), and the Smoot is there. A friend at uni used to talk of walking speed as picoparsecs per hour (although actual walking speeds are about 0.2pps/h, or 4mph) where I trust "h" is a sidereal hour -- Robin reply-to address is (intended to be) valid |
#9
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 09:04:13 +0000, Chris Hogg wrote:
A friend at uni used to talk of walking speed as picoparsecs per hour (although actual walking speeds are about 0.2pps/h, or 4mph) The one I know is that one inch per second is one attoparsec per microfortnight (near enough). -- My posts are my copyright and if @diy_forums or Home Owners' Hub wish to copy them they can pay me £1 a message. Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org *lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor |
#10
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
In article ,
Chris Hogg wrote: On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 01:21:19 -0700 (PDT), wrote: On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 08:05:40 UTC, Brian Gaff wrote: I remember once when I was young we had a cat who seemed to always lay down the same way, I measured it and suggested we used it as a unit of measure, called the pussy, so the garden was 135 pussys long etc. I'm sure I read once of a retired patent specialist who registered a whole system of measurement based on the "Ginger" which was his cat's name - a Ginger in length was the length of the cat from nose to tail tip, in weight was the weight of the cat at a specific time on a specific day etc... I'm frustrated now that I can't find it on a search engine. There's a whole world of unofficial units. http://wiki.c2.com/?WhimsicalUnitsOfMeasurement No ginger pussies, although the RCH is there under unit of distance, which must be related (the smallest measurement known to man. The width of one "red c*nt hair"), and the Smoot is there. A friend at uni used to talk of walking speed as picoparsecs per hour (although actual walking speeds are about 0.2pps/h, or 4mph) you'vew forgotten the small measurement "a gnat's whisker" -- from KT24 in Surrey, England "I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle |
#11
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 09:41:24 UTC, Bob Eager wrote:
On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 09:04:13 +0000, Chris Hogg wrote: A friend at uni used to talk of walking speed as picoparsecs per hour (although actual walking speeds are about 0.2pps/h, or 4mph) The one I know is that one inch per second is one attoparsec per microfortnight (near enough). I like the speed of light as measured to be *about* 1 foot per nanosecond . |
#12
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On 20/03/2019 09:55, charles wrote:
In article , Chris Hogg wrote: On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 01:21:19 -0700 (PDT), wrote: On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 08:05:40 UTC, Brian Gaff wrote: I remember once when I was young we had a cat who seemed to always lay down the same way, I measured it and suggested we used it as a unit of measure, called the pussy, so the garden was 135 pussys long etc. I'm sure I read once of a retired patent specialist who registered a whole system of measurement based on the "Ginger" which was his cat's name - a Ginger in length was the length of the cat from nose to tail tip, in weight was the weight of the cat at a specific time on a specific day etc... I'm frustrated now that I can't find it on a search engine. There's a whole world of unofficial units. http://wiki.c2.com/?WhimsicalUnitsOfMeasurement No ginger pussies, although the RCH is there under unit of distance, which must be related (the smallest measurement known to man. The width of one "red c*nt hair"), and the Smoot is there. A friend at uni used to talk of walking speed as picoparsecs per hour (although actual walking speeds are about 0.2pps/h, or 4mph) you'vew forgotten the small measurement "a gnat's whisker" Gnat's cock. Gnat's dont have whiskers -- "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics." Josef Stalin |
#13
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On 20/03/2019 13:32, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 20/03/2019 09:55, charles wrote: you'vew forgotten the small measurement "a gnat's whisker" Gnat's cock. Gnat's dont have whiskers if you look very, very closely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnat#/...Hooke-gnat.jpg [from Robert Hooke's Micrographia, 1665] https://goo.gl/images/21VtfM [from scanning electron microscope] -- Robin reply-to address is (intended to be) valid |
#14
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On 20/03/2019 14:16, Robin wrote:
On 20/03/2019 13:32, The Natural Philosopher wrote: On 20/03/2019 09:55, charles wrote: you'vew forgotten the small measurement "a gnat's whisker" Gnat's cock. Gnat's dont have whiskers if you look very, very closely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnat#/...Hooke-gnat.jpg [from Robert Hooke's Micrographia, 1665] https://goo.gl/images/21VtfM [from scanning electron microscope] hairs are not whiskers. -- Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance" - John K Galbraith |
#15
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
"charles" wrote in message
... you've forgotten the small measurement "a gnat's whisker" And the "smidgen", with its sub-multiple, the "nano-smidgen". I remember I was working in a chemistry lab in my year off before university in the early 80s. My lab supervisor was tweaking the proportions of a catalyst to find the amount that made a significant difference to a reaction rate, and he said "It just takes a smidgen" and then went on "To poison a pigeon". I must have looked mystified by this because he went on to explain the satirical songs of Tom Lehrer, whose music I came across the following year when one of my friends lent me his TL tape. Then of course there's the alliterative furlong per fortnight, which is 1/8 mile in 14*24 hours, so 1 f/f is 37 * 10^-6 mph or 23 inches/hour or 16 * 10^-6 m/s. A garden snail travels at about 13 * 10^-6 m/s so roughly 1 f/f ;-) |
#16
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On 20/03/2019 14:51, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Robin wrote: On 20/03/2019 13:32, The Natural Philosopher wrote: On 20/03/2019 09:55, charles wrote: you'vew forgotten the small measurement "a gnat's whisker" Gnat's cock. Gnat's dont have whiskers if you look very, very closely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnat#/...Hooke-gnat.jpg [from Robert Hooke's Micrographia, 1665] https://goo.gl/images/21VtfM [from scanning electron microscope] SWMBO says that, because I have whiskers, I must be a gnat. better ask why she keeps shaving the whiskers off her fanny then -- The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. Herbert Spencer |
#17
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 11:43:48 UTC, whisky-dave wrote:
I like the speed of light as measured to be *about* 1 foot per nanosecond |
#18
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 17:18:23 UTC, wrote:
On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 11:43:48 UTC, whisky-dave wrote: I like the speed of light as measured to be *about* 1 foot per nanosecond . - in fact, it is 0.9835710564304 ft/ns. Yeah like I said . It has not been possible to measure the speed of light since 1986 or earlier; yes it has , it;s been in physics books long before then. by/in 1986 it was defined in SI as 299 792 458 m/s precisely. The experiment can still be done, but, given that the second is well-defined and accurately-disseminated, the result is a calibration of whatever length standard was used in the work. Yes so, but for most it was accurate enough even in the 18th century. Be warned that from May 20th 2019, the definition of the kilogram will no longer be that it is the mass of a Pt-Ir cylinder cherished in Outer Paris. See in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram ! Yes I know I heard all about it. But it's not going to make much differnce to the majority of us is it. I also know the freezing point of water isn't 0C it's 0.01C IIRC. But you can have stationary/ none moving water that is -4C |
#19
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On Thursday, 21 March 2019 12:36:15 UTC, whisky-dave wrote:
On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 17:18:23 UTC, wrote: On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 11:43:48 UTC, whisky-dave wrote: It has not been possible to measure the speed of light since 1986 or earlier; yes it has , it;s been in physics books long before then. I think that you did not pay enough attention to my "since" above. Be warned that from May 20th 2019, the definition of the kilogram will no longer be that it is the mass of a Pt-Ir cylinder cherished in Outer Paris. See in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram ! Yes I know I heard all about it. A Usenet response is commonly not aimed solely at the author of the preceding article. But it's not going to make much differnce to the majority of us is it. Much effort, and time, has been put into achieving that, and having new standards which are independent of any artifacts. -- (c) Dr. S. Lartius, UK. Gmail: dr.s.lartius@ | |
#20
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On Thursday, 21 March 2019 22:39:22 UTC, wrote:
On Thursday, 21 March 2019 12:36:15 UTC, whisky-dave wrote: On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 17:18:23 UTC, wrote: On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 11:43:48 UTC, whisky-dave wrote: It has not been possible to measure the speed of light since 1986 or earlier; yes it has , it;s been in physics books long before then. I think that you did not pay enough attention to my "since" above. It made little sense. are you saying the egyptians knew the speed of light, I've seen a ytube vid that claims they did. What's 1986 got to do with it, or are yuo saying the speed of light changed in 1986 ? Be warned that from May 20th 2019, the definition of the kilogram will no longer be that it is the mass of a Pt-Ir cylinder cherished in Outer Paris. See in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram ! Yes I know I heard all about it. A Usenet response is commonly not aimed solely at the author of the preceding article. well I hpe that most realised that it's not going to change their life much. But a few (mostly women) might use it as evidence as to why the scales are wrong, again ;-) But it's not going to make much differnce to the majority of us is it. Much effort, and time, has been put into achieving that, and having new standards which are independent of any artifacts. Yeah time and money which for some might be better spent on other things. -- (c) Dr. S. Lartius, UK. Gmail: dr.s.lartius@ | |
#21
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On Friday, 22 March 2019 11:11:33 UTC, whisky-dave wrote:
On Thursday, 21 March 2019 22:39:22 UTC, wrote: On Thursday, 21 March 2019 12:36:15 UTC, whisky-dave wrote: On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 17:18:23 UTC, wrote: On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 11:43:48 UTC, whisky-dave wrote: It has not been possible to measure the speed of light since 1986 or earlier; yes it has , it;s been in physics books long before then. I think that you did not pay enough attention to my "since" above. It made little sense. are you saying the egyptians knew the speed of light, No, I'm not saying that. But the Egyptians have always been on the fringe of Western scientific culture, so they would have known the speed of light soon after we did. What's 1986 got to do with it, or are yuo saying the speed of light changed in 1986 ? Which part of that do you want to be answered? s/or/and. (1) Not a lot; I should have written "1983". The Web page "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre" contains : "21 October 1983 The 17th CGPM defines the metre as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second." I don't know offhand the date on which that took effect. (( Before that change, "However, the International Prototype Metre remained the standard until 1960, when the eleventh CGPM defined the metre in the new International System of Units (SI) as equal to 1 650 763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum." )) (2) At each of those changes, the speed of light changed, because the definition of speed incorporated the definition of the metre, which changed by an unknown amount as near zero as could be managed on the available information. It is possible, in principle, to measure, with greater precision than available in 1983, the wavelength of that line in terms of the current metre and/or the frequency in terms of the current second, and that would yield the value of the change in the speed of light. -- (c) Dr. S. Lartius, UK. Gmail: dr.s.lartius@ | |
#22
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
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#23
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
"Max Demian" wrote in message ... On 23/03/2019 10:51, wrote: On Friday, 22 March 2019 11:11:33 UTC, whisky-dave wrote: On Thursday, 21 March 2019 22:39:22 UTC, wrote: On Thursday, 21 March 2019 12:36:15 UTC, whisky-dave wrote: On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 17:18:23 UTC, wrote: On Wednesday, 20 March 2019 11:43:48 UTC, whisky-dave wrote: It has not been possible to measure the speed of light since 1986 or earlier; yes it has , it;s been in physics books long before then. I think that you did not pay enough attention to my "since" above. It made little sense. are you saying the egyptians knew the speed of light, No, I'm not saying that. But the Egyptians have always been on the fringe of Western scientific culture, so they would have known the speed of light soon after we did. Which 'Egyptians' are you talking about? The time of Tutankhamen? The pyramid builders? Cleopatra and the Greeks? Nasser? The Muslim Brotherhood? His claim is true of all of those, |
#24
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Lonely Psychopathic Senile Ozzie Troll Alert! LOL
On Sun, 24 Mar 2019 03:52:36 +1100, cantankerous trolling senile geezer Rot
Speed blabbered, again: Which 'Egyptians' are you talking about? The time of Tutankhamen? The pyramid builders? Cleopatra and the Greeks? Nasser? The Muslim Brotherhood? His claim is true of all of those, Are you sure, senile idiot? Senilely sure again? BG -- "Anonymous" to trolling senile Rot Speed: "You can **** off as you know less than pig **** you sad little ignorant ****." MID: |
#25
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The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length...
On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 09:31:16 +0000, Robin wrote:
On 20/03/2019 09:04, Chris Hogg wrote: ====snip==== There's a whole world of unofficial units. http://wiki.c2.com/?WhimsicalUnitsOfMeasurement No ginger pussies, although the RCH is there under unit of distance, which must be related (the smallest measurement known to man. The width of one "red c*nt hair"), and the Smoot is there. A friend at uni used to talk of walking speed as picoparsecs per hour (although actual walking speeds are about 0.2pps/h, or 4mph) where I trust "h" is a sidereal hour Considering the distance unit used, it would have been foolish in the extreme to have done otherwise. :-) -- Johnny B Good |
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