List of humorous units of measurement
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Many comedians and humour writers have made use of, or invented out of whole cloth, units of measurement intended primarily for their humour value. They can be found on this page.
[edit] Conventional
These units may or may not have precise objectively measurable values, but all of them measure quantities that have been defined within the S.I. system of units.
[edit] Distances: Potrzebie
In the 1950s, Mad magazine presented its own system of weights and measures in Donald Knuth's first professionally published article "The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures" (Mad Magazine #33, June 1957). The basic unit of this system was the potrzebie, which equals the thickness of Mad issue 26, or 2.263348517438173216473 mm.
[edit] Distance: Sheppey
A measure of distance equal to about 7/8 of a mile, defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque.
The Sheppey is the creation of Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, included in The Meaning of Liff, their dictionary of objects for which no name exists. It is named after the Isle of Sheppey in the UK.
[edit] Distance: Smoot
The smoot is a unit of length, defined as the height of Oliver R. Smoot who, fittingly, is a former president of the ISO. The unit is used to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge. Canonically, and originally, in 1958 when Smoot was a Lambda Chi Alpha pledge at MIT (class of 1962), the bridge was measured using Mr. Smoot himself as a ruler (his height being 67 inches or 170.18 cm [1]), turning him end over end for the 364.4 (plus one ear) -smoot length of the bridge. The Google Earth software includes the smoot as a measurement unit.
[edit] Power: Donkeypower
This facetious engineering unit is defined as about a third of a horsepower (i.e., 250 watts) [2].
[edit] Unconventional
These units describe dimensions which are not and can not be covered by the S.I system of units.
[edit] Fun: The Barrel of Monkeys
This unit stems from the common English phrase "more fun than a barrel of monkeys".
Note that the size of both barrels and monkeys is unspecified, and thus clearly not important for use of the measure. One can have, for instance, a large barrel with many small monkeys, or a small barrel containing only two monkeys (the minimum). The amount of fun in both cases is the same, by definition, thus leading to the conclusion that a small barrel involves a much greater amount of fun per monkey, and a large barrel much less so. It is not clear how much fun a barrel containing a single monkey would be, although most people would agree that an empty barrel is very nearly (if not exactly) no fun at all.
Also, it is not clear from the use of this expression what percentage of the fun is actually had by the monkeys, as opposed to an observer watching them. Presumably, if the monkeys are not enjoying the experience at all, the observer must think it hilarious, and vice versa.
With all these uncertainties, measuring the actual amount of fun involved in activities that involve neither barrels nor monkeys requires careful study and painstaking calibration, using actual barrels of monkeys for comparative reference. This is especially tricky because the person making these measurements must be exceedingly careful not to have any unscheduled fun doing it, since this would of course throw off the results. [citation needed]
[edit] Phoniness: The Three Dollar Bill
As in the phrase "As phony as a three-dollar bill." Presumably, two three-dollar bills are twice as phony as one.
The effect of the denomination of the bill upon its phoniness is an interesting area for further study. The relationship is not easy to derive with simple math, and clearly does not form a continuous function. For instance, a 5 dollar bill clearly has no phoniness at all (for a value of 0.0 three-dollar-bills), but a 5.0000000001 dollar bill would have a very high phoniness value indeed (certainly exceeding 1.0 three-dollar-bills, since even the few people who might accept a three-dollar bill as legitimate would nonetheless probably reject a bill marked as "5.0000000001 dollars"). The phoniness of the U.S. two dollar bill is actually measured at 0.0 three-dollar-bills, unless the bill is counterfeit. However, this fact is not as widely known as it should be, as several incidents attest.
Note that negative numbers may not be meaningful using this system of measurement: It is not clear, for instance, that anything can be less phony than a genuine five dollar bill.
[edit] Rate of speech: The Millirubbia (mR)
A millirubbia is a unit of speaking rate, usually applied during a technical talk, derived from Carlo Rubbia, Nobel laureate in physics 1984, who always spoke at 1 R. A normal person spewing forth data at break-neck speed may do perhaps 100 mR. [citation needed]
[edit] Bogosity: The Lenat
The unit of bogosity, derived from the fictional field of Quantum Bogodynamics, the lenat is seldom used, as it is understood that it is too large for normal conversation. Its most common form is the microlenat [3].
[edit] Unit of "Kills": The Hitler
Possibly the most unconventional fictional unit of all, a Hitler (Ht) is equal to the approximate amount of deaths in the Holocaust (approx. 10 million). It is used specifically as a unit of persons killed, and was first coined in the webcomic Goats. In the comic, the unit is referred to as a Gigahitler [4], meaning 1 billion Hitlers, or 10,000,000,000,000,000 deaths. In real-life applications, the unit would probably be used only as a reference to virtual kills, such as in a video game.
The official definition from Jon Rosenberg and Zoinks! Magazine [5] is:
| Gigahitler (GIG' uh hit lur) n.
A term used to measure an excessively high number of living entities that have deceased. One Gigahitler is comprised of roughly 1 billion times the number of people exterminated by Adolph Hitler during the second World War. |
One kill is equivalent to 100 nHt (one hundred nanohitlers).
[edit] Smell: The Hobo Power
Hobo Power is a unit coined by Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew on the radio show Loveline as a measure of how bad something smells. Some noted reference points include:
- 0 hobo — Doesn't smell bad at all
- 13 hobo - "A robust fart"
- 50 hobo — The smeller must vomit. Carolla also suggested the hypothetical: "50 hobo power is a cat that's been fed nothing but blue cheese for a week defecating on a white-hot hibachi."
- 100 hobo — Purely theoretical (comparable to absolute zero). Near 100 hobo would cause death by asphyxiation.
A running section of The Adam Carolla Show involves callers relating foul-smelling situations for which the hosts then determine the equivalent Hobo Power.
[edit] "Plausibility Unit"
Another fictional unit from Futurama, a plausibility unit is used to measure the chance something will happen. Professor Farnsworth claims that his What-If Machine---which responds to any "What [would happen] if..." question by showing events on a screen---is accurate within "1/10 of a plausibility unit" ("That's so plausible I can't believe it!"). It is unknown how much a plausibility unit exactly is.
[edit] Seating comfort: The Pinkwater
A notional unit of seating comfort; it can be used to describe both the width of a seat, or the width of a seat which a person needs to be comfortable in. Named for writer and book reviewer Daniel Pinkwater, it was coined by 'Click and Clack', the hosts of the Car Talk radio show. Reputedly, a 1.0 pinkwater seat would be pretty comfortable - most car seats are 0.7 pinkwaters. There was also some discussion of using the pinkwater as a measure of acoustic range - defined by the chord produced by a 1.0 pinkwater person sitting on a piano keyboard.
[edit] Suckiness: The Lovelace
The newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery defines 1 Lovelace as "...the amount of force (measured in dynes) it takes to draw a round ball weighing e Troy Ounces (84.548 g) down a tube it fits exactly (in air) at a speed of pi attoparsecs/microfortnight (0.080148 m/s)."[6] Arguably the mention of 'dynes' is unneeded, as 1 Ll would achieve the goal regardless of the units used to measure the force. A calculation of the real value of the unit is impossible, as information regarding friction is not available in the definition. The unit is a reference to Deep Throat. (Although in the context of computer systems the name is usually associated with Augusta Ada Lovelace, the unit is not named for her.)
[edit] Beauty: The Helen
The amount of beauty that can launch one thousand ships. Usually used as the milliHelen, the amount of beauty that can launch one ship.
Named after the mythological Helen of Troy, from the Iliad. Inspired by Marlowe's line from the play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships...?".
Negative values have also been observed—these, of course, are measured by the number of ships sunk or the number of clocks stopped. An alternative interpretation of 1 negative Helen is the amount of negative beauty (i.e. ugliness) that can launch one thousand ships the other way.
MicroHelens are one-tenth of the unit of beauty required to motivate one sailor. They are sometimes given as the units for the common rating-out-of-ten scale of beauty.
[edit] Systems support: The Mikrotuki
Literally micro-support. This derives from Finnish mikrotukihenkilö ("microcomputers systems support person"). Originally an in-joke of Nokia Research Center in Helsinki, Finland. It is one workday (8 h or 28 800 seconds) of one competent PC systems support person. [citation needed]
[edit] Incompetence: The Pikotuki
Equal to 1/1000 of a nanotuki, or 0.0288 seconds of competent systems support. Likewise originally an inside joke at Nokia Research Center; pikotukihenkilö means "grossly incompetent person assigned in systems support". Also equal to one millionth of a mikrotuki, and used to describe work done by a grossly incompetent work force. [citation needed]
[edit] Coolness: MegaFonzie
A MegaFonzie is a fictional unit of measurement of an object's coolness invented by Professor Farnsworth in the Futurama episode, Bender Should Not Be Allowed On TV. A 'Fonzie' is about the amount of coolness The Fonz contributes to 1 episode of Happy Days. Being that, nowadays, The Fonz isn't exactly considered top quality "cool" (and certainly even less so in the year 3000), most measurements are made in MegaFonzies(MF), with 1MF being equal to the entirety of Fonzie coolness found in the Happy Days 11-season, 6-disc, DVD box set.
[edit] Happiness: The Happy
The unit of happiness, coined by Dave Gorman in his television series Dave Gorman's Important Astrology Experiment. One happy is equal to how much happier you feel if someone gives you a pound coin, which is supposed to be equivalent to how much less happy they feel upon relinquishing it. However, this definition seems to fall foul of the law of diminishing returns, which states that the more you have, the less you benefit from having even more. In other words a penniless beggar will gain appreciably from being given a pound, whereas to a millionaire, the donation is trivial. Some might also point out that calling this unit "happy" is totally unnecessary, as it could be as well called "pound".
[edit] Intelligence: The Tar
After Brazilian's Militaire Dictatorship established in 1964 (in Portuguese, Ditadura Militar), this unit was created in a joke. Tar would measure intelligence. A bright person would be a decatar, an intelligent person a hectotar and a genius would be a kilotar. At the other side of the scale, a slow person would be a decitar, and a stupid person a centitar... [citation needed]
[edit] References
- ^ smoot. The Jargon File (version 4.4.7). Retrieved on 2006-06-27.
- ^ Rowlett's Dictionary of Units. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
- ^ The Original Hacker's Dictionary. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
- ^ goats: comic strip. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
- ^ Zoinks Magazine. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
- ^ alt.sysadmin.recovery FAQ v1.7 (June 2004). Retrieved on 2006-05-20.
