List of humorous units of measurement
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- This is a sub-article to List of unusual units of measurement
Many comedians and humour writers have made use of, or invented, units of measurement intended primarily for their humour value. This is a list of such units invented by sources that are notable for reasons other than having made the unit itself, and of units that are widely known in the anglophone world for their humour value.
Contents |
[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] Length
[edit] Potrzebie
In issue 33, Mad published a partial table of the "Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures", developed by 19-year-old Donald E. Knuth, later a famed computer scientist. According to Knuth, the basis of this new revolutionary system is the potrzebie, which equals the thickness of Mad issue 26, or 2.263348517438173216473 mm.
Volume was measured in ngogn (equal to 1000 cubic potrzebies), mass in blintz (equal to the mass of 1 ngogn of halavah, which is "a form of pie [with] a specific gravity of 3.1416 and a specific heat of .31416"), and time in seven named units (decimal powers of the average earth rotation, equal to 1 "clarke"). The system also features such units as whatmeworry, cowznofski, vreeble, hoo and hah.
According to the "Date" system in Knuth's article, which substitutes a 10-clarke "mingo" for a month and a 100-clarke "cowznofski," for a year, the date of October 29, 2007, is rendered as "To 1, 190 C. M." (for Cowznofsko Madi, or "in the Cowznofski of our MAD." The dates are calculated from October 1, 1952, the date MAD was first published. Dates before this point are referred to (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) as "B.M." ("Before MAD.") The ten "Mingoes" are: Tales (Tal.) Calculated (Cal.) To (To) Drive (Dri.) You (You) Humor (Hum.) In (In) A (A) Jugular (Jug.) Vein (Vei.)
[edit] 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 to be 364.4 smoots, plus or minus one ear, using Mr. Smoot himself as a ruler. At the time, Smoot was 67 inches, or 170.18 cm, tall.[1] Google Earth software includes the smoot as a unit of measurement.
[edit] 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. [2] It is named after the Isle of Sheppey in the UK.
[edit] Spatial volume
[edit] Barn-megaparsec
This unit is similar in concept to the attoparsec, combining very large and small scales. A barn (b) is a unit of cross-sectional area used in nuclear physics, equal to 10-28 m². The effective area for interaction of the nucleus of an atom is on the order of magnitude of the barn —a very small unit of area (itself humorously named after the proverbial "broad side of a barn"). When this is multiplied by the megaparsec (Mpc) - a very large unit of length - the result is a human-scaled unit of volume approximately equal to 2/3 of a teaspoon (about 3.0857 ml).
[edit] Bottlesworth
This unit is approximately equal to a standard bottle of Champagne (0.75 litres), and is designed to allow the use of wine in scientific experiments in the science comedy Look Around You.
[edit] Buttload
This unit is to describe a large quantity of something. This common slang word, used in many regions of the United States, is most likely a censored version of "assload". The Canadian version of this term would be a "Bumload". A donkey can comfortably travel with 30-40 kilograms on its back over long distances.[citation needed]
[edit] Power
[edit] Donkeypower
This facetious engineering unit is defined as 250 watts—about a third of a horsepower.[3]
[edit] Earthquake Intensity
Tom Weller suggests the humorous Rictus scale (a take off on the conventional Richter scale) for earthquake intensity.[4]
| S.No | Magnitude | Observed Effects |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0-3 | Small articles in local papers |
| 2 | 3-5 | Lead story on local news; mentioned on network news |
| 3 | 5-6.5 | Lead story on network news; wire-service photos appear in newspapers nationally; governor visits scene |
| 4 | 6.5-7.5 | Network correspondents sent to scene; president visits area; commemorative T-shirts appear |
| 5 | 7.5 up | Covers of weekly news magazines; network specials; "instant books" appear |
[edit] Non-Conventional
These units describe dimensions which are not and can not be covered by the S.I system of units.
[edit] Sound Intensity: Phone
The unit of perceived loudness, phon, is sometimes also called phone. This has led to puns such as One megaphone equals 1012 microphones. While the phon is a real unit, this intentional misspelling, phone, exists solely for the humour value.
[edit] Beauty: Helen
Helen of Troy (from the Iliad) is widely known as "the face that launched a thousand ships." Thus, 1 millihelen is the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship.
According to The Rebel Angels, a novel by Robertson Davies, this system was invented by Cambridge mathematician W.A.H. Rushton. However, the term was possibly first suggested by Isaac Asimov.[5] The obvious reference is Marlowe's line from the play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships...?" [6]
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.
[edit] Bogosity: 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.[7]
[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 inherent in the Happy Days character Fonzie.[1]
[edit] Duration: Stobart
Based on the name of a UK haulage company the Stobart is the interval that one driver of one articulated lorry can go between bacon sandwiches and cups of stewed, over-sweet, tea. Depending on congestion the Stobart is either a unit of time or distance.[citation needed]
[edit] Awkwardness: Turtle
A unit of awkwardness is the Turtle. It is the amount of awkwardness that causes an awkward silence lasting one second between two people. Both the duration of the awkward silence and the number of people affect Turtles linearly, i.e. two seconds of silence between two people, or one second between three people are each measured as two Turtles.[citation needed]
[edit] Happiness: Puppy
Lucy van Pelt is credited in the comic strip Peanuts to have discovered the axiom happiness is a warm puppy. The proposed SI unit of happiness, puppy, is derivable as the quantity of happiness which one 1 kilogram beagle puppy whose body temperature is 310 kelvins produces when held in skin contact for one second.[citation needed]
[edit] Magical Energy: Thaum
The Thaum is a measuring unit used in the Terry Pratchett series of Discworld novels to quantify magic. It equals the amount of mystical energy required to conjure up one small white pigeon, or three normal-sized billiard balls. It can, of course, be measured with a thaumometer, and regular SI-modifiers apply (e.g. millithaum, kilothaum). [8]
A thaumometer looks like a black cube with a dial on one side. A standard one is good for up to a million thaums - if there is more magic than that around, measuring it should not be your primary concern.
Please do not mistake with the magical particle thaum from the same series of novels.
[edit] Pleasure: Hedon
Philosophers talking about Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism sometimes use the conceptual unit of the Hedon to describe the amount of pleasure, equivalent to the amount of pleasure a person receives from gaining one util of utility. [9]
[edit] Seating comfort: 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.[citation needed]
[edit] Smell: 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[citation needed]. Some noted reference points include:
- 0 hobo — Doesn't smell bad at all
- 13 hobo - "A robust fart"
- 30 hobo - The smeller must vomit.
- 50 hobo — Carolla 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] References
- ^ smoot. The Jargon File (version 4.4.7). Retrieved on 2006-06-27.
- ^ The Meaning of Liff, Douglas Adams and John Lloyd , 1984. IBSN 0-51755-347-3
- ^ Rowlett's Dictionary of Units. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
- ^ Weller, Tom (1985). Science Made Stupid. Houghton Mifflin, 76. ISBN 0395366461.
- ^ Isaac Asimov
- ^ http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/drfsta10.txt
- ^ The Original Hacker's Dictionary. Retrieved on 2006-11-08.
- ^ Prachett, Terry (1998). The Last Continent. Doubleday London. ISBN 0-385-40989-3.
- ^ EG, "Utilitarianism and the Wrongness of Killing", Richard G. Henson, The Philosophical Review Vol. 80, No. 3 (Jul., 1971), pp. 320-337.
