Just gonna leave you with a smidgen of this.
Tam wrote here about Tolerance Stack, and uses one of her favorite words to describe how much material she needs to take off the end of her new guide rod so it will fit in her Para.
Which got me wondering:
How many thousandths in an inch? .
This is actually a question I posed to a young (but know-it-all) apprentice we had back in the day. He had this response: “I bet there’s a bunch”
He turned red with incandescent rage when we laughed at him. “Like you know!” he yelled, and stormed from the roon.
Actually, what it got me thinking was, what are the rates of exchange for the different imaginary units? I don’t think there is one, or if there is, I certainly couldn’t find it.
So never being one to see a target move without trying to nail it down, I figured I’d set some of these things to rights here.
So:
As far as I can determine,
1000 zillion = 1 bazillion. (Not to be confused with Basilian, the Order of St Basil)
1000 Bazillion = 1 Gazillion
1000 Gazillion = 1 jillion
1000 jillion = 1 Bajillion
1000 Bajillion = 1 Kajillion
1000 Kajillion = 1 Kabillion
1000 Kabillion = 1 Umptillion
1000 Umptillion = 1 Squillion
1000 Squillion = 1 googillion
1000 Googillion = 1 Hojillion.
Part of the problem we encounter is the mixture of metric an imperial units. For instance: A Hojillionth of an inch is actually .073 skosh, (or, as the Japanese say, Sukoshi) (You thought I made that shit up, didnt’ you?) There are three cubic shosh in a Smidge, and One Smidge of pure Unobtaium has a mass of 1 tad.
Clear?
Now let’s look at units of time:
The Photosecond is the amount of time it takes a small boy to reach his bed after turning off the lights. A Photosecond is defined as the distance from the light switch to the bed divided by the speed of light * .9875.
The ohnosecond is the amount of time it takes to realize that your mom is cleaning out your bedroom and will soon discover your stash of (illicit substances, porn, personal electrical appliances, etc)
The Hellnosecond is the amount of time that elapses between me hearing “I’m Kelly with Senator Obama’s Campaign†and me hanging up.
Add yours in comments.
17 comments Og | Uncategorized
Ohsh*tsecond – the time it takes for the front end of my car to connect with the deer (either gender) which leaped out into the middle of my lane of traffic from the foliage off the side of the street.
Damn. I can’t get one to show up in a hundred yards, and they’re commiting suicide on your car.
So how do a jot and a tittle fit into this?
(Yes, I said “tittle”.)
A Jot is the distance between an EM and a semicolon. A Tittle is not actually a recognized unit of measure, but the punishment for being convicted of serial mopery.
So, what’s the official measurement of a c**t hair? As in “Give me the sledgehammer. We need to knock this sumbitch about three c**t hairs to the right…”
El Cap, we used to call that an RCH, as in a red c**t hair. We figured each one was 32 bajillionths of an inch.
No, no, the red ones are finer. Three full sized cunt hairs is more like 10 red ones.
The damnsecond (DNS) is the amount of time it takes for a dropped fastener to make its way through the engine compartment to the floor. Waiting for more than one DNS to hear the sound of a nut on concrete is common, but futile.
The waitasecond is the time between someone grasping the outside handle on the stall door and your realization that you forgot to engage the latch on said door. The waitasecond is especially well-illustrated when the occupant is in the handicapped stall and is too far away from the door to block its opening.
Apparently none of you ever spent any time in Boston, where the smoot is a time-honored way of measuring bridge length.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot
“Oliver Smoot later became chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)[2] and president of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).” Proof again that form follows function.
Jenny
your humble TubaDiva
Long ago in the Navy a friend actually had a RCH calibrator. His wife was a natural redhead, you see, and…
Og, you forgot some of the most critical measures:
Assload = 10 lbs in a 5lb sack
Metric Assload = 2.2 Assloads
Shitload = 10 Assloads
Metric Shitload = 10 Metric Assloads
Shitton = 2000 Shitloads
Metric Shitton = 1000 Metric Shitloads
To add to Chris’ reckoning, a boatload is (apparently, based on local usage) 10 or 100 shitloads. I’ve never heard of a metric boatload, but I suppose it would be either 10 or 100 metric shitloads (again, depending on local custom).
Someone else beat me to the RCH discussion. That unit figured prominently in one of my farewell luncheons, which did not please my non-redhead wife very much at all…
I knew a carpenter who would refer to a sixteenth as a “steenth”; or “s’teenth”, I suppose.
Of course there’s the mite. At least down south. “Okay, two inches to the right.” “Good, Good.” “Now back to the left a mite…..Yea that’ll do.”
There is also a “scooch”. Which, I believe is the northern equivalent of the mite. It is also used by various photographers, as in “Ok, honey move just a scooch to the right … that’s better, now the shadows aren’t covering your RCH’s.”
Chris – you missed one “Metric fuckton”
From Urbandictionary:
More properly, “Metric Fucktonne.” The Fuckton is the Imperial standard for the measurement of fuckweight, while the Fucktonne, in contrast, constitutes the Metric measure of fuckmass.
Generally used to imply superlative quantity with the Metric standard included to emphasise this point. The inclusion of the term is, however, fundamentally a misuse of that standard, as the Imperial Fuckton (2000 Imperial Fuckpounds) denotes a slightly greater measure of fuckweight within Earth’s gravitational pull than does the Metric Fuckton (1000 Metric Fuckilograms).
Here in Sunny SA we have the “moer” and it’s derivatives “moerswaar” and “moerlig” or as in Saffer english “Moer heavy and Moer light” this is also often used when wielding a hammer, “Moer it again” or when having a cold one… “Moer that is lekka”.
However we also have the funny way of measuring time in Nownow’s which could be translated as in a few seconds or never in a million years, it is dependent on the speaker’s mood and weather he is willing comply to the request or just ignore it…