18 ms·

Ahh, this reminds me of when wikipedia used to have a "list of ridiculous measurements" page.

• soyelmango 16y ago
  I'll have to see if I can find this page in google's cache - I'd be curious to see how many of those 'ridiculous measurements' were really ridiculous, or whether they served a similar purpose to the BED; to allow the average person to understand unfamiliar things in everyday terms.
  • surlyadopter 16y ago
    Found a copy! http://www.indopedia.org/index.php?title=List_of_strange_units_of_measurement http://www.indopedia.org/index.php?title=List_of_strange_uni...
    • cromulent 16y ago
      That page has a link to the World Snail Racing Championships as a reference. The web is marvellous.
    • cschneid 16y ago
      It always makes me happy that Smoot ended up being the ISO president.
      • jacobolus 16y ago
        He retired from the ANSI in 2005, and did an NPR interview http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5043041 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5043041; I made sure to wander across town and across the Harvard Bridge the next day, in honor. It’s great that they still repaint the numbers from time to time (annually?).
    • jacobolus 16y ago
      The relevant Wikipedia articles are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measur... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measu...
    • soyelmango 16y ago
      Thanks for the link! I'm surprised how many of the unusual measurements I take for granted, even though they're imprecise. Ha... "New York Second Theoretically the shortest period possible in Quantum Time, this is the time that elapses between a Manhattan traffic light turning green and the taxi behind you honking its horn"