• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Expressing Measurements Via Analogies & Comparisons

LymeswoldSnork said:
Saw a sign outside a pub today advertising roast dinners "with lashings of proper gravy".

Is it permissible to use the lashing as a unit for measuring the volume of liquids other than ginger beer?
Click to expand...
Rain can be lashing down..
 
LymeswoldSnork said:
Saw a sign outside a pub today advertising roast dinners "with lashings of proper gravy".

Is it permissible to use the lashing as a unit for measuring the volume of liquids other than ginger beer?
Click to expand...
Would have been better to have knot worded it like that?
 
I was drawn irresistibly to a thread abbreviated on the Forums Overview page as

Expressing Measurements Via Anal...​

then I realised the abbreviation had fallen into a most uncomfortable and unfortunate place.

I want to dig out more information, but not all that long ago, the Jerusalem Post headed an article about an asteroid in near-Earth approach with a headline like "Asteroid the size of a dozen large walruses approaches Earth". I wondered if this was one of those old Biblical weights and measures you find in the detailed small print in Leviticus or Deuteronomy and maybe revived for everyday use in the modern world.

Apparently, this is a knowing joke thing with the JP, and the paper prides itself on making up unique and eccentric size and weight comparatives - there have been a few more since.
 
AgProv said:
…the Jerusalem Post headed an article about an asteroid in near-Earth approach with a headline like "Asteroid the size of a dozen large walruses approaches Earth".

Apparently, this is a knowing joke thing with the JP, and the paper prides itself on making up unique and eccentric size and weight comparatives - there have been a few more since.
Click to expand...

“…45 aardvarks…”

maximus otter
 
One I remember my Mum using "black as Newgate's knocker". The origin obviously comes from the original Newgate Prison and a time when door knockers were made of brass and would go black through lack of use!.
 
This does seem like a good way to illustrate wind speeds.

tt8dvitrl3121.jpg
 
AgProv said:
I was drawn irresistibly to a thread abbreviated on the Forums Overview page as

Expressing Measurements Via Anal...​

then I realised the abbreviation had fallen into a most uncomfortable and unfortunate place.

I want to dig out more information, but not all that long ago, the Jerusalem Post headed an article about an asteroid in near-Earth approach with a headline like "Asteroid the size of a dozen large walruses approaches Earth". I wondered if this was one of those old Biblical weights and measures you find in the detailed small print in Leviticus or Deuteronomy and maybe revived for everyday use in the modern world.

Apparently, this is a knowing joke thing with the JP, and the paper prides itself on making up unique and eccentric size and weight comparatives - there have been a few more since.
Click to expand...
I saw a version of this that gave the asteroid size in geese.


**Note: Unintentional, but hilarious headline contraction in quoted panel!
 
As I said back on post #296, I don't believe that analogous comparisons are a bad thing per se - and I suspect most of us use them quite a lot without even thinking about it (although I dare say few of us use a giraffe as any sort of datum, unless maybe we own one). More than that, I think they can - applied sensibly - be very useful.

I was thinking about this thread while finishing Jordan Harper's pretty decent crime novel Everybody Knows, over the last weekend.

Two characters are talking about the wealth of the bad guy at the apex of the bad things pyramid. One of those characters, like I suspect most of us when dealing with such rarefied concepts as having more money than we would ever know what to do with, obviously considers a millionaire to be doing okay and a billionaire to be doing - well - quite a lot better, but beyond that the concept of how much better gets a little hazy.

To put it in some sort of real-world perspective, the other character states:

You know the difference between a million and a billion? A million seconds is eleven days. A billion seconds is thirty-two years. Kyser has billions, man.
Click to expand...

I think that's actually a pretty good example of quantifying by analogy (albeit with a bit of rounding out).

(Obviously, that example employs the US billion - which is kind of becoming standard anyway, I think. The old British billion would be hold on...run out of fingers. Yup, okay, more years than I can comprehend without making my brain hurt.)
 
It must be my screen resolution but the short thread title summary on the front page reads ' Expressing Measurements Via Anal.....'

:eek::oops:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top