Frazz by Jef Mallett for May 26, 2012

So his speed will be measured in X number of furlongs per fortnight.

So it’s about eight to the mile and five to the klick; but what’s that in cubits?

It aint Euro…it’s rest of the world.

I remember my science teacher saying how the U.S. will be totally metric in a few years. This was in 1977. I’m still waiting.

On to cubits!

@kroykali: Library books are measured for cataloging in metric, because Melville Dewey figured we’d be going metric soon. That was in 1876.

BTW – 185 k is 919.6 furlongs

If Frazz wants to feel slow – 185 kilometer = 0.000 617 093 576 12 light second www.onlineconversion.com

I once figured my gasoline mileage in inverse acres. The dimensional analysis actually allows that (length/volume is the same as 1/area, right?). It’s too bad the numbers weren’t closer to the regular miles/gallon figures, or I could have had some fun with it.

@phuh knees: A furlong is 440 cubits. And no, I didn’t have to look that up.Personally, I prefer the meter-ton-second system: It’s all metric, so you’ve got the convenient factors of 10, none of the base units has a prefix on it, and the density of water is 1, which is convenient.

When I am required to reveal my weight, I prefer to do so in stones. It sounds much better, and usually no on knows what it means.

At Georgia Tech in the last millennium we used kilofurlongs per fortnight

Actually, the Celsius scale has no more (or less) claim to being base ten than the Fahrenheit scale; it’s just that the zero and hundred points are different. With the Fahrenheit scale, you can give a more precise temperature without having to go to the right of the decimal point.

Let me correct my last comment for Europeans…that’s ‘to the right of the comma’.

I had fun during metrication in Canada. With the usual resistance to anything new, I would suggest that first we split the difference between US and Imperial quarts. Everyone would agree. “Then we could call it a litre.” Lots of sputtering..

for my HS physics final the extra credit question asked us to calculate the speed of light in furlongs/fortnight —

computed in stadia: 8.7mis (approx)

To prrdh: Brits are Europeans however they deny it and use the dreaded point for decimal, so you were one part right. They are even switching slowly over to the decimal system.

Don’t roll your eyes so, boyo. For the lack of a kilo a space probe was lost, because the Nasa sent course correction and thruster data using the pounds measurement when the probe internal programming was in metric units.

There is a stretch of highway south of Tucson AZ that has the mileage sign posted in metric. This was done there sometime in the early 70s, with the thinking being that they would start in a relatively unused area of the country, so that people could get used to it, then they would slowly change all signs to metric. It’s really been slow because, in 2012, that stretch of highway is still the only one in the country that is in metric.