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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.
e units may or may not have precise objectively measurable values, but all of them measure quantities that have been defined within the S.I.
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Category:2006 films
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upon seeing Robin's room Whoah. Even I'm not into us this much.
Encyclopedia
- 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.
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.
Length
Beard-second
The beard-second is a unit of length inspired by the light year, but used for extremely short distances such as those in nuclear physics. The beard-second is defined as the length an average physicist's beard grows in a second. Kemp Bennet Kolb defines the distance as exactly 100 Ångströms while the Physics Handbook has it half the size at 5 nanometers. Google search supports the beard-second for unit conversions using the latter conversion factor.
Bloit
In the Zork series of games, the Great Underground Empire had its own system of measures, the most frequently referenced of which was the bloit. Defined as the distance the king's favorite pet could run in one hour (spoofing a popular legend about the history of the foot), the length of the bloit varied dramatically, but the one canonical conversion to real-world units puts it at approximately two-thirds of a mile. Liquid volume was measured in gloops, and temperature in degrees Q (57°Q is said to be the freezing point of water).
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.)
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 5 feet, 7 inches, or 170 cm, tall. Google Earth software includes the smoot as a unit of measurement.
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.
It is named after the Isle of Sheppey in the UK.
Spatial volume
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 used for measuring the distances between galaxies - the result is a human-scaled unit of volume approximately equal to 2/3 of a teaspoon (about 3.0857 ml).
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.
Five Year Old Baby Hand
This unit is roughly equivalent to 0.87 cups and is traditionally used in the kitchen. The origin of this technique is still debated by historians. One of the prevailing theories is that many small frontier children made their own rationed meals using this estimated measurement. After watching their parents die of dysentery on the Oregon Trail they had to "buck up and start cooking", as put by Dr. Robert Pembrose in his dissertation "Survival Methods of Pioneer Travelers". An opposing theory relates this act as a rite of passage for toddlers weening off the breast and becoming a full fledged member of the caravan.
Power
Donkeypower
This facetious engineering unit is defined as 250 watts—about a third of a horsepower.
Non-Conventional
These units describe dimensions which are not and can not be covered by the S.I system of units.
Earthquake Intensity
Tom Weller suggests the humorous Rictus scale (a take off on the conventional Richter scale) for earthquake intensity.
| 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 |
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.
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. 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...?"
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.
Since the original quotation was "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium", a more accurate definition of the millihelen might be the amount of beauty required to launch a single ship and ignite a wastebasket.
David Lance Goines has written a humorous article describing various Helen-units. It has a chart with the fire-lighting and ship-launching capability for different powers of "Helens". For example, a Picohelen (ph) (10^-12 helens) indicates the amount of beauty that can "Barbecue a couple of Steaks & Toss an Inner Tube Into the Pool".
Thomas Fink, in The Man's Book defines beauty both in terms of ships launched, but also in terms of the number of women one women will, on average, be more beautiful. One Helen (H) is the quantity of beauty to be more beautiful than 50 million women, the number of women estimated to have been alive in the 12th century BC. Ten Helena (Ha) is the beauty sufficient for one oarsmen (of which 50 are on a ship) to risk his life, or be the most beautiful of a thousand women. Beauty is logarithmic on a base of 2. For beauty to increase by 1 Ha, a woman must be the most beautiful of twice as many women. One Helen is 25.6 Ha. The most beautiful woman which ever lived would score 34.2 Ha, and 1.34 H, the pick of a dozen women would be 3.6 Ha, and 0.14 H.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 confuse it with the magical particle "thaum" from the same series of novels.
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.
Fame: Warhol
This is a unit of fame or hype, derived from Andy Warhol's dictum "everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes" — it represents, naturally, fifteen minutes of fame. Some multiples are:
- 1 kilowarhol — famous for 15,000 minutes, or 10.42 days. A sort of metric "nine day wonder".
- 1 megawarhol — famous for 15 million minutes, or 28.5 years.
First used by Cullen Murphy in 1997.
Also used simply as meaning 15 minutes; as the Warhol worm, that could infect all vulnerable machines on the entire Internet in 15 minutes or less.
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 . 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.
See also
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