Doper standardized units of measure

In My Humble Opinion
1

In this column The Perfect Master makes mention of millishakespeares as units of literary or poetic talent. He uses the term millishakespeares. My guess (and on advice from here) is that one thousand monkeys banging on one thousand typewriters for one thousand years to produce a work of Shakespeare, say Hamlet. Therefore, one monkey at one typewriter for one year would produce the literary talent of one micro-shakespeare. Now, The Master says that Robert Plant produced 2-3 milli-shakespeares of literary talent in writing Stairway to Heaven. That’s 2-3 thousand monkeys over 1 year. A standard has been set.

So, what other standardized units of measurements are there out there?

2

Well, there’s the millihelen, which is defined as the amount of beauty required to launch a single ship.

I’ve also heard the term metric shitload. No definition, though.

3

How about in “half straight dope winters”? Seems about a pretty standard unit around here.

4

It’s not specifically a Doper measure, but I’ve always liked the attoparsec (about 3.1 centimeters) and the microfortnight (1.2 seconds)

5

If you heard it here on the SDMB, then it was probably me. I think I made it up. If you heard it elsewhere, then:
a) I am obviously wrong, and
b)great minds think alike. :smiley:

6

I’ve always thought there should be a scientific measure of cuteness. (Distinct from the measure of beauty, the millihelen.) I’m not sure what it would be though. Perhaps millikittens?

7

Obviously, someone left you out of the loop - a metric shitload is exactly 964/1000 of an imperial shitload…

-FK

8

All right, then how much is an imperial shitload?

And the first perrson who says it’s 1000/964 of a metric shitload is going to get such a smack.

9

The Hamster is the official Doper measure of how long it takes for a web page to load.

Examples:

“Hey, not bad! Only took 4 Hamsters for MPSIMS to come up.”

“Oh, come on! I clicked submit 6 Hamsters ago and the damn post still hasn’t gone through!”

The Wolverine is a measure of how pissed off a Doper is and would normally be used in the BBQ Pit. Instead of the old fashioned marks out of ten that a rant gets, it should instead be awarded Wolverines.

The Reindeer is used to measure the offensiveness of any given word. From ‘Twit’, which would only score 0.05 Reindeers, to ‘C**t’ which scores 0.99.

Doesn’t matter if these measures are Imperial or Metric because, luckily, they are totally interchangable.

10

And an Imperial shitload is 1000/964 of a Metric shitload.

11

All of this sounds great!

LurkMeister, I like the Helen, too but perhaps it could be updated to something abit more modern?

clayton_e, the half straight dope winter is okay, but what’s it measuring and what’s the standard?

BlackKnight, you came up with it, what about a standard?

Kal, all of those are good!

More, more!

12

There really should be a term to express how many times you’d like somebody who has irritated you should smack themselves in the testicles with a sledgehammer.

13

How about the -gry meaning one newbie asking a question that has already been addressed a million times?

Example: “It was a ten -gry week for the SDMB.”

Similarly, the duckquackecho meaning one mention or cite of a thoroughly debunked Urban Legend.

“The incidence of duckquackechos has been rising lately.”

14

I’ll pitch in for a standardized Dopefest Quotient. I propose that we abbreviate it DfQ to distiguish it from the ice cream treats food store chain.

The standard DfQ would be equal to one Dopefest in each of ten locations on the same day. Therefore, if on one day, there was one single Dopefest scheduled worldwide, that event would equal one centi-DfQ. Adjustments, approximations and standard deviations could easily be applied to account for Dopefests that span more than one day or included more than one location.

Yes, indeed. The DfQ - I think we could even make it sufficiently complicated to require a government bureau to oversee the standard and issue documents.

15

Oh my - of course I meant “deci-DfQ”

Somebody’s gonna take away my math card now, right?

16

TVGuy: You lost me after “I’ll pitch in for a…”.

17

MilliChick - a measure of Christian idiocy (not to bash all Christians of course. I’d say Polycarp is .000001 microChick).

Ignoramaliter - what the Straight Dope has been fighting since 1973, now in easy-to-quantify units of liquid measure!

18

3 list items = 1 Opal

19

I tried the monkey-typewriter thing but all I got was ‘mockingbird’ typed out 2000 times. Can anyone think of a good title?

20

Neutron star would negative values represent Xian intellegance or athiest stupidity?

Come to think of it, how about:

infinity: Jack Chick
10: one notch stupider than average Xian
1: standard Xian
0.1: one notch savier Xian
0: Cecil Adams - perfect knowledge, theosity irrelevenant
-0.1 one notch savier athiest
-1: standard athiest
-10: one notch stupider athiest
-infinity: you get the idea