# Measurement standards for real people **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 16, 2016, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681 "2016-10-16T04:59:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2016, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/21 "2016-10-16T20:26:56Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > Real estate listings in Japan all give walking distance from the closest train station, in minutes. It’s actually defined in law - it’s supposed to be calculated at 80 meter/min (3.0 mph) walking speed, rounded up to the next minute. That actually sounds like a good idea. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2016, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/22 "2016-10-16T21:09:50Z")
**Beer as a distance measure** How far is it to the river? 1.5 six packs. This meant that, driving a beat-up old VW van towing a HobieCat, we each would consume 9 Coors Lights between home and Lake Havasu. (Yes, we were much younger and much more foolish. But that van could never get above 50 mph with that tow load, so we weren’t a _high-speed_ danger.) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2016, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/23 "2016-10-16T22:10:29Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > For measuring real people, I prefer non-negative integers. Any other measure – rational numbers, real numbers, negative integers, etc., and you run into serious difficulties: what does it mean to have 1.436 people? Or 1/3rd of a person? Or -27 people? Non-negative integers make it very instinctive and clear to most people. I know a lot of people who aren’t “all there.” ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/24 "2016-10-17T00:26:32Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > **Beer as a distance measure** > > How far is it to the river? 1.5 six packs. This meant that, driving a beat-up old VW van towing a HobieCat, we each would consume 9 Coors Lights between home and Lake Havasu. Beat me to it. But I was going to use the more precise measurement, just “beers”. Dennis ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/25 "2016-10-17T00:29:24Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > [List of humorous units of measurement - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement) > > Sheppey is my favorite. No mention of a Skoch? And an RCH has been alluded to in the OP. Dennis ---
**Author:** ![Backwater\_Under\_Duck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@Backwater\_Under\_Duck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Backwater_Under_Duck)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/26 "2016-10-17T00:41:26Z")
At the sports bar after work: Me: Hey, Bobby. Bobby: Hi. How long have you been here? Me: I just started my second beer. Bobby: Well then I know exactly how long you’ve been here. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/27 "2016-10-17T00:43:33Z")
> [@ASGuy](#): > > Bill: “How far is it to Santa Monica?” > Sue: “About 90 minutes from here.” Is that atypical? A coworker said she spent the weekend somewhere in Maine, so I asked her how far away it was. She said three and a half hours away. That’s actually what expected the answer to be along the lines of, not an answer in miles. ---
**Author:** ![SantaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/da6949/32.png) [@SantaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SantaMan)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/28 "2016-10-17T02:00:39Z")
Are traveling distances in NJ measured in exits? ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/29 "2016-10-17T02:47:12Z")
The examples in the OP remind me more of the way newspaper and TV news stories are worded and not so much of the way real people talk in ordinary conversation. Sometimes it’s so bad I have to wonder whether journalists think their audience is too dumb to know what 100 feet or an acre or a ton is. A couple of examples from news stories I remember: 1. When we were trying to shell Lebanon back to the stone age in the Reagan era, the news stories noted that the 16 inch shells each weighed as much as a Volkswagen. 2. When the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, the news noted that the (intended) resolution was such that if the telescope were in New York it could see a dime at the top of the Washington Monument in D.C. Well, you know, if it weren’t for pesky things like atmosphere, curvature of the earth, and the infamous improperly ground mirror. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/30 "2016-10-17T02:57:06Z")
> [@minor7flat5](#): > > Pouring some liquid such as floor wax from a gallon jug? Behold the _glug_–“give it about three glugs.” Somehow or other that reminds me of liquor, which of course is measured by the finger. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/31 "2016-10-17T13:41:30Z")
> [@bibliophage](#): > > The examples in the OP remind me more of the way newspaper and TV news stories are worded and not so much of the way real people talk in ordinary conversation. Sometimes it’s so bad I have to wonder whether journalists think their audience is too dumb to know what 100 feet or an acre or a ton is. A couple of examples from news stories I remember: > > 1. When we were trying to shell Lebanon back to the stone age in the Reagan era, the news stories noted that the 16 inch shells each weighed as much as a Volkswagen. > > 2. When the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, the news noted that the (intended) resolution was such that if the telescope were in New York it could see a dime at the top of the Washington Monument in D.C. Well, you know, if it weren’t for pesky things like atmosphere, curvature of the earth, and the infamous improperly ground mirror. Agreed. When I was a young teen my brothers and I parodied that effect, so common on “educational” TV and lame school A/V media, by measuring everything in sperm whales. e.g. That car (1970s boatmobile) is 1/3 sperm whales long. That airliner weighs 4 sperm whales. McDonalds sells 10 sperm whales a day worth of pickles. etc. We also had the milliWhale and the microWhale, what with then being the heyday of the fruitless “Let’s Make America Metric” effort. I weighed about 1 milliWhale (mWl) at the time and stood about 100 milliWhales (also mWl for maximum comedic effect) tall. Years later I ran into somebody who used marshmallow peeps as their joke unit of measure. It takes a lot (a whale of a lot) of marshmallow peeps to equal one whale. Ever since the Discovery Channel was invented there’s been ever more opportunities to recast their increasingly ridiculous comparative measurements into peeps, whales, etc. It’s cheaper than throwing a shoe at the TV in frustration over their inane dialog. ---
**Author:** ![ASGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@ASGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/32 "2016-10-17T14:41:46Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Is that atypical? A coworker said she spent the weekend somewhere in Maine, so I asked her how far away it was. She said three and a half hours away. That’s actually what expected the answer to be along the lines of, not an answer in miles. No, I think using time as a distance measure is common, even as far back as the Old West; “It’s a days ride to Carson City.” But in my case I grew up in the Los Angeles area and can distinctly remember my Dad (who drove into downtown L.A. for work) say things like “The main office is 20 minutes from here.” Now I live in a rural area, where highway speeds are consistently 65 mph day and night (no kidding), I tend to use actual miles when asked distance questions because people drive at different speeds. BTW: I disagree with **LSLGuy** about the practice fading in L.A. He’s right about increased traffic but I bet it makes people append a qualifier to the distance. Eg., “It’s 90 minutes from here _during rush hour._” ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/33 "2016-10-17T17:55:05Z")
Stephen Jay Gould wrote an entire essay about the size of the Eohippus. That’s the ancestor of the modern horse, and Gould was unable to find any published account that gave the size of the Eohippus as anything other than “dog sized”. Which led to the obvious question, how big is a dog. I’m waiting for my apartment management company to restate their size restriction on pets, and allow no dogs larger than an eohippus. ---
**Author:** ![mcgato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac8455/32.png) [@mcgato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcgato)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/34 "2016-10-17T18:32:59Z")
I use beers as a measure for time or money. A task can be “three beers,” meaning that I will probably consume three beers while doing it. I also use beers in foreign countries as a surrogate for the local currency. Once I know how much a beer costs in local currency, I can convert any other cost into how many beers that is equivalent to. A hotel room costs about 20 beers. It makes it easier to compare to my home currency. When I lived near NYC, I half jokingly used the measure of distance of Starbucks. It is a measure of how many Starbucks you would pass getting to your destination. “How far is it to xxxx?” “About 5 Starbucks.” “Oh, not very far then.” I always liked the Helen as a measure of beauty. One Helen is the amount of beauty to launch a thousand ships, with a milliHelen the amount of beauty to launch a single ship. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/35 "2016-10-17T18:40:17Z")
The traditional English measurement system was frequently based on this. For example the foot is the length of a human foot. ---
**Author:** ![Philliam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/philliam/32/3011_2.png) [@Philliam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philliam)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/36 "2016-10-17T19:20:54Z")
> [@mixdenny](#): > > Nothing beats a smoot. > > “The smoot is a nonstandard, humorous unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot, a fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha, who in October 1958 lay down repeatedly on the Harvard Bridge (between Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts) so that his fraternity brothers could use his height to measure the length of the bridge.” > [Smoot - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot) This reminds me of Dorothy Parker: “If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised” ---
**Author:** ![Totenfeier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@Totenfeier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Totenfeier)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/37 "2016-10-17T20:49:53Z")
In the movie _Memphis Belle_, the Sean Astin character attempts to communicate to his pilot just how serious the damage to the bomber is by yelling “There’s a hole the size of my dick in the wing!” A friend of mine, many years ago, invented the _bevometer_, which is the height of your beer glass above the surface of the table or bar when the cardboard coaster falls off. ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_T-Cups](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@Sir\_T-Cups](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_T-Cups)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/38 "2016-10-17T20:57:57Z")
> [@bibliophage](#): > > Sometimes it’s so bad I have to wonder whether journalists think their audience is too dumb to know what 100 feet or an acre or a ton is. It’s because the audience is EXACTLY too dumb to know 100 feet, an acre or a ton. There’s a reason journalists write at a 5th grade reading level, because the general audience doesn’t know those things without some form of comparison. Hell, I don’t even know how big an acre is, and square footing is also confusing as hell. Writing in generalities or making obvious comparisons is a way to prevent blowback and it’s overall a better way of getting the message across. ---
**Author:** ![janeslogin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@janeslogin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/janeslogin)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/39 "2016-10-17T22:38:24Z")
A favorite of my youth was an uncle from Kansas whom, at all family holiday dinners would repeat the story of ‘‘people playing golf using balls the size of hail’’. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681/40 "2016-10-17T23:50:21Z")
Measuring fires as a number of alarms, with each alarm representing a firehouse being called to put the fire out, therefore, a three-alarm fire would have three entire fire companies trying to deal with it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measurement-standards-for-real-people/768681.md?page=1)