the vynsane asylum

Okay, here's the deal. With the Beijing games winding down and talk of the 2012 London games already starting, I'm reminded that the 200th anniversary of the war of 1812 is just around the corner. Our plans for that year include invading your country, fixing your public health system, oh, and burning the White House (again). Since you're all facing the inevitable, I'd strongly suggest you have a look at the following and get to know it well.

Distance

The base unit for measuring distance is the metre (not the meter, goddammit, the metre). A metre is pretty darned close to a yard. The most useable measure of distance however, is the kilometre (1000 metres). 1.6 kilometres is the same as one of your silly miles.

Volume

The base unit for volume is the litre (not the liter, for fuck sakes, the litre). A litre is very similar to a quart (as a matter of fact, 3.8 litres of fluid is the same as one of your gallons). Millilitres are also used commonly (a millilitre is 1/1000 of a litre - you'd better know that for the testing).

Mass

Mass is like weight, though not exactly like weight. The base unit for mass is the gram. A gram is 1/28th of an ounce, and hence is not very useful as a measurement (unless you're into things that weigh ounces and quarters or eighths of ounces - for those types the gram can be your $20 friend). The more useful measure of mass is the kilogram. If you refer back to the distance segment, you'll notice that both kilogram and kilolitre start with kilo. Can you thus guess how many grams might be in a kilogram? No? That's okay. There are 1000.

Common prefixes and their meanings:

milli = 1/1000 (eg millilitre)
centi = 1/100 (eg centimetre)
deci = 1/10 (eg decimetre OR also commonly referred to in Canada as "the length of EP's dinky")
kilo = 1000 (eg kilogram)

And there you have it. Congratulations on finishing my short guide.

Oh, and if you're one of those that has read this whole thing and are feeling a little put out that I wrote this for retards, but you feel you're not retarded.... I submit the following:



You're still one of those that has read this whole thing.

20 bucks a gram?? Fuck dude, you got the wrong connections

jjreason wrote:Okay, here's the deal. With the Beijing games winding down and talk of the 2012 London games already starting, I'm reminded that the 200th anniversary of the war of 1812 is just around the corner. Our plans for that year include invading your country, fixing your public health system, oh, and burning the White House (again). Since you're all facing the inevitable, I'd strongly suggest you have a look at the following and get to know it well.

We have more guns. We win.

But in the highly unlikely scenario where you manage to successfully invade the U.S. then you may proceed with your health system and White House agendas.

i read this as "the metric system IS for retards".

If McCain wins, just go ahead and take over.

vynsane wrote:i read this as "the metric system IS for retards".

You have the power to change it.

I'm in a minority, but I prefer metric. Why am I saying something so communistic and unpatriotic, endangering our troops and emboldening the terrorists? Because the metric system makes sense. Every unit is based on other units. One square centimeter of water is one milliliter and has a mass of one gram. Our current system is a mess. Even years after learning all this weirdness, I still refer to charts to see how many cups in a gallon or fingers in a bushel (fingers in a bush... ha!) so I don't fuck anything up.

Plus, the prefix system makes it easy to deal with tiny and huge amounts, and they're consistent across the board.

And weight is a joke. It's an approximate measurement of the force exerted by gravity on an object, which is why one weighs a lot less on the moon but has the same mass (amount of matter). Fuck, weigh yourself in Death Valley and then go to Mount Everest and weigh yourself and see how many pounds you've supposedly shed.

Not to mention that we were already supposed to be on metric, like the rest of the world, something like fifteen years ago, but a bunch of pussies in Congress thought delaying indefinitely was more important than silly things like global warming and energy costs.