--- title: Amusing Measurements author: George Mandis date: 2011-03-04 description: There are many humorous ways to measure things in this world. tags: post --- After thinking about my post about Bhut Jolokia peppers and the Scoville scale for measuring the hotness of things, it got me to thinking about other kinds of measurements. Initially I wondered if there was a general scale for unpleasantness and how the pepper might fair. That would be a far more useful comparison really, than comparing it to the spiciness of other peppers. Although Bhut Jolokia is more than 400x the hotness of Tabasco sauce, I'm not sure I have any real concept of what that means. However, if you were to tell me Tabasco scores a comparable score on the general unpleasantness scale to, say, biting your tongue, and the Bhut Jolokia was like biting your tongue while fire ants crawl all over your face, I might have a better sense of the disparity between the two peppers. In my brief search for this universal unit of unpleasantness, I did find two fantastic Wikipedia pages: [Humorous Measurements](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement) and a [List of unusual units of measurement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement). Some of my favorites: - A [Warhol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement#Fame:_Warhol) is a unit of fame. One Warhol represents, as you would guess, 15 minutes. - The [Beard-second](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement#Beard-second) is the length your beard hair grows in a single second. During [Whiskerino](http://whiskerino.org/) a total of 10.4 million beard seconds elapsed which supposedly translates to 5.18 centimeters. Don't believe me? [Ask Google](http://goo.gl/2e6Fg). - A [Sheppey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement#Sheppey) is defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque (Thank you Douglas Adams). - The [Rictus Scale](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement#Earthquake_intensity) is an alternative means of measuring earthquakes based on media coverage. In Portland, we should probably devise a similar scale for snow. - Coolness can be measured in [Fonzies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement#Coolness:_MegaFonzie). - [Utility](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility) is the measure of relative satisfaction (Sort of the opposite of what I was looking for) - I no longer use the imperial OR metric system. Now I just measure things in [shakes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement#Shake), [jiffies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement#Jiffy), [bags of cement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement#Bag_of_cement), [elephants](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement#Elephant), [cricket pitches](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement#Cricket_pitch) and [fully loaded 747s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement#Fully_loaded_747).