Metrication and three legged donkeys (was: Re: POA book differences)

[annemehr]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "arrowsmithbt"
<arrowsmithbt at b...> wrote:

> Well, it is possible to have fun inventing your own systems.
> Something outrageously sexist from about 30 years ago - a quiet
> afternoon in the lab, bored males, so we  put in a few hours
> working on the 'Helen Index' of female beauty.

Heh!  You are *such* guys!  Still, nothing wrong with appreciating
beauty where ever you can find it...

> 
> Can't remember all of it but:
> 
> 1 Helen, equivalent to a 1000 ships
> 1 milli-Helen, equivalent to 1 ship -  a battleship
> 1 micro-Helen, reminiscent of an inflatable dingy
> 1 femto-Helen, reminds me of a rubber duck
> 
> It went the other way, too, through mega-Helen, giga-Helen up to
> 1 tera-Helen, equivalent to a Treasure Fleet (no confirmed sightings)

That reminds me of something slightly different, but equally "sexist"
-- the mnemonic for remembering the color-coding on resistors. The
author's name is lost in time, but it goes:

Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly

And the initial letters remind you that stripes of these colors:

Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Gold, White

stand for the digits zero through nine (or the other way, I forget).

I imagine the mnemonic would have been "corrected" by now, except I
think they just stamp the numeric values of Ohms on the resistors
these days.

> 
> Wish I could remember the rest, then I could transpose it to Imperial.
> Hmm. What's 2.54 dingies? Or if I multiply by 0.001296 I get it in
> Scruples -  something I've never had before.
> 
> Kneasy

I think your conversion factor is backwards.  If a scruple is tiny,
you can't have 0.001296 Scruples/Dinghy -- it must be
Dinghies/Scruple, so you'd have to divide.  Didn't they teach you to
always write out your units and cancel properly? <g>  Or, was this a
Psych lab you were hanging out in? <double g>

Annemehr
who, as a physics major in college, had a *lot* of male science and
engineering classmates, and liking them very much, married one; and
who adores the '60s engineers in the "Apollo 13" movie <sigh>