Why do the British still measure their bodyweight in stones?

[KK]

they do it for the confidence factor. same reason they measure penis length in cm's.

 

[CallMeJoe]

Only a seven stone manlet would ask this question.

 

[schneiderguy]

Only a seven stone manlet would ask this question.

According to Google I am 12.5 stones

 

[schneiderguy]

schneidgerguy's

 

[Newbian]

no, you're just not interpreting it properly. It is based on the unit of measure. day is shortest unit (single day), month is larger (~30 days), year is largest (365 days/12 months).

It's about nesting.

I always view it as the numbers they can go up to and since the month is the lowest, 12 , it's on top. 😉

 

[OutHouse]

Hard to get rid of a very old system.

They use kilograms for most everything else, though.

but they use miles instead of kilometers....

 

[pelov]

That's nothing I got busted by a bobby for doing 268800 furlongs per fortnight over there.

 

[CallMeJoe]

According to Google I am 12.5 stones

Body mass, not cranial content...

 

[CPA]

might makes right.

lmfao

 

[sdifox]

that picture is not up to date.


The U.S. Navy also has the world's largest carrier fleet, with 11 in service, one under construction (two planned), and one in reserve.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy

 

[Eug]

I weigh 70 litres of water.

 

[Imp]

Oh.... I always thought stones were 10 pounds. Woops.

 

[SSSnail]

Wait, so if a stone is 14 pounds, then how many pences are in a stone? :awe:

 

[Maximilian]

Because they are stupid, just like the people who use pounds :whiste:

Here in Scotland I always get blank stares when discussing weight with anyone because i use KG so i say "im 63kg" and the follow up question is always "How much is that in stones?" to which i reply "gtfo" 🙄

 

[Bateluer]

Wasn't a 100 degrees Fahrenheit supposed to be human body temperature?

 

[RedRooster]

I weigh 70 litres of water.

Salt or fresh???? Stop causing confusion! The world is breaking!

 

[Eug]

Salt or fresh???? Stop causing confusion! The world is breaking!

Distilled.

Wasn't a 100 degrees Fahrenheit supposed to be human body temperature?

It is not. 100 F is a fever. I read that 96 was supposed to be body temp, but it turned out to be wrong. 98.6 F (37 C) is body temp, give or take.

 

[iGas]

That's because the rest of the world isn't smart enough to use the English system. An idiot could figure out the metric system.

And it take even a bigger idiot to fuck it up.

CNN NASA lost a 125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agencys team used the more conventional metric system

 

[SirStev0]

Why do we still use the english system?

 

[glenn1]

That's because the rest of the world isn't smart enough to use the English system. An idiot could figure out the metric system.

"The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it."

 

[sportage]

Most kids I see couldn't be weighted by stones anyway. More like bricks. Huge heave bricks. Massive large bricks.

 

[BrokenVisage]

"My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!"

 

[Bateluer]

It is not. 100 F is a fever. I read that 96 was supposed to be body temp, but it turned out to be wrong. 98.6 F (37 C) is body temp, give or take.

Should clarify what I meant. 100F was supposed to be human body temp, but it was measured incorrectly.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns...heit-scale-why-is-32-freezing-and-212-boiling

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) was a German instrument maker who invented the first practical mercury thermometer. Casting about for a suitable scale for his device, he visited the Danish astronomer Ole Romer, who had devised a system of his own.

As it turned out, it was a case of the blind leading the blind.

Romer had decided that the boiling point of water should be 60 degrees. This at least had the strength of numerological tradition behind it (60 minutes in an hour, right?).

But zero was totally arbitrary, the main consideration apparently being that it should be colder than it ever got in Denmark. (Romer didn't like using negative numbers in his weather logbook.)

In addition to the boiling point of water, the landmarks on Romer's scale were the freezing point of water, 7-1/2 degrees, and body temperature, 22-1/2 degrees.

D.G., simple soul that he was, thought this cockeyed system was the soul of elegance. He made one useful change: to get rid of the fractions, he multiplied Romer's degrees by 4, giving him 30 for the freezing point and 90 for body temperature.

Then, for reasons nobody has ever been able to fathom, he multiplied all the numbers by 16/15, making 32 freezing and 96 body temperature. Boiling point for the time being he ignored altogether.

By and by Fahrenheit got ready to present his scale to London's Royal Society, the scientific big leagues of the day.

It dawned on him that it was going to look a little strange having the zero on his scale just sort of hanging off the end, so to speak. So he cooked up the explanation that zero was the temperature of a mix of ice, water, and ammonium chloride.

At some point Fahrenheit figured out that the boiling point of water came in at 212 degrees. Over time this replaced body temp as the upper landmark on his scale. Meanwhile, as more precise measurements were made, body temperature had to be adjusted to 98.6 degrees.

In short, 100 means nothing at all on the Fahrenheit scale, 96 used to mean something but doesn't anymore, and 0 is colder than it ever gets in Denmark. Brilliant.

 

[Bignate603]

that picture is not up to date.


The U.S. Navy also has the world's largest carrier fleet, with 11 in service, one under construction (two planned), and one in reserve.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy

This is a bit more up to date but still shows more than 11 carriers. I think this is because the definition of "carrier" is a bit ambiguous. For the US they're including the 9 amphibious assault ships that the Navy has in the graphic. While the US Navy doesn't typically call the amphibious assault ships "carriers" they are capable of deploying fixed wing aircraft and are bigger than many other countries' carriers.

 

[pontifex]

I find that chart to be heavily biased and un-mericun!
:Colbert:




no, you're just not interpreting it properly. It is based on the unit of measure. day is shortest unit (single day), month is larger (~30 days), year is largest (365 days/12 months).

It's about nesting.

but when someone asks the date, do you say June 7th or 7th of June?

much easier to say June 7th