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Welcome to the Strange But True...

check the minimum requirement of this manufacturer's tartan kilt...

http://www.alibaba.com/product-free/125 ... _Kilt.html

...like Mrs Bucket's friend (UK sitcom) - room for a pony with every order.

Pete

That's a very very LARGE kilt...

Yes, it is difficult with forreign languages. Probably he means minimum 5 kilts per order. In that city of Pakistan where he has his business there are a lot of kilt makers. Some of them will ship just one kilt.

Perhaps these kilts grow on trees.

BTW it is Hyacinth Bucket's sister Violet who has a house with room for a pony ánd a husband who is a drag queen.

janrok wrote:BTW it is Hyacinth Bucket's sister Violet who has a house with room for a pony ánd a husband who is a drag queen.

For those not familiar with the character - Hyacinth Bucket is a middle-aged social climber (TV sitcom) who pronounces Bucket as Bouquet (as in bunch of flowers) - not like Charlie Bucket of chocolate factory fame.

Charlie (not Bucket or Bouquet)

I like the title of the thread.

It's easy to remember what a hectare is - an area of a square of 100 meters on a side.

But an acre - that's a little hard to figure out. You remember in school that there are 640 acres to a square mile. Then you read somewhere that there are 80 chains to a mile. Then you figure out that an acre is an area of 1 chain by 10 chains, and a chain is 66 feet. You may ask why an acre is defined as a skinny rectangle instead of a square. Why, it's easier to plow a skinny rectangular field than a square field!

Our spineless leaders in the U.S. don't have the good sense to lead the U.S. population to use S.I. [metric] units instead of the "colonial conglomeration" known as the U.S. Customary Units.

John

JohnH wrote:Then you figure out that an acre is an area of 1 chain by 10 chains, and a chain is 66 feet.

Better phrased as "1 chain by 1 furlong". Heck if you want to add confusion you might as well do it properly

Have fun,


Ian.

Milfmog wrote:

JohnH wrote:Then you figure out that an acre is an area of 1 chain by 10 chains, and a chain is 66 feet.

Better phrased as "1 chain by 1 furlong". Heck if you want to add confusion you might as well do it properly

Have fun,
Ian.

You learn something new everyday. I have heard of a furlong but never knew what it was.

John

JohnH wrote:I have heard of a furlong but never knew what it was.

And then we have 1.80E12. What's that you ask? It's the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight.

The most common place one runs into furlongs is in horse racing.

Just to add to the confusion, I had also heard an acre is one rod (one rod = 16.5 feet) times 1/2 mile (2640 feet). Either way, it turns out to be 43,560 square feet I believe. Interestingly (to me at least) if you take the square root of 43,560 it is about 208.710 so that is how long on each side (approximately) a square acre would be...roughly 2/3 the length of a football field.

Mugs-n-such wrote:Just to add to the confusion, I had also heard an acre is one rod (one rod = 16.5 feet) times 1/2 mile (2640 feet). Either way, it turns out to be 43,560 square feet I believe. Interestingly (to me at least) if you take the square root of 43,560 it is about 208.710 so that is how long on each side (approximately) a square acre would be...roughly 2/3 the length of a football field.

Now that's a real skinny field. There are 4 rods to a chain. An acre is 1 chain by 1 furlong, which is 4 rods by 40 rods or 160 square rods. Or the alternate definition is 1 rod by 1/2 mile which is 1 rod by 160 rods (there are 40 chains to a half-mile) which is also 160 square rods.

160 square rods * (16.5 feet/rod)^2 = 43,560 square feet.

People who oppose the use of SI units for the most part don't even know the "colonial units" very well. Young minds are taught this drivel [colonial units] in grade school, and give up on doing any math or science. Also the U.S. has problems with exports of goods that have special fasteners that require special tools to service them - that is inch-measured fasteners.

John

JohnH wrote:People who oppose the use of SI units for the most part don't even know the "colonial units" very well.

That's Imperial units, please. Assorted seemingly random measurements have been around vastly longer than what the French have foisted upon us quite recently, the moniker of "SI" notwithstanding.

Young minds are taught this drivel [colonial units] in grade school, and give up on doing any math or science.

But furlongs-per-fortnight is a perfectly good way of measuring speed! Why dumb it down so we have to express it in centimeters per kilosecond? (There has been at least one space probe that underwent unintentional lithobraking due to the confusion of units. FAIL!) Besides, Sexagesimal is a perfectly decent way to delineate time (the French failed here in spades -- no decimals for you)

Also the U.S. has problems with exports of goods that have special fasteners that require special tools to service them - that is inch-measured fasteners.

Nope. That's dead. For all practical purposes the US is using SI for (what little is left of) its manufacturing purposes, and has done so for about 20 years. To do otherwise would be stupid in the extreme. (I do, however, recall, first-hand, the consternation that the cutover caused when auto-mechanics had to buy a set of SI tools in addition to the Imperial ones that they'd already paid a small fortune for. There was much complaining.)

JohnH wrote:I have heard of a furlong but never knew what it was.

A Furlong is a Hollywood Actor. John Furlong to be exact. In Terminator 2, he did his first work in movies.

Next thing we see will be Cowboy Boots made in Ulanga. Or Square Dancing books coming from Afghanistan. The planet Earth is shrinking, and shrinking, and shrinking, and shrinking.

JohnH wrote:

Mugs-n-such wrote:Just to add to the confusion, I had also heard an acre is one rod (one rod = 16.5 feet) times 1/2 mile (2640 feet). Either way, it turns out to be 43,560 square feet I believe. Interestingly (to me at least) if you take the square root of 43,560 it is about 208.710 so that is how long on each side (approximately) a square acre would be...roughly 2/3 the length of a football field.

Now that's a real skinny field. There are 4 rods to a chain. An acre is 1 chain by 1 furlong, which is 4 rods by 40 rods or 160 square rods. Or the alternate definition is 1 rod by 1/2 mile which is 1 rod by 160 rods (there are 40 chains to a half-mile) which is also 160 square rods.

160 square rods * (16.5 feet/rod)^2 = 43,560 square feet.

People who oppose the use of SI units for the most part don't even know the "colonial units" very well. Young minds are taught this drivel [colonial units] in grade school, and give up on doing any math or science. Also the U.S. has problems with exports of goods that have special fasteners that require special tools to service them - that is inch-measured fasteners.

John

"rods". When I learned about those measurements they were called "roods".

That is definitely confusing...however, an ACRE is 4,840 square yards and it's square..not narrow. Sheesh..