As tall as a field-mouse on stilts giving a piggyback to a dolphin…
Ever notice in newspapers, magazines and blogs, that there are always some pretty strange units of measurement to describe the size of things?
Presumably this is an effort to make the size ‘relatable’ for the average idiot who doesn’t know how big 75 meters (67.5 yards) is… Well that’s roughly the size of 15 double-decker buses, or the distance of a 1 hour crawl across broken glass with your arms and legs tied.
I recently saw the ‘iPods’ used as a unit of measurement… wtf! For starters… Which iPod? It also didn’t specify the iPod’s orientation. I’ve also seen the distance between the earth and the moon described as a stack of dollar-bills, how many blue whales would need to be layed end-to-end to match the height of the new Burj tower, and even seen time compared to how long it would take to drive between Manchester and London 1000 times… really… yes REALLY.
Please, next time you need to come up with an inventive way to describe a number and can’t face writing lots of zeros: consider scientific notation, it’s not exactly rocket science ;)
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bobbigmac posted this
