Jargon

[The Duke]

That’s cos Britain do everything half arsed Jason. I even notice that doctors have to grab a conversion chart when they ask your weight.

We are a strange country.

Anyone have a good idea or tale while the US imperial gallon is less than a real one? I’ve heard a few tales, but no one seems to know.

[Bob Williams]

As usual Steve, Wiki is your friend:     https://tinyurl.com/6rgs3rh

Quoting Wiki:

” Having this shared heritage, the two systems are quite similar, but there are differences. The US customary system is based on English systems of the 18th century, while the Imperial system was defined in 1824, after American independence. ”

So it looks as if those ex-colonials followed our our original system, and we changed ours in the next century, to standardise it over here. Leaving the last two users of the Imp system today, to be different even to each other! Anglo-Saxons, Romans, William the Conqueror and his Normans, all involved!

History is BS sometimes… :yahoo:

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Ed P]

The Duke wrote:

That’s cos Britain do everything half arsed Jason. I even notice that doctors have to grab a conversion chart when they ask your weight. We are a strange country. Anyone have a good idea or tale while the US imperial gallon is less than a real one? I’ve heard a few tales, but no one seems to know.

The story I heard was that the US gallon was stuck in a pre-Independence time warp, whereas the Imperial gallon was changed under a Georgian Weights & Measures act. This latter made it ‘easy’ for Inspectors to calibrate/check gallons using weights (10 pounds of water=1 gallon) rather than the Inspector having to carry a standard jug and slop stuff around.

[edit] there are reminiscences of the earlier times in Asia but this is in weights katis which is one and a half pounds (imperial). You find it still in use in one form or another across Asia – I was told it was a hang-over from the days when the UK was the world’s biggest drug pusher (opium).

[The Duke]

Sadly ed we lost that crown to America  :negative:

[Ed P]

The same ‘liquid’ weight system was applied to the smaller measures which is why there are 20 ‘fluid’ ounces in a pint, rather than the sixteen in a pound weight.

One of my uncles ran a pub and although he was completely above board with respect to booze measures he still visibly paled when the Weights and Measures guy arrived with his box of weights. Maybe it was the thought of all the black-market bacon, cheese, smoked salmon etc he had hidden away. (rationing was still in place until the 50s)

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Another word I don’t like is “Metadata”. I have nothing against the word it’s self as it is what it is, reference data or data about data if you like. My annoyance comes from the fact that it’s never explained in text that uses it. I first came across metadata when I was delving into the GEM OS on the Atari ST and it had me baffled for weeks because at the time I couldn’t find anywhere to look it up.

[Ed P]

As someone brought up on a diet of Assembler and C and latterly C++. I find the world of Python a cross between very interesting and b-awful.. While trying to resolve the somewhat buggy and inconsistent world of Tkinter (a gui wrapper for Python) I have come across a piece of jargon that I have grown to detest – it is the smug word Pythonic which I now mentally translate into the old punchline ‘Standing up in a hammock’. If there is a difficult and convoluted way of doing something then the smug Pythonic way will be even worse.

[Bob Williams]

I think ‘Brexit’ should be declared jargon, having given birth to ‘Frexit’ which will never happen. And made-up words from almost any speech by a US government Security organisation.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

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