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Dublin Whiskey Fire

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Re: Dublin Whiskey Fire

#81

Post by VoodooJuJu »

noSyncCloud wrote: post #78
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going to defend imperial (and other ancient) units of measurement. The metric system is unintuitive but standardized. The imperial system is intuitive but (traditionally) non-standardized. A standardized but unintuitive system is useful in modern science and engineering, where reliability and precision are of utmost importance. An intuitive but non-standardized system is useful for day-to-day communication and c…

This is complete balderdash; I'll go first: 1. What is a "wheatberry"? 2. What is an "oxen"? 3. How long is "a day"?

>complete balderdash

What's completely balderdash about it? The definition of centimeter is accurate, so it cannot be the case that the post is completely balderdash? Like you've requested with my oxen and my days and my wheat berries, perhaps you could you also be more precise?

Again, the point is that you use these measurements in situations where micrometer-tier precision is unnecessary. You can hear "pound", immediately be able to conceptualize it, and then move on with your life, not waste all day haggling with the merchant over his wheat berries that happen to be 0.2mm shorter on average than what you typically might consider to be a wheat berry.

Re: Dublin Whiskey Fire

#82

Post by boomboomsubban »

unhammer wrote: post #79

There's a PG version at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwood_%26_Company_shipping_... – ‘Waverley Avenue [was] coated in butter and chocolate. […] an ocean of fudge ... flooding the street ... like lava, sufficiently deep to float a rowboat for two blocks along Flushing Avenue. The flood attracted "a thousand and one" local children, keen to taste the mixture. The police initially made no attempt to stop them but a…

I don't understand how that could happen in Brooklyn in 1919 without being photographed.

Re: Dublin Whiskey Fire

#85

Post by [deleted] »

noSyncCloud wrote: post #78
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going to defend imperial (and other ancient) units of measurement. The metric system is unintuitive but standardized. The imperial system is intuitive but (traditionally) non-standardized. A standardized but unintuitive system is useful in modern science and engineering, where reliability and precision are of utmost importance. An intuitive but non-standardized system is useful for day-to-day communication and c…

This is complete balderdash; I'll go first: 1. What is a "wheatberry"? 2. What is an "oxen"? 3. How long is "a day"?

[deleted]

Re: Dublin Whiskey Fire

#86

Post by tdubhro1 »

smcl wrote: post #80
tdubhro1 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but maybe rapport based on “I don’t know you but I’ve heard your kind are a harmless lot who are always up for a drinking party after work”, is useful in a very limited set of circumstances, such as meeting a new team of peers, maybe. I’d still argue not, since the point of rapport building is to get to know the person in front of you, not how well they fit your preconception / stereotype. In a large majority…

> the UK still has astronomical alcohol consumption, but they don’t get labelled the same way as the Irish It shows how sticky stereotypes are and how they allow people to point at others without really thinking about themselves. I've got an example too. Within the UK Scotland gets a bad rap for being a nation of overweight people who eat deep fried food every other meal, when in reality the rate of obesity within th…

Yes, people “doing” the stage-Irish accent in response to an Irish person speaking in a relatively neutral accent is incredibly common, I just don’t get how people don’t realise what they’re doing- and I know for fact that many times it’s meant in a friendly, almost affectionate way, which boggles my mind even more, and then of course there are times when it’s intended to irk and offend but the person doing it hides behind the “banter” and thinks they won’t get called out for it.

Re: Dublin Whiskey Fire

#87

Post by LeanderK »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #76
jasontdev wrote: post #5

> The fire is believed to have started in Laurence Malone's bonded storehouse on the corner of Ardee Street, where 5,000 hogsheads (262,500 imperial gallons or 1,193,000 litres or 315,200 US gallons) of whiskey were being stored... Hogsheads sound like a fictional unit of measure made up to mock the imperial system.

I am going to defend imperial (and other ancient) units of measurement. The metric system is unintuitive but standardized. The imperial system is intuitive but (traditionally) non-standardized. A standardized but unintuitive system is useful in modern science and engineering, where reliability and precision are of utmost importance. An intuitive but non-standardized system is useful for day-to-day communication and c…

I don't know if it's sarcasm or not.

For one, many units are actually defined using relatable things like your example: "the mass of one cubic centimeter of water". Here, one always buys water in in 0.5 litre, 0.75 litres or 1 litre (=0.5,0.75 and 1 kilo), so it's even more relatable than your hand of berries (I literally had half a unit kilo weight in my hand an hour ago). Or celsius, 100 is boiling point of water and 0 is freezing point, which you will also encounter in your daily life (cooking and your fridge, at least approximately) and are easy to relate.

But more importantly, it doesn't matter. Most "personal" definitions are vague. My girlfriend is significantly shorter and a meter is way longer for here than for me, also her forearms are like two thirds of my forearm. Nobody knows how a meter is defined and I think many have forgotten how a gram or a kilo are defined, it's a scale you internalise. How to define them, that's up to the scientist. The day to day advantage is that it's so easy to calculate with these units and every single unit has the same concept behind it (from current to weight to acceleration).

Re: Dublin Whiskey Fire

#88

Post by flanbiscuit »

unhammer wrote: post #79

There's a PG version at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwood_%26_Company_shipping_... – ‘Waverley Avenue [was] coated in butter and chocolate. […] an ocean of fudge ... flooding the street ... like lava, sufficiently deep to float a rowboat for two blocks along Flushing Avenue. The flood attracted "a thousand and one" local children, keen to taste the mixture. The police initially made no attempt to stop them but a…

Curious where this was

> bounded by Flushing Avenue on the north, Park Avenue on the south, Waverley Avenue on the west and Washington Avenue on the east

Found it. It's by the Brooklyn Navy Yards: https://goo.gl/maps/uat3hq47dvV9tQaTA

in fact, the building still exists,

from wikipedia "Front of main plant, 1918": https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Industri...

it's on the Washington and Park corner: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6960688,-73.9674585,3a,75y,3...

Re: Dublin Whiskey Fire

#89

Post by zeagle »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #76
jasontdev wrote: post #5

> The fire is believed to have started in Laurence Malone's bonded storehouse on the corner of Ardee Street, where 5,000 hogsheads (262,500 imperial gallons or 1,193,000 litres or 315,200 US gallons) of whiskey were being stored... Hogsheads sound like a fictional unit of measure made up to mock the imperial system.

I am going to defend imperial (and other ancient) units of measurement. The metric system is unintuitive but standardized. The imperial system is intuitive but (traditionally) non-standardized. A standardized but unintuitive system is useful in modern science and engineering, where reliability and precision are of utmost importance. An intuitive but non-standardized system is useful for day-to-day communication and c…

I certainly don't want to run afoul of the etiquette rules here but I would ask yourself if you are projecting your long-standing familiarity and the resulting intuition that you have with these units onto everyone else.

Nobody who uses meters outside of setting the international standard or working in particle physics would have a working idea where they denoting meters in wavelengths of radioactive decay or hemisphere spanning fractions. They approximate it to something they can relate to just like you do. It's easy to skewer imperial units too with silly examples stories e.g. Fahrenheit.

Similarly just because it's convenient to me to think of (mile!) country roads, quarter sections, and acres from familiarity despite using metric elsewhere due to the grids from historical land allocations in Western Canada doesn't devalue other ways of measuring.

Re: Dublin Whiskey Fire

#90

Post by jefftk »

DoughnutHole wrote: post #55
jasontdev wrote: post #5

> The fire is believed to have started in Laurence Malone's bonded storehouse on the corner of Ardee Street, where 5,000 hogsheads (262,500 imperial gallons or 1,193,000 litres or 315,200 US gallons) of whiskey were being stored... Hogsheads sound like a fictional unit of measure made up to mock the imperial system.

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

0.002 mpg?
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