While welcoming the new units, what i would like to ask is,

Whats the new unit for measuring "angles"?

What with measuring the IT and paris hilton angles, we need a new unit for angles...

Q1) Express the volume of an Olympic swimming pool in Bulgarian airbags.

Q2) Express the surface area of the pool in microWales (show your working).

Q3) What is the ideal pool water temperature in Hn?

I noticed after you pub quiz win the other week that you managed to guess the height of someone in heinze baked beans tins(HBTs). perhaps these should be added as a subdivision of a spaghetti. I haven't bought either for a while but would guess there's about 2 1/2 HBTs per Spaghetti

"The standard unit of weight shall be the Jub (Jb), representing the weight required to crush an Australian beer can at sea level,"

What? Just how thick are you lot? I know for a fact it takes two jubs to crush a beer can, I was there!

Steve, Perth WA

For the ease of proper pronunciation, I think that the plural of Norris should still be Norris as in:

A fish

Some fish

A story could then read - Deputy PM assaulted in egg outrage.

Deputy PM John Prescott was attacked by a disgruntled egg-throwing voter today. The egg hit mister Prescott with a force of at least 0.5 Norris.

Would it be possible to have an online conversion calculator? Then we could all be very accurate in our converions to Reg Standard.

The plural of the Norris should be the Norrii.

How about units of measurement for sound - pin-drop - the basic unit is how loud a sound is made by a pin dropping.

A unit for software bugs could be a Vista, although in most real-world cases a micro-Vista is sufficient.

Rob

Have you considered formalising the " Merican " unit for large weights? Equivilent to 150 kg, 300 paris hiltons etc.

...that this is the kind of thing that makes me wish I'd gone into journalism?

We now seem to have two conflicting units of force (since weight is a force). To make matters worse, the definition of the Jub is given in terms of kilograms, which is a unit of mass. However since the Jub is defined as the weight required to crush an Australian beer can, it must be assumed that the Jub is indeed intended to be a unit of force (mass doesn't crush, force does).

Thus I would suggest redefining the Jub as equivalent to approximately 42 Newton or 0.42 Norrises.

Before anyone else asks, Whats the IT Angle??

I eagerly await a IT related comment using these new measurements.

Um, force and weight should bear the same units. Note that the crushing "weight" of 4.2 kg would not crush a beer can on the moon even if someone were to pay the outrageous import duties to perform the experiment. Just to be straight, kg and slugs are mass units and newtons and pounds are force units. That said, I hereby petition the Reg Standards Soviet that the Jub standard be rightfully defined as a unit of mass. The conversion should be set at 3.42 kg as that is the mass of water required to fill 2 Bulgarian funbags at 0 Hn.

"Whats the new unit for measuring "angles"?

What with measuring the IT and paris hilton angles, we need a new unit for angles..."

It's obvious, angles are measured in ITs and their inverses are measured in Parises

Really, if you were to hit anyone with the force of 1 Norris, their face should implode and their teeth should scatter through the air, drawing beautiful enamel arcs through the golden evening light. I believe the definition of a Norris is 1 or even 2 orders of magnitude off.

I'm at odds with el Reg. I defer to the noble readers for judgment on this: The use of a Hilton (Hn) should be used as a unit of measurement of the speed of stupid.

However, to absolutely measure temperature, one could still use a "Hilton-esque" value, which is identified as the absolute temp of an empty hilton girl brain cavity. I submit PNH as that unit of measure, with a value of 1 degree above absolute zero, as both sisters share the same level of warmth when talking about something that doesn't involve themselves.

"That said, I hereby petition the Reg Standards Soviet that the Jub standard be rightfully defined as a unit of mass. The conversion should be set at 3.42 kg as that is the mass of water required to fill 2 Bulgarian funbags at 0 Hn."

Okay, so what is the mass of *silicone* required to fill two Bulgarian airbags at 0 Hn?

I'm pretty sure the poor lad who came with that measure has neven been "Chucked" (that may happen if The Man ever notices this), else he'd have estimated the Force as a somewhat way larger value... IF he'd survived the initial impact, that is.

The obvious unit of measure for angles must surely be the IT. Where one IT of angle is the minimum required to get a story into the register.

Surely a unit of force called a norris would be a supreme unit of force instead of such a small weak, pathetic force as listed!

I propose you revise the units so it reads something along the lines of:

Scientists believe an asteroid as small as five Bulgarian airbags in volume could strike the earth with a force of two nano-Norrises, flattening an area of 500 nanoWales.

A force equivalent to 1 norris should be the sort of force that destroys entire glaxies as befits the man himself!

2 ideas.

Plausibility. Measured in Tin Foil Hats.

Needless outrage. Measured in Children (to be thought off)

I *STILL* say we should go back to swallows, oceans, and coconuts. There is no need for all this new math! I shall be writing a very firm letter to The Times tomorrow - and I don't even live in the U.K. So there.

Sir:

With El Reg's punctiliousness- a recently formulated obsession, it seems to me- about units, you should be aware there are no "degrees Kelvin". For over a generation now,the SI units of absolute temperature now have been kelvin.

Perhaps your illustrious writers could use a technical advisor?

Larry Sherwood

So when will we be petitioning the International Bereau of Weights and Measures for these to be ofically recognised units

velocity seems to be missing, kilodouble-decker busses per hour seems the most useful for longer distances, linguinis per second for samller things

pressure will obviously be jubs per square linguini, although the suggested lesser length of Heinz Baked Beans Tins (surely that should be HBBTs) might work as well and so it would be Jubs per square HBBT

density will be jubs per grapefruit

It should be noted that the Hilton is a relativistic temperature measure as observed on Friday nights in Newcastle where thermometers regularly show 0°C but the empirical temperature is a good 2-3Hns higher.

Are we to understand that, like SI units, the measure held in Paris is taken as universal and local variants are merely derivations?

On a scale of 1 to silly, I rate this article (and all other measurement articles. Keep 'm coming) with 11.64 out of a possible 12.3 pythons (roughly equal to 5 cans of spam, or 76 dead parrots).

Everyone knows that data bits are stored on maracas, and a '1' is when the maraca is being shook, and it is a '0' otherwise. So the unit of data should be a Bez, in honour of the Happy Mondays' maraca shaker, and a byte should be an octBez, and 8,000 bits should be a kilooctBez and so on.

Do try and remember that the Norris is the smallest possible force that Chuck can exert - it's a quantum thing. This is the force applied to an object that receives a passing glance from Chuck.

The unit for intelligence should be the Bush, with a one-to-one correspondence with IQ. So 70 Bush is pretty dim and 150 pretty smart.

I propose two subdivisions of Norris':

1/8 Norris = 1 pirate. Since the application of force equal to one Norris will likely cause wide-ranging destruction, whereas the application of the force of one pirate will likely cause only one death with possible, comedic collateral damage

1/120 Norris = 1 ninja. While applying the force of one ninja may cause death, the resulting collateral damage is likely to negligible. Most likely, the force will be stopped about 1 second before impact and diverted into a look of masked surprise (raised eyebrows) and the breaking of a nearby banister or guttering.

1/1600 Norris = one monk-subpoena. For obvious reasons.

Asbestos suit donned. Extinguisher at the ready...

The specific gravity of silicone implants is approx 0.85 to 0.95.

The maths may be done accordingly.

at the needless Merkanisation of some of these measures.

The European equivalent of the Norris is of course the Van Damme, with the added advantage that the pronouncements of Jean-Claude Van Damme are at least as entertaining as those of Paris Hilton, which means he's far most efficient and therefore more ecological.

We therefore already have perfectly good measures for force AND the speed of stupid.

Time should be messured using the knickers and bra principle, and how long its take a subject to remove them.

1x knicker = 5 seconds (edible ones may invoke an exponetial factor of 10x if including Quagmire effect, also ifs shes lucky)

1x bra per clasp = 10 seconds

Now if we include the bush effect and the Quagmires (gig, short for Giggity), where by the Quagmire will secure the removal of said garment with a swift single motion.

1x bra (3 clasp) = 30 seconds

If the intelligence of 1x Gig equats to 150x Bushes, then

1x bra (3 clasp) divided by 150x bush = 0.2 seconds (also known as the James Bond Golden Number for dispatching bad guys and bad girls alike)

For time

- the standard pint - with additional units of sessions, binges and lost weekends - an additional unit of the standard hangover would be available for the quantification of radioactive decay.

It follows that the standard unt of frequency would be the vomit

There is no problem surely with having separate units for weight (OK mass really) and force. After all the SI system copes fine with having both kilograms and newtons ...

Sorry, but this is completely wrong. The Hilton (Hn) is already widely accepted as a measurement of pressure in relation to a vacuum.

Interestingly, the measurement applies to two standard areas of analysis; encompassing both suction and of course, a defined space devoid of matter.

The control point for an Hilton varies depending on environment. In a late night residential setting for example and when measuring suction, one Hilton equates to 3.667 Divine Browns (DvB) which is in turn 1.38 times more powerful than a standard 800 watt Mr Henry (MH).

Example:

At over 6.7 Hiltons, Tom knew he wasn't going to last more than 10 minutes.

Likewise NASA have begun marrying their traditional measurement of distance (the parsec) with the Hilton to calculate the likelihood of a foreign object impacting on the International Space Station ISS), or any other space faring craft.

It was revealed that the recent shuttle mission had a 99.8% chance of success based on there being only 8 near-earth objects within the 140,056 Hiltons that made up the operational area of the craft.

Example:

Modern nuclear submarine sonar has advanced to the point whereby objects the size of Jade Goody can be detected instantly even in volumes exceeding 500,000 Hiltons.

But it seems that there are no longer "degrees centigrade", having been replaced with Celcius, which is identical apart from the fact that you're not allowed to use the degree symbol, so no "degrees celcius", either.

Now, I'd swear that SI units already included something called the Coulomb, a measure of charge, which is also denoted by C.

Of course, the standard unit of "charge" was previously measured in "Archers" (bribes) but is most frequently associated with peerages these days.

Firstly, "The Norris" (surely that's TN): Since it is already widely accepted that "The Norris" is quite simply the largest single unit of force known to our species, it is logical then to accept that only fractions of "The Norris" are suitable to describe such mundane and trivial definitions like "the effect of a meteor, 500 times the weight of Wales, striking a raw hen's egg at terminal velocity" which would be perhaps equivelent to 0.1 Norri.

Secondly, "The Hilton" (Hn): We are in danger of translating every unit of measurement into a "Hilton" of some form or another, perhaps I might suggest at this stage that we merely resist this urge and retain a discrete distance from anything other than the "Paris Hilton Angle" which is, of course, 180 degrees ;-P

As a replacement unit of Temperature/Heat, perhaps the GPU... addition of a single GPU results in a temperature rise of about 8 Hns.

Surely a story requires an IT angle equal to zero to make it onto the register, based on most articles here...

I recommend a new unit The Politician for angle. One politician = 180 degrees or the maximum angle. So 2 Politicians to one circle (this is self explanatory). For the subdivision, how about the Special Interest Group (SIG) where there are 100 SIGs per Politician or if greater accuracy is required 1000 SIGS per Politician.

Tin foil hats offer no protection, a trio of grad students have some pretty compelling evidence that shows the use of the typical tinfoil hat actually makes it easier for the government to get into your head. They even went so far as to test three separate designs, consisting of a skull cap (most common form), Roman Centurion had, quite similar to the helmets that film makers portray roman soldiers wearing, and a fez. All three designs failed miserably when attempting to protect the wearer.....

any self respecting paranoid know the tin foil hat needs to be a pyramid to stop the mind control rays :)

"the tin foil hat needs to be a pyramid"

Also referred to as "a cheops" or "doing a cheops" as any fule kno .

or so the voices keep saying ........

"I *STILL* say we should go back to swallows, oceans, and coconuts. There is no need for all this new math! I shall be writing a very firm letter to The Times tomorrow - and I don't even live in the U.K. So there."

_________________

Would that be a laden, or unladen swallow?

Can I suggest that the unit of Thesp or Luvvie is used for offense? 1 Thesp is equivalent to the number of child actors with smudgy, dirty faces (pretending to be poor and / or war torn) that it takes to cause the viewer to shoot the telly? As this is bound to lead to some pretty small numbers for every day offense, I'd suggest another unit of the Luvvie, where 1 Luvvie is equal to 1 microThesp. (That way we can avoid the situation we get with Farads where we usually need to work with large multiples of tens in everday calculations)