Comic Corner - Trebuchet.

I have often found that its not the actual comic that makes me laugh but the hover text that is associated with the comic, today's "XKCD" is a prime example. The Comic is funny, but the below hover text is the meat of the joke.

If the flyers don't work, we'll switch to the LEAST subtle

method of informing a town of the existence of a trebuchet club.

Weekly Wanderings - Kilo, Gladiatorial Pursuits, Edible Flatware.

So normally I would have something valuable to post, that would increase your knowledge or strengthen your week. However, I have some questions that are unanswerable, mainly because they involve asking sociological questions.

1) The United States of Gluttony and the Metric System:

Something that I have yet to comprehend now that I have returned to my country of birth is why we are still suck on the Imperial measurement system. There are just to many units alone, much less their accuracy. Take, for instance, units of volume. In imperial, you can take your pick from:

gallon, liquid quart, dry quart, liquid pint, dry pint, fluid ounce, teaspoon, tablespoon, minim, fluid dram, gill, peck, bushel, cubic inch, cubic foot, cubic yard, cubic fathom, cubic rod, cubic furlong, cubic mile, cubic league, cubic mil, cubic pole, cubic perch, cubic hand, cubic link, cubic chain

In metric, that list is a little shorter:

liter

Let's take a step back. Imperial measurements have roots which can be traced back—sketchily—though Egyptian and Persian history, though the first occurrence of a measure we all know can be found written out in the Magna Carta, signed in 1215, that reads:

"There shall be one measure of wine throughout our whole realm, and one measure of ale and one measure of corn—namely, the London quart;—and one width of dyed and russet and hauberk cloths—namely, two ells below the selvage…."

The imperial units we now know slowly evolved over next 600 years, being added to as and when required. Eventually, they were gathered together and made official in the United Kingdom in 1824 by a Weights and Measures Act. US weights and measures are—very subtly—different to those in the UK, and were made official in the Mendenhall Order of 1893. It was updated in 1959, sure, but its roots are in a bygone age and, as a result, they now make little sense.

I mean when is the last time you heard about people worrying about the weight of the standard pound, well is the weight, currency or a slang body contact. But look people are positively in a twitter (see what i did there) about the IPK

There's long been debate over the accuracy of the standardized kilogram. Now, though, scientists have shown once and for all that the lump of metal defining the unit of mass has been putting on some weight.The original kilogram—the International Prototype Kilogram, or IPK, made of platinum and iridium alloy—is the standard against which all other measurements of mass are set. So, it's quite important. Forty replicas exist across the world, and the UK is in possession of replica 18. Researchers from Newcastle University, UK, thought they'd take a look at—and they found something amiss.  Using a state-of-the-art x-ray photo-electron spectroscopy machine— the only one of its kind in the world—they were able to analyze the block with unprecedented accuracy. Turns out age hasn't been kind. The x-ray measurements show that there's a build-up of hydrocarbons on the surface—weighing up to 100 micrograms.

Wouldn't it be nice to use a measurements system that actually cared about things like a few micrograms?

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2) The Roman Model, Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt:

So the other day I was watching football (more accurately post game coverage of football), they were covering the fourth or fifth injury and all i could think was why don't we just let people kill each other on television, it would be wildly popular and dominate peoples attention. say what you want about the Romans, they figured it out. We do not really care about the player we want to know how bad they were hurt. Same thing goes on the highway we don't slow down to see if everyone is OK we are looking for the carnage, we are a base and vile species, a warrior race bent on the destruction of anything that gets in our way. So the question needs to be asked, Why do we not have a blood sport yet? we could use hardened criminals from death row at first, or something.

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3) The Hershey Kiss:

How do you eat your Hershey kisses, do you consume them like a chewable item or are the to be savored like a hard candy?

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4) I ate the Plate too:

Seriously why are there not more foods like the ice cream cone where you use it and get to eat it too? No fuss no mus, when the food is gone there is no clean up! How cool is that?