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## Imperial vs. Metric, Base 2, Base 10, Base 12

Mundane & Pointless Stuff I Must Share: The Off Topic Forum

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rampaging-poet
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Post by rampaging-poet » Mon Jan 07, 2013 6:31 am

> Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I dated a chick whose boobs weighted a metric tonne. It pisses me off now, three nicer chicks could have had nice bouncy DDD's with that much chest ham and they were wasted on one person who used them to substitute for an actual personality.

Just for the hilarious and/or disturbing mental image:
the actual volume of breasts weighing one metric tonne would be around 1,100 litres. Assuming that's the combined mass and estimating each breast as a sphere, they'd each have a radius of about 51 centimetres. Reminds me of that old drawing of two Final Fantasy characters immobilized after one of them cast the fictional spell Breastaga.
EDIT: Forgot to divide by two the first time. Fixed.
Last edited by rampaging-poet on Mon Jan 07, 2013 6:35 am, edited 2 times in total.

> DSMatticus wrote:I sort my leisure activities into a neat and manageable categorized hierarchy, then ignore it and dick around on the internet.

My deviantArt account, in case anyone cares.
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tussock
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Post by tussock » Tue Jan 15, 2013 7:07 pm

Go read that babyonian link for how easy large-base systems are to use IRL, you just teach kids some basic algebra rather than rote tables. Well, some algebra and some rote tables, but not too big. NB: Base60 is written in alternating Base6 and Base10, but that's the same as base60 as far as math cares.
Ah. Base 12. Mmmm. 12's a nice number, and boxes of 12 items tend to stack nicely, but base12 is a bit rubbish anyway.
Different bases give you prime factor divisors that work, and prime factors of numbers adjacent to the base that almost work in a memorable way. Quick ways to check for even divisibility apply similarly.
Base12 gets you 2 and 3 (and 2 again to make life tidy), and nearly gets you 11 and 13. Base10 gets you 2 and 5, and nearly gets you 9 (thus 3) and 11.
So base10 has a mess for /7 and /13, while base12 has a mess for /5 and /7, thus, the base12 mess turns up more often and notably earlier. All higher primes are similar messes, and no one cares anyway, you just don't divide things by 17.
Base30 (or 60, or 360) catches 2,3,5 but misses everything higher. Technically that's better, because you make a lot of numbers out of 2, 3, and 5; but 3's are easy in base10 anyway, it's just annoying to write thirds in decimal notation.
Interesting that a society which developed around base12 would view 5 as an awkward number to work with, and ascribe 5 and 7 magical properties as we do 7 and 13. Instead of 7*8 being the tricky point on the rote table, it'd be more like 9*A.
The big Y1K scare would've happened in our 1728. 265 days per 10-month year. 260 degrees in a circle. Pi = 3.184809493B9186 ... We'd have kept more of the old systems notation when they standardised the weights and measures. Number pads would look different. Musical notation would be easier to read. 6-digit phone numbers last longer. Instead of a 166MMX on a 33 MHz bus I'd have owned a 47MMX on a B MHz bus. No one would have ever made a d10 as anything other than a curio, and D&D would be played with the platonic solids only. Random tables would all have 144 entries.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
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tussock
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Post by tussock » Fri Jan 25, 2013 2:40 pm

Gods-damned dozenal mindworm.
The number of the beast doesn't become dozenal 434, because it's a symbolic addition, so still 616, it's just bigger.
It's "Three score and thirden years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, ...", which happened in 1040 for the declaration and 10B3 for Gettysburg. The Declaration of the Rights of Man was 1051.
It's the Twendy Second of January in the year 11B9, one gross and six years since Gettysburg, and just 3 years 'till the auspicious 1200 when all the old computer clocks could break with the two gross bug, or Y2G.
{Late Edit: 40 million, not 40 thousand.}
Ug, "metric" (and SI) is based on the litre, kilogram, and meter, but the meter was taken from being 1/40000000 of the assumed earth's circumference, which would be 40,000,000 = 11,490,194 dozenal, or 10,000,000 rounded. So a meter would be about 10% (decimal) smaller, and a dozimeter a smaller fraction of that still (0.75 decimeters), leaving the litre and kilo of water under half the volume and weight (~= 0.42 decimal kilos, = 0.92 lb). Grams even smaller (at just 3.7 grains).
Note that would've made a meter closer to a yard (1.02m), a kg quite close to a lb (1.09kg), and a litre fairly close to a pint (1.14L). I can imagine the US converting for reals at that, even if they kept the old names. Hmm, assuming yards and pounds and pints stayed the same in base12, which they may as well given the non-conformist bases they already use.
So I'd be about 130 dozenal kilos (75 decimal -> 180 lighter metric -> 130 dozenal), and, uh, 2.12 dozenal meters tall (1.88m decimal -> 2.10m shorter metric -> 2.12m dozenal).
Gods-damned dozenal mindworm.
Last edited by tussock on Sat Jan 26, 2013 1:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
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