h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dad sometimes drinks Budweiser beer from Budweis, Czech Republic.

I've had that in Germany. The Czech beer, I mean.

Aha - Eberhard Anheuser was born in 1805 in Bad Kreuznach. His son-in-law was born in 1839 in Kastel near Mainz.

Apparently, there was a trademark dispute between Anheuser and Busch and the people in Budweis back in 1907. Beer fans, a possible Guide Entry?

I seem to remember another trademark/copyright case between them a lot more recently, too. Maybe in the 90s.

I think there was. I didn't read very deeply, but there were a lot of copyright/trademark disputes stemming from World War II, as well. I suspect the beer people may have had similar issues to the Bayer company.

I stopped fighting over religion, I'm not going to start an war

Metrification began with the French revolutionaries.

Lenin, was, of course, a great admirer of them.

The metric system was nothing to the damage the French Revolution did to the calendar.

Talk about the events of the 9th Thermidor...

Ah, the Bud/Budweiser Debacle.

Let's see as a summary... Budweiser are from the place, brew a beer in the style of the place. Were there first, but stopped brewing. Bud took the idea of the beer, went off to the States, started brewing their own version, and have been continuously brewing for longer.

All happy and fine until the global market, enter confusion of customers, and then the lawyers. Bud loses most of the trademark cases it brings, only winning in America I think, and ends up doing a deal with Budweiser where AB become the sole distributor of Budweiser in the States (meaning they can manage the competition).

Denmark has produced gazillions of tons of feta and exported most of it to Greece, The Middle East, the emirates, Saudi Arabia etc. Not so any more. But now we sell "white " in the same amounts. The European Union only allow makers in certain districts of Greece to call their product feta.

I wonder why the good people from Budovar and Budweiser didn't think of this instead of waisting millions on lawyers

What's funnier is, the word 'feta' in Greek means 'slice'. When you ask for it in the store, you say, 'mia feta tiri', meaning 'a slice of cheese'.

That IS funny!

I'm not going to ask for a slice of Danish white cheese, though. It's good, but when I can afford it I prefer the real thing

I was just remembered of the delicious white wine we bought in Lindos, Rhodes, for our lunch of and very freshly baked bread A very nice variation from and

argh, pliny doesn't show my selfmade smileys of olives, onions, olive oil, vinegar and retsina

We need a retsina smiley.

I suggest it be a water glass containing pale yellow liquid, with a tiny pine tree stricking out.

anyonegot any superglue ?

http://www.wisegeek.org/why-does-the-us-have-a-different-measurement-system.htm

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Measurement.html

http://www.ehow.co.uk/info_8371042_three-types-measurement-systems.html


all I wanted was 2 fingers of Red Eye err! Jim lad

Anthropomorphic measures do vary a lot from individual to individual, but that's one of the things that often makes them convenient, like the two fingers of red eye.

For me, a palm's breadth is four inches.

I have a friend whose palm's breadth is five inches, though his hands are only six inches long against my eight inches.

I met a Hindu woman once who had the smallest and most delicate hands I've ever seen on a normal sized adult, at only 2 by 3 inches.




On the metric convention, if it had been me writing the standard, I'd simply have made Earth normal gravity equal to 10 meters per second squared and worked out all the other measures from that.




Nowadays, I occasionally suggest people ought to be thinking in terms of a more universal standard based on the elementary quantum, taking the standard from the mass density statistics of the vacuum field rather than the hydrogen standard.

Then, a mole (Avogadro's Number) squared of elementary quantum times works out to a little over 5 hours, 19 minutes, 20 seconds, a convenient if rather disconcerting sized basic unit of time.

A mole squared of elementary quantum distances works out to approximately the distance between the Earth's orbit about the Sun, and that of Neptune.

A mole of either elementary quantum times or distances, the last I noticed, is still immeasurably tiny.

A mole cubed, in either case, exceeds the dimensions of the observable universe.




Probably all the smart interstellar civilizations are using a standard like that.




Some idea of the size of the mole (and a hint as to how fundamental it is), the elementary quantum equivalency of the rest mass of the neutron is a mole of elementary quanta, less the elementary quantum equivalency of the electron, multiplied by the spin and momentum statistics of the graviton.

(An amusing range for a study in Richard Feynman's "sum over histories" approach.)

The discrepancy is probably due to bonding energies under the poly-electron model of baryonic matter, same principle as one gets variations from the arithmetical ideal with isotopes under the poly-hydrogen model, the discrepancies due to variations in bonding energies.




A mole of hen's eggs, or golf balls is about the size of the moon.




(Actually its a little closer to the size of Europa, but near enough the moment.)

You're right! If we're going to be 'scientific' with measurements, why not go whole hog?

I feel the need to drop this in here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/24/vulture_central_standards/

Sorts it all out once and for all.

Very nice one.

I agreeit's worth 10LB of plaited fog of anyone's money