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Shaq-inches? Not at City Hall you don't
By adamg on Wed, 02/02/2011 - 2:45pm
It was a busy day today at the Mayor's Hotline office in City Hall - more than 2,700 calls by 2 p.m. I spent some time there, will have a report later, but for now, here's an image showing how they measure snow at City Hall.
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Smoot?
Yes, but how many Smoots in a Menino? And how many Meninos in a Shaq? And how many Shaq's in my snowbank?
I don't know from your
I don't know from your snowbank friend, but...
1.04 Smoot = 1 Menino
1.21 Menino = 1 Shaq
Or, more relevant...
http://www.google.com/search?q=one+keg+in+cubic+sm...
Latest snow totals
Harv just said Boston's now up to 70.5 inches of snow this season, which equals:
Still- this season is not as bas as the . . .
. . . The Great Snow of 1717. What do you think the penalties were back then for not clearing the snow in front of your house? Public whipping or just a day in the stocks?
The better question: is there an iPhone app to do the math?
IIRC, Smoot is 5'7", but the Wikipedia page says the non-SI standard measure is 170.18cm. If Mumbles really is 5'10", or 177.8cm tall, 1.044 smoots. Shaq is 7'1", which is 216cm or 1.269 smoots.
Or working the other way, a Menino is 0.819 Shaqs, and a Smoot is 0.7878 Shaqs, or 0.961 Meninos.
Clearly I'm so fried from working from digging that there's only one thing left for me to do: make an Excel spreadsheet to handle these calculations more easily.
Be careful.
Be careful. Given that the heights of Menino, Shaq and Smoot are all popularly reported in English - not Standard metric - units, you need to be mindful about producing results with more siginificant digits than are justified.
Although there is some debate about whether Shaq is 7' 1" or merely 7' 1/2", the other two gentlmen's heights are only reported in whole inches. Therefore - using 1 inch as the unit basis for measurement - it seems prudent to assume accuracy of no more than 1 part in ((7*12)+1)= 85. Yes, I took some liberty by assuming 1 part in 100 - ie - two siginifcant digits. But any more than that is untenable.
Not to mention
We wouldn't want to repeat the mistake of the Mars Climate Orbiter and get SI and Imperial units mixed up. The result would be a disaster for the whole snowfall-compared-to-famous-person system, possibly leading to a loss of funding.
Smoots
Google lets you type
"How many Smoots in 70.5 inches" or whatever and get the results. So at least for Smoots, we're covered.
You mean
like I did up above in this same post an hour ago?
Do ya not read yer own website?! ;o)
You, Brett and Swirly spend
You, Brett and Swirly spend more time on the website than Adam does.
Minus Brett, plus Kaz
Brett doesn't actually post a lot; he's just, um, loud? Noticeable? Memorable?
Kaz posts a lot. Don't forget Kaz. Oh, and Ron Newman. Gotta have Ron.
(Let's not talk about The Zak.)