English-speakers have screwed around with their units throughout history. Always importing units and adjusting the old ones a percent or so to get a nice fit. Usually several different ounces, pounds, stones, and quarters have been floating around in the English stew. Eventually nice ratios get established between units that were originally foreign as they become assimilated. Everybody has some idea of how the mile was adapted from the roman 5000 feet eventually reaching the present 5280 feet. It was gradually fudged to achieve a nice fit with other units like yard and furlong. The British system is a cross-bred and accretive mongrel, like the languange that goes with it. It has not stopped growing and the only ones who eventually lose are the purists.

Metric is a ill-sized sterile system and it would be a pity for the British traditional system to mongrelize with it. Also the sizes of units would have to be bent noticeably out of shape to fit with metric. I'm suggesting barely perceptible changes to fit traditional units to natural ones and help preserve them.

THE "NOAH'S ARK" FOR LENGTH UNITS

I suggest you consider the 5-foot two-step Roman PACE as a preservation vehicle for traditional length units.

Inch, foot, cubit, yard are 1/60, 1/5, 3/10, 3/5 of the pace.

The pace has potential endurance because it is 10**35 of the natural length unit, and a bunch of traditional units are nice fractions of a pace.

THE 'NOAH'S ARK" FOR MASS UNITS

I suggest you consider a 48-pound TALENT as a preservation vehicle for traditional mass units. The pound is 1/48 of this talent by definition. The troy pennyweight turns out to be 1/14,000 part of this talent. Classically the drachma was 1/6000 talent and we get our word "dram" from drachma. It just happens that what is called the apothecaries dram is roughly 1/6000 of this talent. Several traditional mass units of various sizes, most especially the POUND, are describable as nice fractions of the talent.

The talent has potential endurance because it is 10**9 of the natural mass unit.

1600 TROY MINUTES IN A DAY

I suggest you entertain the possibility of an alternative ten-percent shorter minute called, for want of a better name, a TROY MINUTE. This is not to supplant the ordinary minute but to use as an optional alterate in certain prescribed contexts (the way troy ounces are used for certain specialized purposes).

There are 1440 ordinary minutes in a day and, because the troy is exactly 9/10 of ordinary, there are exactly 1600 troy minutes in a day. Troy minute is used in these definitions:

The PACE is defined as 10**-10 c minute.
The MILE is defined as 10**-7 c minute: a thousand paces.
The TALENT is defined as 10**34 h-bar minute/square pace.

Troy minute is what relates the two Noah's Arks, pace and talent, to the natural constants c, h-bar, G. That is why it is good to have troy minute around. It can fulfill its function without interfering in everyday time.

MINUTE, PACE, AND TALENT ARE VALIDATED BY THEIR RELATION TO THE NATURAL CONSTANTS

The speed of light is exactly ten million miles per troy minute. So it is exactly ten billion paces per troy minute. In terms of pace, minute, and talent the constants have the following values:

c---exactly 10**10.
h-bar---exactly 10**-34.
gravity constant G---approximately 10**-6.

The last approximation is to within three tenths of a percent, as 0.997 is to 1.000.

WHAT HAPPENED TO BRYAN UNITS?

Bryan units are a good units but they had satirical names like *dog* for the 48-pound mass unit. these units are very similar to bryan ones but with serious names.
Instead of *dog* we say TALENT.
The bryan *snicker* was essentially a thousandth of a MINUTE.
The *bone* was essentially a hundredth of a PACE.

what I am saying is approximate, not something that is exact out to the last decimal place. But if you built a system based on 1/100 pace, 1/1000 troy minute, and talent, it would look very much like the bryan system based on bone, snicker, dog.

That is why I say that this is the "serious-names" version of bryan system. Note that in this version what are technically the base units are 1/100 pace, 1/1000 minute, and talent. Pace and minute are used presenting the system here because they're more intuitive and familiar-sized. Base units would only be needed for checking definitions and doing physics.

************HERE IS SOME EARLIER MATERIAL PASTED IN FOR REFERENCE***********
Traditional+Natural Synthesis
Universal Natural Units
No set of physical quantities is more basic than the universal fundamental constants of nature. The NIST lists thirteen such constants of which three are the natural unts: planck mass, length, and time.

To see the NIST (CODATA ) values for these constants use the Google search engine with the keyword [constants]. Simply typing "constants" into Google will get you the NIST site, where clicking on the first category "universal" will get you the short list of universal fundamental physical constants.

Reinforcing Traditional Units with Natural Ones—the fortyeight pound Talent

It happens that a billion times the natural unit of mass is 48 pounds. The equality is exact to the accuracy with which the natural unit is measured. This is an odd coincidence and nothing comparable to it occurs in the metric system. In metric terms, the same mass, namely a billion times natural, is 21.767 kilograms with an uncertainty of 0.075 percent. This experimental uncertainty in measuring the natural mass unit, an uncertainty of a thirteenth of a percent, means that a billion times the natural unit is indistinguisable from a mass of exactly 48 pounds.

This odd coincidence allows us to validate and corroborate traditional units in an unexpected way: we simply give 48 pounds a name—talent for instance—and say that the avoirdupois pound shall be 1/48 of a talent. Nothing changes. But a billion times the natural mass unit, as accurately as may presently be measured, is now one talent. (Not terribly different from the Attic Greek talent of 57 pounds or 60 "minae" in widespread use at one time.)

The existing set of British units, with one additional unit adjoined, namely the 48 pound talent, is an example of a traditional+natural synthesis. It is a traditional system which has been adjusted (in this case simply by addition of one unit) to make a coincidence with natural units visible.

The troy Minute and the Natural Time Unit

The current best estimate for the natural time unit, if you scale it by 10**45 gives a minute-sized interval. One might call it a "troy minute" since it is about 10 percent shorter than the conventional minute (the medieval troy pound, from the French city of Troyes, was lighter than the now-prevailing pound avoirdupois.)

Although there are 1440 ordinary minutes in a day, there are some 1600 "troy minutes" because the troy minute is shorter. For definiteness, we can define the troy minute to be exactly 9/10 of an ordinary minute, or equivalently make it exactly 1/1600 of a day. A common highway speed (67 mph) is then a mile per minute, a typical speed for sound is ten miles per minute, the earth's average speed in orbit is 1000 miles per minute and the standard speed for light is ten million miles per minute. To make this last relationship exact all that is needed is a slight adjustment in the length of the mile.

The thousand-pace Mile and the Natural Length Unit
If you google with keyword "constants" the first thing that comes up is the NIST site. Selecting "universal" and then "planck length" will get you the natural length unit: 1.62×10**-32 millimeters. So 10**32 the natural length unit is 1.62 millimeters—-about the thickness of a penny. Ten pennies make a classic fingerwidth unit, a hundred are just over half a foot, and a thousand make an ordinary two-step PACE. A thousand such paces make a recognizable MILE, less than a percent different from the conventional mile in use today. No accidental fit between natural units and the metric system is anywhere near that close.

We can define the mile unambiguously so as to make the standard speed of light exactly ten million miles per minute—it was already very close to that anyway—and that will stretch it out slightly and give the mile an exact value in metric terms of 1618.8…meters. Accordingly the pace 1.6188… meters. The classic Roman two-step pace was five feet. Other traditional lengths (inch, shaftment, foot, cubit, yard) are convenient fractions (1/60, 1/10, 1/5, 3/10, 3/5) of a pace. I won't belabor this in detail.

Redefining the Talent

Now that we have time and length scales unambigouously defined we can if we wish redefine the mass unit as follows.

talent = 10**34 h-bar minute/pace**2.

This is in line with the previous definition which gave the speed of light an exact power-of-ten value—it redefines the mass unit to make h-bar an exact power of ten as well. Doing so reduces the mass unit by TWO TENTHS OF A PERCENT changing it from 48 pounds to 47.9 pounds. The cost of not making this redefinition would be that the mantissa of h-bar would be 0.998 instead of exactly one.


The twentyseven pound Quarterforce

The natural force unit happens to be 27.2 ×10**42 pounds of force and a traditional weight unit, the quarter (most recently 25 pounds in the US and 28 pounds in Britain), has varied in the 27.2 pound neighborhood. The English quarter is connected to the Arabic unit ar-Rub, which means "the quarter", and the Spanish and Portuguese arroba, roughly the same size as our quarter.

So here we have an at-one-time widespread unit which we can redefine as 27.2 pounds and call the quarterforce or simply quarter for short. This makes the natural force unit, Planck force, equal to 10**42 quarters. The rigorous definition of the force unit, given the fact that the troy minute and the pace (a thousandth of a mile) and the talent mass unit have already been defined, is as follows.

quarterforce = 10 thousand talent pace per sq. minute.

Exerting quarter force for the distance of one pace delivers a "quarterpace" of energy, a force-distance product analogous to "footpound". A quarterpace is half the size of the familiar food Calorie—the amount contained in an average-size black bean of a type we get around here. A climb I often make in the hills near my house involves a rise of 60 paces. Since my weight is 7 quarters, the energy involved in climbing is 420 quarterpace, or 420 "beans-worth".

These definitions provide for a coherent system in which c and h-bar have exact power-of-ten values. Base units in the coherent system are a hundredths of a pace, a thousandth of a minute, and the talent mass. The acceleration corresponding to this choice of base units is 10**4 pace per square minute, and the force unit is the quarterforce. The gravity constant G has a value which is approximately a power of ten, in fact G is very close to a millionth. In terms of the units we've been using it is 0.997 × 10**-6 cubicpace/squareminute per talent. So it is G is within three tenths of a percent of being a power of thousand.

"Naturalness" of traditional units
Traditional British units are "natural" in several different senses. They have evolved through use by linguistically inventive people for many centuries, and units have been added, combined and adjusted in various ways to suit their purposes. Inevitably these units have adapted to the dimensions and materials of life. But this is not the only way in which units can be natural.

The units (planck mass, length, time) listed as universal fundamental physical constants are natural in a different sense. These are units favored in certain branches of physics and cosmology which arise if one requires that the values of the main proportions in nature (G, c, h-bar) be one. Quantities such as the planck mass and planck length are implicitly present in light and gravity everywhere in the universe. Units such as mile, talent, quarterforce, and pace, which are power-of-ten multiples of planck units, are also natural or nature-related in the sense that they are human-scale versions of the basic Planck units and arise if one requires the main proportions in nature to be powers of ten.

So these units are natural in various senses. The objective is to put them together in a convenient way so that they can help each other collectively to be more understandable and enduring.

http://www.planck.com/British+NaturalUnits/index.html

>Always importing units and adjusting the old ones a
>percent or so to get a nice fit. Usually several
>different ounces, pounds, stones, and quarters have
>been floating around in the English stew.

Best euphemism ever for saying "It was the frickin' middle ages, no regulations whatsoever, everyone was ripping off each other by having different pounds and yards"

>Everybody has some idea of how the mile was adapted
>from the roman 5000 feet eventually reaching the
>present 5280 feet

Yup, I got mine. "So let's see, what have we got here ? Godammit, those don't fit at all ! I guess we have to stick we a factor of 1760 ! Well, let's keep it for now, maybe we can come up with something better later. What, the French have a better one ? No, we can't go for that one, what about our national pride ?"

Ralf

It's 8 furlongs, Herr. Ralf, 8 furlongs.

I like Ralf's paraphrase
he is developing some standup commedian skills---

Bryan you are right it was the 8 furlongs and
Ralf seems clueless about the details, but he
has a glimmer of the process all the same.

In medieval times "national pride" was not much of
a factor (feudalism was non-national) and probably
no barrier to adopting other people's units.

One probably took over the units of one's trading
partners without prejudice.


The christian spaniards took over the Arroba
(arabic for the "quarter") from the islamic arabs
and so on. national pride no problem.

The interesting thing to me is how skillfully the
english put it all together. never seemed to have a problem assimilating units and finding nice ratios.

partly a matter of luck perhaps.

Ralf's comic monologs are suggestive of how NOT to
go about it, but they recognize the problem.

"Bryan you are right it was the 8 furlongs"

This is why I might like a 12^3 mile- because it isn't so much of the mile being 8 furlongs now, as it is that a furlong is one eighth of a mile. This is the way it is conceived of.

12^3 is a clear and readily understood definition of the mile (although I have given up this 12^3 dream)

Bryan, On another thread, can't remember which now, you
mentioned persistence of ounce-like sizes (25,28,35g etc) in european products. Reminded me of this essay by Joan Pontius

http://www.metricsucks.com/metric_land.html

it used to be posted at a Rutgers U. site I guess she used to teach there in philosophy dept. but am not sure.

now several sites have taken the essay over including metricsucks. she writes entertainingly. you most likely have already seen it, but just in case

Let's keep 1728 (12 cubed) in mind, one never knows
it is a nice number and things are in flux.

http://www.planck.com/British+NaturalUnits/twelvecubed.html

I rewrote the essay posted here using only the mile
for distance scale (not using the pace).

that means that the mile, in that parallel development
of the traditional+natural synthesis is blank---can be divided up however you like.

all I need to do the synthesis is one point of contact
in the length scale (and another in the mass scale at 48 pounds)

so I can do my part of it and still leave the mile
a blank slate.

if you want, try designing the divisions of a mile.
make it whatever seems best and we'll have a look.
I agree that 12cubed is a good number, so why not?

things are in flux, it is a longterm project,
eventually Carthage gets trashed as Cato the Elder said

Hmm,
12^3 looks good...... but only if you count in a 12-based system ! Since we count in a decimal system, 1728 doesn't look any better than 1727 or 1729, does it ?

Ralf

The point is, it is an easily understood definition of the mile (as opposed to the 8 furlong mile... because we don't use furlongs that much any more)

Greeks didn't have positional notation but still
recognized distinctive qualities of numbers and proved theorems. numbers have differences which rise above notation. Positional notation (which makes the number base so important) is just one phase of history.

twelve is distinctive no matter how written
XII roman
11000 binary
"C" hexadecimal (...789ABCDEF)
14 octal

matter of taste here--de gustibus non disputandum whatever
people who cannot taste their food should
not try to argue about cooking

if Bryan wants to design a mile with 3x12^4 inches
he's entitled to and we can look at it and compare
with existing divisions of mile to see if it's more
beautiful or not. Such a system would make the
handbreadth (3 inches) conspicuous and the quarterinch
too (because there would be 12^5 quarterinches, which
is kind of intriguing

like the furniture in people's apartments
some people have interesting
and thoughtfully chosen furniture
with some character

some have cheap badly designed furniture that
you can just eat off of or sit on without breaking

some people have cliche danish modern that looked
classic in the Seventies

...which is, btw, the idea behind my 48ths inch division- the quarter inch becomes preeminent in this mile (as does the 3"hand), and so one qtr. in. is in turn made up of 12 lines.

In fact, Leonard, I was thinking about this before- we could enlarge the mile to your Planckian length and just divide it dozenally as I have laid out before.

How does that work? what are the implications? I'm not sure.

Just to clarify again and for those who don't wish to search the archives, my length and distance measures would be (in everyday language terms):

-1 Mile is 12x12x12 yds.
-12 lines make one qtr inch.
-12 qtr. Ins. make one hand.
-12 hands make one yard.
-12 yards make some kind of doziard length.
-12 doziards make a kind of grossyard (pr. gross-yuhd, groshud etc?)
-12 grossyards/grossiards make one mile.

An 'acre' is, obviously, 12^3QtrIn*12^3Hands (144x12 yds, 1728sq yds.

I did propose an alternative acre, though, which was cloer to our own, but considering this is all theoretical, does it really make any difference? Anyway, this other acre was 1 furlong (now 216yds) by one chain (now 4 sixyard rods, as opposed to 4 5½yd rods). So a new 'other' acre would be 216x24= 5184 sq yds, and that number, indidentally, would be the number of ft in a new mile.


A weight system I haven't thought of in nearly as much detail, but a "pound" of 7680gr, an "ounce" of 480gr, and a dwt of 20gr. (24 to the ounce), with the pound hovering around it's present size is fine to me. I see no real advantage to a totally 12 based weight system, like I do for the length system. I do view, however, a separate weights system for science and medicine as desirable, but it should be easily interfaced with the "ordinary man's" system eg. 12 moz (medical ounces) to the mlb (medical pound). The medical ounce, of course, being but one normal ounce.

Officially, I would change the abbrevs to, perhaps:

floz (or just 'oz', making the oz and floz fully aligned)
oz
lb
mld
moz
in
yd
hb
ft
gy
grs
m

or whatever.

Capacity? Not too sure, either. Perhaps 3^3" (one cubic hand) is a 'new pint', with a gallon being 8 of these and so on. Like the weights system, I would have an easily interfaced scientific set of units. Perhaps even for length, too.

Whatever, these are all old ideas of mine. Since it's been brought up again, perhaps you might like to debate this system which, I suppose we can call, the Rational and rather super-duper Boom-Boom almost one inna row dozenal ystem of measures.

I think you're in danger of falling into the same error as the metricators' (well, one of them). The reason why customary weights and measures, with their auxiliary units, are so convenient for everyday use is precisely that they are NOT systematised. It's not simply that 12 or 16 or 60 are better factors than 10, but that different auxiliary units are related by different factors, making them distinctive and easily memorable.

It's like laying out a town in a simple uniform grid; you'd think it would make it easier to find your way around, but it doesn't; it makes it harder, because everywhere looks just the same. But if the crooked streets come in at crazy angles and irregular intervals, a single glance tells you exactly where you are; you don't even have to think.

Paul, I do not *want* this sytem to come into use, but am using it as a theoretical system. I am always aware of 'The Trap' :-)

However, we DO have that system I described:

-12 lines = 1 inch... but then became obsolete pretty much. now it's decimal and binary.
-12 inches= 1 foot.
-The hand became 4 inches, but was 3.
-The mile is a little more than 12^3.

In my sytem, hopwever, the idea is that the inch and foot are used alongside the hand and quarter inch. we had that, now we don't.

thanks for the comments. I seriously need your help on a couple of things.

Is it acceptable to define a "troy minute" which is
1/1600 of a day?

the word troy is beautiful and has all the right connotations---the troy pound and ounce were alternatives to the ordinary ones that formed part of a parallel system and they were a bit different in size so the word "troy" serves as a warning signal--watch out this may be 10 or 20 percent different from what you expect.

Is it OK to borrow this good-sounding and useful word? I am very concerned about this.

It would be extremely convenient for my purposes to have a troy minute which is exactly 9/10 of ordinary because it is so close to the (semi)natural minute.

The word would be used only to apply to lengths and times.

troy minute is 54 conventional seconds
troy mile is 10**-7 c troy minute

exactly 29.9792458 x 54 meters

I don't want to cause confusion by making people
think this minute and this mile are actually related to
the medieval weights from the French city of Troyes!
But I want a good-sounding warning signal that this
mile and this minute are not the conventional ones.

Comments or ideas?

L

Yes, but after 12" = 1' we have 11' = 1 rod, 20 rod = 1 furlong, 8 furlong = 1 mile. We don't keep using the same factor 12.

Paul:

>It's like laying out a town in a simple uniform grid;
>you'd think it would make it easier to find your way
>around, but it doesn't.

Tell that someone in Boston. Boston has the weirdest angles in streets I've ever seen, and even after having lived for more than a year here I still get confused where I am. And I'm certainly not the only one having that problem.

On the other hand I've never met someone who couldn't find their way in New York.

Ralf

I don't see any good relation to troy weights or currency (which uses the factors x12 and x20). I don't think it would be right to appropriate the name without at least employing similar factors. Didn't we have this discussion before and settle on a sensible name, or I am mixing it up with something else?

I admit it's possible sometimes to have irregular street layouts weird enough to confuse; but highly regular layouts can be far worse. New York does not have a regular grid - it has an assembly of rough grids, with enough variability to provide the necessary visual cues. New Shanghai and Kuwait City, with micrometrically laid out square grids, are reputed to be next to impossible to find your way around in (ref. P.J.O'Rourke, Eat the Rich).

{Yes, but after 12" = 1' we have 11' = 1 rod, 20 rod = 1 furlong, 8 furlong = 1 mile. We don't keep using the same factor 12.}

That's 16'6" = 1 rod, and 40 rods = 1 furlong.

Yes, I think Paul is confused here:

5½yds(16½ft)= 1 rod
4 rods (22yds)= 1 chain. 10 chains (40 rods)= 1 furlong

Above post was by me

You ask "didn't we have this discussion before and settle on a sensible name?"

Not that I recall. If you can recall the name please tell me!

The troy idea is a new departure for me---the new thing is 1600 minutes to a day.
In the past I have used 1602.72 minutes to the day because that leads to the closest fit with natural constants. A G which is equal to a millionth to the full precision with which G is currently measured.

What I am trying here, for the first time this week, is
trading precision for a simple 1600 number.

The old snicker was 1/18.55 second. The new one is 0.054 second. 1000 snickers make a "troy minute" that is exactly 9/10 of a conventional minute.

That seems analogous to a troy pound which is not 9/10 of a usual pound but more like 8/10, I forget the exact fraction.

I want a familiar word that means "a parallel unit about the same size". How it is divided up is not an issue--not sure most people remember how old troy pound was divided up---main thing is it was just a bit different.

Would like a one-syllable word to tag the alternative mile and minute. Nothing else needs the tag.

Yes, sorry, my mistake. I multiplied the yard figure by two instead of three. However, my point that it's not continuing in factors of twelve still stands.

I see what you mean about a one-word tag. But I don't think "troy", which already has a different historical meaning, is suitable. Possibly "natural" minute, and "natural" mile would do?

Sorry, I realise you'd like a one-syllable tag too, but at the moment I can't think of a good one.

Do you have the expressions "Dutch treat" and
"Dutch courage"?

idea: not quite legitimate, non-standard.
dutch treat is where everybody's expected to pay
their own way--take your friends to the restaurant
but have separate checks.
dutch courage is a stiff drink before a difficult
or daunting engagement.

Leonard: This won't do. Dutch courage means Deutsch courage ie German courage. So a dutch mile/minute would properly mean a German mile/minute. Very confusing. Try again.

maybe we could say troy minute and troy mile as
a place-holder till better is found

so 'dutch courage' refers not to alcohol-emboldened
Hollanders but to the same phenomenon a bit farther
upriver? It must be a pretty
old expression.

do you say "dutch treat" in english-english? and
"let's go dutch" meaning let each pay his or her
own way?

Why not just keep things simple for the minute, Leonard, and call them 'minute' and 'mile' or 'new minute and mile'?

I've never actually heard the expression "dutch treat" that I can remember, though its meaning is obvious enough. "Let's go dutch" I'd think of as an American expression.

you are probably right.
no harm in simply saying 'mile' and 'minute' at least MOST
of the time --- as long as there is a distinguishing
adjective to use occasionally when needed to
avoid confusion.

one might borrow the bryan system name to serve
as a place-holder for the time being, and say
'bryan mile' and 'bryan minute' when one needed
to distinguish from ordinary.

my interest in this comes from the fact
that a power-of-ten multiple
of the natural time unit just happens to be
1/1600 of a day (or very close to).
so it would be a possible new approach to
begin with (bryan) 'minute' and 'mile' by saying

day is 1600 minutes
light goes ten million miles per minute

Those two statements establish the essentials and provide
a framework within which a variety of possible traditional/natural systems could be tried. Having minute and mile defined, one can divide them up any way one pleases and choose whatever names one wants for the subdivisions and multiples.

A minute which is 1/1600 of a day turns out to be
54 ordinary seconds and 9/10 of an ordinary minute.
The mile turns out to be 5311.3 ordinary feet.

Any system which was elaborated within that framework,
based on those scales, would be a 'bryan' system. Or
a 'troy' system--still unsure what to call it. Any such would be based on natural units and would have a traditional connection through the mile.

Maybe Paul's word 'seminatural' is the descriptive tag I am looking for. A general category of unit systems.
But the point is that such systems should also be traditional.

The mass unit that goes with this minute and mile is
47.9 ordinary pounds. One would need to adjust the pound by two tenths of a percent so as to have exactly 48. (this 1/5 of a percent is the indirect cost of having the number 1600 be simple, instead of something harder to deal with like 1602.72, there are tradeoffs, I am now trying the simple 1600-minute-day version and so I need to shave 2 tenths of a percent off the pound.)

Nature gives us a timeperiod which is 1/1602.72 of an Earth day. If we diverge just slightly and make it 1/1600 of an Earth day then we get a mile that is
5311.3 ordinary feet and a talent that is 47.9 ordinary pounds. What is best to do with that 5311.3 ordinary foot length. Should we make new
foot slightly longer and say the mile is 5280 new feet.
Or make it 1000 paces and develop traditional units within that context. Or make it 5184 new feet--the dozens approach. I assume it is all right to have a new pound which is 1/48 of a talent (and thus reduced from old by 2 tenths percent.)

another idea for tag or system-designation: "serious"

a serious minute is 1/1600 of a day, and therefore 9/10 of the old unserious minute

a serious mile is the distance light goes in a tenmillionth of a serious minute.

a talent, namely 48 serious pounds, is 10**40 h-bar minute/sq.mile (serious).

????

L

Paul, Bryanm,

I have revised some fables and posted them
at

planck.com/seriousunits/fables1/index.html

You can't tell about a word until you try it in
the context of some writing.

Here is an excerpt from the preface of the draft set of fables (stories told in human-scale natural units) called Serious Units Fables

See if you like the effect.

[[Serious units are an "open architecture" framework in which the outlines are provided for essential scales and you can elaborate on that to suit your purposes. You create the subdivisions and auxilliary multiples and call them what you want.

1. We define a serious minute to be 1/1600 of a day.
2. The serious mile is a tenmillionth of the distance light travels in a minute.
3. The talent mass unit is 10^40 h-bar minute per square mile (serious).

These scales can be used to specify the base units for whatever traditional/natural system...]]