New Standard Unit?

[insanity]

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1970849,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

A physics student from Davis has organized an online campaign to get the new prefix for 10^27 to be 'hella' in recognition of Northern California's contribution to society. Hella, which is slang for a lot, is a popular word in the region, getting an entire episode of South Park devoted to the word.

Hella would supplant yotta as the upward bound of many measurements.

For example, the Sun (which has a mass of 2.2hellatons) puts out .3 hellawatts of energy, the volume of the sun is 1417 hellaliters.

The speed of light could be expressed as about 2.48*10^-25 hellameter/fortnights
It would take light 10.45 epochs to travel a hellameter.

The storage capacity of the internet (estimated at about 5 exabytes) then becomes 0.000005 hellabytes.

The mass of the Earth is about 5.97 hellagrams. In hellatons the Earth weighs in at 0.00000597.

In a 12 oz glass of water there are about .21 hella atoms of hydrogen.

More? We can convert hella units all day.

 

[unknown_orbiter]

Aw sweet that's hellacool.

 

[Urwumpe]

Would not be realistic to get through though... the "yotta-" comes from the Greek word for "eight-", which relates to the Octillion (10^24). The next one in the series of Greek words would be "xenna-", which means "nine".

 

[RisingFury]

For example, the Sun (which has a mass of 2.2hellatons)

Short hellatons, long hellatons or hellatonnes? :lol:

 

[Andy44]

I agree with Urwumpe about it not sharing the proper Greek origin.

Besides, maybe it's better if it just gets used as slang for "a lot". Like "I'm buying a hellaload of beer for tonight's party".

Also, I'm a little too East Coast to start accepting stupid California skate punk slang as scientific units. It's bad enough the whole country now calls each other "dude" all the time.

 

[Urwumpe]

Yeah. For the recognition of the contributions of Brunsvig citizens to science, I demand you to adopt the term "klinterklater" in the English language. Does that sound anything more reasonable?

(Klinterklater means usually "poor person living in a klint", with klints being the poverty ridden roads that go down to the river - today it is a identification of people living in Brunsvig)

 

[Andy44]

Well, English is a Germanic language, but I think that's a bit of a stretch...

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, English is a Germanic language, but I think that's a bit of a stretch...

:lol:

Actually, people born just outside Brunsvig wouldn't even have a tiny chance of knowing the Brunsvig flavor of lower saxon...if I remember correctly, we have 8 completely different dialects here in 50 km radius.

 

[SiberianTiger]

if I remember correctly, we have 8 completely different dialects here in 50 km radius.

How do you manage to sustain this level of dialect diversity when everyone has a TV in his house? Isn't this supposed to introduce a "Capital's standard" as the only right way of speaking - after some time? Do your citizens watch only their local stations where narrators speak just like themselves?

 

[Urwumpe]

How do you manage to sustain this level of dialect diversity when everyone has a TV in his house? Isn't this supposed to introduce a "Capital's standard" as the only right way of speaking - after some time? Do your citizens watch only their local stations where narrators speak just like themselves?

Noo, the standard is high German, but the older people still speak the old dialects and many words in local use are from the dialects. It is not like you need a electronic translator once you go shopping in the next town. But never forget that in this region, the national borders once had been very complex in the 18th to 19th century. What was already with some local flavors became more extreme when you could have gotten faster to Paris, than to the next town.

And if you for example have some interest in the proverbs and dedications often written on the main sill of half-timbered houses, you can quickly get an idea how the languages did look like here before Germany became really unified.

 

[Ashaman42]

How do you manage to sustain this level of dialect diversity when everyone has a TV in his house? Isn't this supposed to introduce a "Capital's standard" as the only right way of speaking - after some time? Do your citizens watch only their local stations where narrators speak just like themselves?

I read in a magazine recently, think it was National Geographic, that whilst it was predicted that the various regional dialects/accents in the USA would becmoe less distinct due to mass television it's actually turned out that over the last 50 odd years they have become more differentiated.

 

[RisingFury]

:lol:

Actually, people born just outside Brunsvig wouldn't even have a tiny chance of knowing the Brunsvig flavor of lower saxon...if I remember correctly, we have 8 completely different dialects here in 50 km radius.

When it comes to dialects, Slovene has you beat. 33 recognized dialects, with many more candidates within roughly 300 by 150 km area...

It's sad, really, when a person from Murska Sobota can't understand the person from Koper...

 

[Urwumpe]

When it comes to dialects, Slovene has you beat. 33 recognized dialects, with many more candidates within roughly 300 by 150 km area...

Wow.

 

[Ghostrider]

How do you manage to sustain this level of dialect diversity when everyone has a TV in his house?

Well, here in Switzerland High German (Hochdeutsch) is taught in school, but people in German-speaking cantons speak their own Schwytzerdütsch dialect which sounds like Klingon spoken backwards with a Goa'uld accent.

 

[Jarvitä]

When it comes to dialects, Slovene has you beat. 33 recognized dialects, with many more candidates within roughly 300 by 150 km area...

It's sad, really, when a person from Murska Sobota can't understand the person from Koper...

Not to mention nobody except for media and politicians will be caught dead using the "official" version of the language (and it's even falling into disuse in those areas). Dialects and tradition have to be respected, sure, but some standards that are actually used would be fine too.

 

[Loru]

Well, here in Switzerland High German (Hochdeutsch) is taught in school, but people in German-speaking cantons speak their own Schwytzerdütsch dialect which sounds like Klingon spoken backwards with a Goa'uld accent.

:rofl:
Are you sure there aren't any Asgaard influences?

 

[Ghostrider]

:rofl:
Are you sure there aren't any Asgaard influences?

Only in the Graubünden and Wallis areas.

 

[Andy44]

I read in a magazine recently, think it was National Geographic, that whilst it was predicted that the various regional dialects/accents in the USA would becmoe less distinct due to mass television it's actually turned out that over the last 50 odd years they have become more differentiated.

That may be true. I have been to sleepy southern towns of mostly African American populations and when the locals speak to each other quickly I can hardly understand a word they're saying. When speaking to out-of-towners like myself they usually slow down a bit for courtesy. Rural areas of the Deep South like South Carolina and Louisiana are on the extreme end of this.

I think maybe there is a backlash against the neutralization of local culture that television seems to impose. People in rural areas really resent being called hicks and talked down to by people from cultural centers like New York and Los Angeles, so I think they purposely try to set themselves apart to maintain their own roots.

 

[SiberianTiger]

When it comes to dialects, Slovene has you beat. 33 recognized dialects, with many more candidates within roughly 300 by 150 km area...

It's sad, really, when a person from Murska Sobota can't understand the person from Koper...

That's stunning. Especially if you compare this to Russian, which is so uniform everywhere that people from Vladivostok speak exactly the same language as people in Kaliningrad, Norilsk and Makhatchkala (unless the latter talk in Dag, of course). But here is the clue: I'm talking about cities. Who cares about what happens outside cities? Perhaps, you have never been so forcefully urbanized, and this helped you to preserve your diversity of dialects.

 

[Ark]

I'm staunchly against this concept, on the grounds that the only people who use "hella" in daily conversation are total douchebags.