Comments on: From Fit to Fat to Fit: Funny haha, funny strange

By: John Scanlon FCD

John Scanlon FCD — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:13:04 +0000

The stone as a unit of personal weight in stone is convenient

... because what sort of wanker needs to speak their weight with a precision of 1% or less? Sure for doing science and engineering, you need the little units. But you weigh how many pounds, exactly? How many grams, just this moment? I don't care to know how big your last shit was, in any units.

By: Mona Albano

Mona Albano — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:19:25 +0000

The stone as a unit of personal weight in stone is convenient because usually gain or loss of one stone is one clothing size as well.

By: llewelly

llewelly — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:02:57 +0000

I live in Utah, a place where metric units are viewed with suspicion, and most people have only encountered the American subset of the “English” unit system. A year or so ago I was in a friend’s bathroom. I noticed their bathroom scale had a glass top. Through the glass top I could (just barely) see a switch (which was on the bottom of the scale). I wondered what it was for. I picked up the scale and took a look. The switch was for setting the units. All other bathroom scales I have seen have two settings – lb and kg. But this one had a third setting … for stone. I moved the switch to stone and put the scale back down.

By: stripey_cat

stripey_cat — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:14:41 +0000

I find I can convert fairly freely between metric and imperial for most measurements (although the US thing of many-many pounds usually has me trying to remember the 14-times-table), and will often alternate systems when working, or even use both in the same piece of work (which is fine so long as your conversion is within acceptable tolerances), but for some reason Fahrenheit confounds me. Actually, Fahrenheit and kitchen Gas Marks both have me reaching for conversion tables or doing sums on my fingers. I grew up alternating between England and Germany, which may have contributed.

By: Robert Estrada

Robert Estrada — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:57:46 +0000

C vs F can cause real issues too. We were drying some aluminum blocks in an oven at work. I set it at 200, I thought F, and when they were dry I just grabbed them. Needless to say it really burned as the setting was C (not clearly labeled and not on the knob).

By: Umlud

Umlud — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:09:05 +0000

I’ve had your LB/KG problem before. What’s worse is in the UK, where weight might be in KG, or LB, or (“bizarre” I thought the only time I saw it) in STONE. It’s therefore a good thing to check and see what measurement system you are working under when you start stacking up those weights (or determining where to stick the pin in the stack).

Now that I’m safely in a ONE-SYSTEM country, I don’t have to worry too much about this point. However, having lived in Europe and Asia for so long, it does give me a small ego boost knowing that I’m pressing 100.

By: Laurie

Laurie — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:14:29 +0000

A power suit is used for squats and dead lifts. The thing you saw was a bench shirt. A bench shirt does not help anyone to lift “hundreds of pounds” more. It gives a boost of a few percent to a one rep max but more importantly, it protects lifters from shoulder injuries while competing. It’s no different from compression gear that other athletes wear during competition.

To be honest, if it only took one helper to get the shirt on, it was probably too big.

By: Drax

Drax — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:09:41 +0000

The rubber suit thingie is a powerlifting suit. It helps the, er – athletes I guess – lift more weight.

Since some of those suits can increase their max lifts by hundreds of pounds, which they couldn’t lift otherwise, I’m not sure why they don’t drop the pretense and just use a forklift instead.