Matthew Belinkie, Pete Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink the World Cup, Edge of Tomorrow (for real this time), and feeling sorry for Tom Cruise.
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Your Panel
Further Reading
- The Autobahn on Wikipedia
- Salsa Dancing on Wikipedia
- “traditional guayabera” on
- Unicameral Legislature on Wikipedia
- The Metric System on Wikipedia
- Nautical Mile on Wikipedia
- [Think Tank] Benchmark Movies on Overthinking It
- Edge of Tomorrow (film) on Wikipedia and Box Office Mojo
- Tom Cruise on Box Office Mojo
- Tom Cruise on the Nerdist Podcast
ahhh americans, so nice to have actual reasons to feel superior for once, true story up until I was 20 and was about to visit america I thought that the imperial system was a myth, or something that only the craziest of americans actually still use, *sigh*
The metric system in cooking, as in everything, is fairly simple. It is based on 10 to the power of three, so each unit is either 1000 times bigger or 1000 times smaller than another unit.
You have your base* unit, a gram (about the weight of a paperclip) 1000 grams is a kilogram (about the weight of a large book), commonly called a ‘kilo’ which sound very different and context will almost always tell you ie you aren’t going to put 200 kilo’s (same mass as 2-3 people) of chocolate chips in your recipe.
For liquid units the two most common units are litres (spelled with the R before E as the rest of the world spells things), about the size of a gallon of milk and millilitres, about the same volume as held in an eye-dropper, both again sound very different, and context will tell you which is which. For cooking we also have cups, one cup being 250mL, and most people will own several different types of cups (1/2, 1/4 ect), as well as different sized teaspoons (which are 15mL) and recipes will sometimes give instructions in different sized cups/teaspoons.
I won’t go into all the various values of the metric system which are vast, but cooking is I assume similar to the US method, except a lot easier to scale up/down, as everything is based on 10, not 16 or 2.43 or whatever your system is.
(Also while I’m busy feeling superior to the US, getting rid of the senate might reduce some deadlock, but switching to the parliamentary system…now that would seriously help to remove much of not all of it)
I just wanted to say that the standard benchmark on whether or not a movie has made money is multiplying the budget by 2.5. It’s not precise, but it’s the closest we’ll get since studios are pretty secretive about money. The multiplier would cover things such as marketing, the money the theater gets, the percentage of the BO that the stars will get, etc. etc. In these terms, Edge of Tomorrow still has a long way to go to become financially successful. Also, by this standard Pacific Rim did NOT make a profit at the box office.
I mean, by that standard, almost nothing makes money anymore.
David Prowse has said he gets a letter from LucasFilm that they have no money to give him for his share of the profits from Return of the Jedi because the movie is still in the red.
http://www.slashfilm.com/lucasfilm-tells-darth-vader-that-return-of-the-jedi-hasnt-made-a-profit/
For about 3 years after the 1995 repeal of the nationwide 55 speed limit some roads in Montana had no listed maximum speed during the day. Instead you could go as fast as was “reasonable and prudent.”
Given the current US political scene, I’ll take gridlock over unbridled control of government by Tea Party extremists, which is pretty much what the House of Representatives is at present.
Pete with a Last Action Hero reference #ftw
1. Yes there are unrestricted sections of the autobahn, that said personal bravery / other drivers operate as a limiter on how fast people actually drive. There’s an interesting bit on Top Gear where they have to try and get up to max speed and keep having to brake due to lorries pulling out to overtake in front of them.
2. Cooking in metric involves grams, kilos, litres and millilitres (abbreviated to mls), no-one asks for a decalitre of anything, and we use measuring jugs for fluids in substantial quantities, teaspoons/tablespoons for small quantities and spices.
3. For some reason Tom Cruise trying everything possible made me think of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0LqjrkpZ1A.
You guys were talking about cooking with the metric system as if 90% of the world hasn’t been doing that forever (I admit, I totally made up the percentage, but my point’s still valid)… It’s much easier, much more accurate, and not just for cooking. When sewing for example, the usual width of a seem allowance is 1 to 1.5cm. That’s some random fraction of an inch. Tip: if you regularly need to use fractions to break down your smallest unit, your smallest unit may be too big/useless.
Yes, we use cups, and spoons, and I’m pretty sure they’re the same size as yours, though I never compared them. We also commonly own one of these (http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/claudiodivizia/claudiodivizia0907/claudiodivizia090700064/5151595-measuring-cup-with-metric-scales-for-water-sugar-and-flour.jpg) with weight measurements of different things like flour, sugar, etc. Also, our butter doesn’t come in sticks, and no one writes recipes as if they did. Butter’s usally measured in cups or spoons, and honestly, I’ve been using any cup or spoon I have for the past 26 years, and even though they may at times be bigger/smaller than THE spoon (on Fifth Avenue), my recipes always come out ok.
Basically, I agree with everything Emily and Tim H said (feeling superior to crazy Americans and their weirdo system and yep, I’d be surprised if decalitres have ever been used in a recipe).
As to the switch from imperial to metric, I grew up using the metric system and have had to adapt. I now use both interchangeably and, although still think metric is better, didn’t find learning a new system all that hard. The worst part of cooking in America is the stupid non-gas ovens. Those coil things can’t keep a steady temperature, cause they’re always either heating up further or cooling down, and it also takes like an hour to boil water with it. Ugh, give me back my fire stove…
I’d like to call out the cooking tumblr linked in Amanda’s username above, which everyone should check out.
Thanks, Matt!
I thought it’d be appropriate to link to that one for this post… As you probably know, I’m a tumblr-oholic or whatever the word is :)
(also, I wrote a draft of a comment on Chromeo and Iggy Azalea, but now it’s a little late :P Should I post it on the newest TFT, or go back?)
I didn’t hear it mentioned, but Edge of Tomorrow isn’t an original property, it’s an Americanization of a popular Japanese light novel/manga franchise All You Need is Kill, which is the name of the film in the Japanese market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Need_Is_Kill
I am very much enjoying the recurrence of the “this podcast is ruined” call back. I’ve been listening to the show for a while but I think this is the first time I’ve been around to see such a recurrence being seeded.
Of course, now I’ve pointed that out, I’ve probably killed it.
This running gag is ruined!