What grinds my gears...

[lou]

Celebrity political endorsements. Does anybody think people will change their vote because Eddie Izzard tells them to?

yes, there really are people that are that thick/shallow

[lou]

Me, I grind my gears with my stupid pathetic self confidence issues.

One day Im flying and full of confidence and loving my job... the next Im on the floor and questioning whether Im capable of anything! Im my own worst enemy. I fecking hate it.

I want to go home and cry today

[Jon the Hat]

yes, there really are people that are that thick/shallow

Most of the electorate judging by the polls today.

[Dr The Singh]

Most of the electorate judging by the polls today.

If malkit singh, MBE, was part of a party campiagn, even if it was the BNP.........it would sway my vote!!

[Guest]

EIEIEO up the football 'ere we go

this grinds my gears no end, I know it's been mentioned on here before, this is particularly aimed at the bloke who sits 2 seats down from me at the Walkers, who seems intent on joining in incorrectly at the top of his voice

[FoxyPV]

Cars and the cost of repairing them.

[The Doctor]

the phrase "a country mile".

Correct me if i'm wrong but isn't a mile 2580 feet in the city, the countryside and everywhere else?

[Jon the Hat]

the phrase "a country mile".

Correct me if i'm wrong but isn't a mile 2580 feet in the city, the countryside and everywhere else?

Takes longer in the country, cos you have to avoid tractors and so on. And cow pats. And there aren't any pavements. See?

[Fosse Boy]

the phrase "a country mile".

Correct me if i'm wrong but isn't a mile 2580 feet in the city, the countryside and everywhere else?

Not in the olden days it weren't. Country miles used to be longer than city miles.

[The Doctor]

Takes longer in the country, cos you have to avoid tractors and so on. And cow pats. And there aren't any pavements. See?

as opposed to the traffic jams and multiple buildings in urban areas.

Same length distance wise, similar lengths time wise.

[Jon the Hat]

as opposed to the traffic jams and multiple buildings in urban areas.

Same length distance wise, similar lengths time wise.

I am thinking this might pre-date such things.

[Sir Fynwy]

When a mile isn't a mile:

Historical miles in Britain and Ireland

The statute of Elizabeth I was not the only definition of the mile in Britain and Ireland. Perhaps the earliest tables of English linear measures, Arnold's Customs of London (c. 1500) indicates a mile consisted of 8 furlongs, each of 625 feet, for a total of 5,000 feet (1,666⅔ yards, 0.947 statute miles):[2] this is the same definition of the mile in terms of feet as used by the Romans. The "old English" mile of medieval and early modern times appears to have measured approximately 1.3 statute miles.[9]

[edit] Scots mile

Main article: Scots mile

The Scots mile was longer than the English mile, but varied in length from place to place.[10] It was formally abolished by an Act of the Parliament of Scotland in 1685,[11] and again by the Treaty of Union with England in 1707,[12] but continued in use as a customary unit during the 18th century. It was obsolete by the time of its final abolition by the Weights and Measures Act 1824.[10] An estimate of its length can be made from other Scots units: in Scots, the rod was usually called the fall or faw, and was equal to six ells of 37 inches.[13] As there are 320 rods in a mile, this would make the Scots mile equal to 5,920 feet (1,973⅓ yards, 1.12 statute miles). Other estimates are similar.[2][14]

[edit] Irish mile

The Irish mile was longer still.[9] In Elizabethan times, four Irish miles was often equated to five English, though whether the statute mile or the "old English" mile is unclear.[9] By the seventeenth century, it was 2,240 yards (6,720 feet, 1.27 statute miles).[14][15][16] Again, the difference arose from a different length of the rod in Ireland (usually called the perch locally): 21 feet as opposed to 16½ feet in England.[15][17]

From 1774, through the 1801 union with Britain, until the 1820s, the grand juries of 25 Irish counties commissioned surveyed maps at scales of one or two inches per Irish mile.[18][19] Scottish engineer William Bald's County Mayo maps of 1809–30 were drawn in English miles and rescaled to Irish miles for printing.[20] The Howth–Dublin Post Office extension of the London–Holyhead turnpike engineered by Thomas Telford had mileposts in English miles.[21] Although legally abolished by the Weights and Measures Act 1824, the Irish mile was used till 1856 by the Irish Post Office.[22] The Ordnance Survey of Ireland, from its establishment in 1824, used English miles.[23]

In 1894, Alfred Austin complained after visiting Ireland that "the Irish mile is a fine source of confusion when distances are computed. In one county a mile means a statute mile, in another it means an Irish mile".[24] When the Oxford English Dictionary definition of "mile" was published in 1906,[25] it described the Irish mile as "still in rustic use".[14] A 1902 guide says regarding milestones, "Counties Dublin, Waterford, Cork, Antrim, Down, and Armagh use English, but Donegal Irish Miles; the other counties either have both, or only one or two roads have Irish".[26] Variation in signage persisted till the publication of standardised road traffic regulations by the Irish Free State in 1926.[27] In 1937, a man prosecuted for driving outside the 15-mile limit of his license offered the unsuccessful defense that, since the state was independent, the limit ought to use Irish miles, "just as no one would ever think of selling land other than as Irish acres".[28] A 1965 proposal by two TDs to replace statute miles with Irish miles in a clause of the Road Transport Act was rejected.[29] The term is now obsolete as a specific measure,[30] though an "Irish mile" colloquially is a long but vague distance akin to a "country mile".[31] Outside of its downtown core, but within its newer subdivisions, Toronto' street grid is based on the Irish mile.[citation needed]

[edit] Metric mile

The term metric mile is used in sports such as track and field athletics and speed skating to denote a distance of 1,500 meters (about 4,921 ft). In United States high school competition, the term is sometimes used for a race of 1,600 meters (about 5,249 ft).[32]

[edit] Nautical mile

On the utility of the nautical mile

Each circle shown is a great circle– the analog of a line in spherical trigonometry– and hence the shortest path connecting two points on the globular surface. Meridians are great circles that pass through the poles.

Main article: Nautical mile

The nautical mile was originally defined as one minute of arc along a meridian of the Earth.[33] It is a convenient reference, since it is fairly constant at all latitudes, in contrast with degrees of longitude which vary from 60 NM at the equator to zero at the poles.

Navigators use dividers to step off the distance between two points on the navigational chart, then place the open dividers against the minutes-of-latitude scale at the edge of the chart, and read off the distance in nautical miles.[34] Since it is now known that the Earth is not perfectly spherical but an oblate spheroid, the length derived from this method varies slightly from the equator to the poles. For instance, using the WGS84 Ellipsoid, the commonly accepted Earth model for many purposes today, one minute of latitude at the WGS84 equator is 6,087 feet and at the poles is 6,067 feet. On average, it is about 6,076 feet (about 1852 meters or 1.15 statute miles).

In the United States, the nautical mile was defined in the nineteenth century as 6,080.2 feet (1,853.249 m), whereas in the United Kingdom, the Admiralty nautical mile was defined as 6,080 feet (1,853.184 m) and was approximately one minute of latitude in the latitudes of the south of the UK. Other nations had different definitions of the nautical mile, but it is now internationally defined to be exactly 1,852 meters.

[edit] Related nautical units

The nautical mile per hour is known as the knot. Nautical miles and knots are almost universally used for aeronautical and maritime navigation, because of their relationship with degrees and minutes of latitude and the convenience of using the latitude scale on a map for distance measuring.

The data mile is used in radar-related subjects and is equal to 6,000 feet (1.8288 kilometers).[35] The radar mile is a unit of time (in the same way that the light year is a unit of distance), equal to the time required for a radar pulse to travel a distance of two miles (one mile each way). Thus, the radar statute mile is 10.8 μs and the radar nautical mile is 12.4 μs.[36]

[edit] Roman mile

Various historic miles/leagues from a German textbook dated 1848

In Roman times, the unit of long distance mille passuum (literally "a thousand paces" in Latin, with one pace being equal to two steps) was first used by the Romans and denoted a distance of 1,000 paces or 5,000 Roman feet, and is estimated to correspond to about 1,479 meters (1,617 yards). This unit is now known as the Roman mile.[37] This unit spread throughout the Roman empire, often with modifications to fit local systems of measurements.

[edit] Other miles

* The Arab mile (or Arabic mile) was a unit of length used by medieval Muslim geographers. Its precise length is uncertain, but is believed to be around 1925 meters.[citation needed]

* The Danish mil (traditional) was 24,000 Danish feet or 7532.5 meters. Sometimes it was interpreted as exactly 7.5 kilometers. It is the same as the north German Meile (below).[38]

* The Meile was a traditional unit in German speaking countries, much longer than a western European mile. It was 24,000 German feet; the SI equivalent was 7586 meters in Austria or 7532.5 meters in northern Germany. There was a version known as the geographische Meile, which was 4 Admiralty nautical miles, 7,412.7 meters, or 1/15 degree.[39]

* In Norway and Sweden, a mil is a unit of length which is equal to 10 kilometers and commonly used in everyday language. However in more formal situations, like on road signs and when there is risk of confusion with English miles, kilometers are used instead. The traditional Swedish mil spanned the range from 6000-14,485 meters, depending on province. It was however standardized in 1649 to 36,000 Swedish feet, or 10.687 kilometers.[38] The Norwegian mil was 11.298 kilometers. When the metric system was introduced in the Norwegian-Swedish union in 1889, it standardized the mil to exactly 10 kilometers.[38]

* The Portuguese milha was a unit of length used in Portugal and Brazil, before the adoption of the metric system. It was equal to 2087.3 meters.[40]

* The Russian milya (русская миля) was a traditional Russian unit of distance, equal to 7 verst, or 7.468 km.

* The hrvatska milja (Croatian mile) is 11,130 meters = 11.13 kilometers = 1/10 of equator's degree,[41] first time used by Jesuit Stjepan Glavač on a map from 1673.

* The banska milja (also called hrvatska milja) (mile of Croatian Ban, Croatian mile) was 7586 meters = 7.586 kilometers, or 24,000 feet.[42].

[Guest]

the phrase "a country mile".

Correct me if i'm wrong but isn't a mile 2580 feet in the city, the countryside and everywhere else?

You're wrong; it's 5,280 feet.

[FoxyPV]

the phrase "a country mile".

Correct me if i'm wrong but isn't a mile 2580 feet in the city, the countryside and everywhere else?

A country mile was a variable distance relating to how fertile the land was so one mile could actually be shorter than another.

[The Doctor]

You're wrong; it's 5,280 feet.

not according to the tinternet and a distance conversiony thing.

[Guest]

not according to the tinternet and a distance conversiony thing.

Well, seeing as there are 1,760 yards in a mile, and there are 3 feet in a yard, that makes 5,280 feet according to my mental arithmetic. Apart from that, if I type "feet in mile" into Google, my little search drop down autofill thing gives me "= 5,280". That's aside from the actual results page, which also tells me that there are 5,280 feet in a mile.

I would suggest that your distance conversiony thing is wrong.

[MC Prussian]

Party Poker pop-ups with this distinctive click-click sound effect, trying to get your attention in an easy and cheap way.

They can shove it up theirs. I'm not going to join EVER.

Edited 20 April 2010 by Alexei

[AoWW]

Them kids singing 'Twinkle, Twinkle...' on that CBeebies ad.

[FoxyPV]

The new Halifax ads!

[Guest]

The new Halifax ads!

I would like to smack that ISA ISA woman. Annoying bint.

[AoWW]

I would like to smack that ISA ISA woman. Annoying bint.

God, yes. She looks so bloody smug.

[Trav Le Bleu]

Saw a woman going through red lights on a bicycle, turning right at a junction today. Fine, if she wants to risk life and limb, so what.

But she had a kiddie seat with her toddler in the back.

[Libertine]

Them kids singing 'Twinkle, Twinkle...' on that CBeebies ad.

You'll get bird poo in YOUR EEEEEYE.

Edited 21 April 2010 by Libertine

[lou]

Saw a woman going through red lights on a bicycle, turning right at a junction today. Fine, if she wants to risk life and limb, so what.

But she had a kiddie seat with her toddler in the back.

on a similar vein........... morons who push their kids out into the road-edge in a pushchair while waiting to cross! WTF are they thinking? "Oh if the kid doesnt get cleaned up then its safe for me to cross"?!

[FoxyPV]

on a similar vein........... morons who push their kids out into the road-edge in a pushchair while waiting to cross! WTF are they thinking? "Oh if the kid doesnt get cleaned up then its safe for me to cross"?!

Absolutely hate this! Better still I'll edge out between two parked cars to make absolutely sure no one can see me.