Tuesday, May 13, 2008

As A Rule Of Thumb...

Rulesofthumb.org is a fun site that gives you handy shortcuts you can use. Some are setup like classic rules of thumb:

Ten people will raise the temperature of a medium-size room one degree per hour.

Others are a bit more creative:

As a rule of thumb, the more satellite TV dishes per row home in a given block, the more dangerous that block is.

Fun and useful stuff.

Also, it's worth noting that the popular story about the phrase Rule Of Thumb coming from "maximum thickness of a stick with which it was permissible for a man to beat his wife" is false:

The term is thought to originate with wood workers who used the length of their thumbs rather than rulers for measuring things, cementing its modern use as an inaccurate, but reliable and convenient standard.

It is often claimed that the term originally referred to a law that limited the maximum thickness of a stick with which it was permissible for a man to beat his wife, but this has been fully discredited as a hoax.

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