#donkeypower

Wilson here. Mr. Struggan just read this humor piece by David Lance Goines about Helen of Troy and the idea that a standard measure for beauty can be derived from Homer's Illiad, where 1 Helen = Beauty sufficient enough to launch 1,000 ships (1 milliHelen = launching capability for 1 ship).

This led Mr. Struggan to Wikipedia, where he found a List of Humorous Units of Measure, from which he instructed me to share a few of his favorites:

1 beard-second = the length the average beard grows in one second (empirically measured at 5 - 10 nanometers)

1 donkeypower = 250 watts (about one third of 1 horsepower)

1 Warhol = 15 minutes of fame (derived from Andy Warhol's thoughts on the subject. 1 kiloWarhol = 10.42 days of fame; 1megaWarhol = 28.5 years of fame)

Tongue-in-cheek though these are, Mr. Struggan always seriously appreciates an attempt to quantify or qualify the unquantifiable or unqualifiable and look at things from a new direction. The human spirit is asymptotic to the truth, so take your standards with a grain of salt.