"Lord...um...excuse me. What's a 'cubit' ? "
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Notes of enormous importance:
1)“Cubit’s Rube” is a sloppy spoonerism for “Rubic’s Cube.”
2) Years ago, when I had a legitimate job in the fascinating field of accounting – fiscal voyeurism – my boss said to me (in anticipation of a confrontation with a dissatisfied client who had just learned that he owed the Internal Revenue Service a large sum of money), “Geez, Doug. The ‘fit is going to hit the shan!” If you cannot figure that one out, you must turn off your computer, go to the supermarket, and purchase a copy of The National Enquirer and a large box of bon-bons immediately. You are exempt from reading any further. Congratulations.
3) A friend once asked me (in an attempt to be witty and engaging, despite his chronic halitosis and repellent reptilian skin condition), “Hey, Dougie! What’s the difference between a rooster and a lawyer?” When I failed to answer, he said, grinning, “A rooster clucks defiance.” On reflection, I realized that while this sophisticated spoonerism was indeed cute (albeit obscene), it was, when translated, undeniably true. But I digress….
We should have an article here. Okay.
Question: What is the height, in cubits, of a man who is exactly six feet tall?
Answer:
You’ll have to be patient…
First, a few clues about the unit of measure (very popular in ark-building) known as the CUBIT excerpted from the all-knowing Wikipedia:
“A cubit is the first recorded unit of length and was one of many different standards of measurement used through history. It was originally based on measuring by comparing to one's forearm length.
Cubits were employed through Antiquity, the Middle Ages up to the Early Modern Times, especially for measuring cords and textiles, but also for timbers, stone and volumes of grain.
The Egyptian hieroglyph for the unit shows the symbol of a forearm, but it was rather longer than any actual forearms.
The Egyptian cubit was not subdivided into centimetres or inches, but into palms and digits. The Egyptian cubit was subdivided into 7 'palms' of 4 'digits', making 28 parts in all, and was between 52.3 and 52.4cm in length.”
But this is all just speculation and estimation…we need something more definitive. So, let’s settle on this average:
1 cubit = 45.72 centimeters, according to Douglas E. Castle of Braintenance
And let’s settle on this Metric to British conversion factor so that we can convert feet to centimeters to cubits:
1 centimeter = 0.032808399 feet, according to Douglas E. Castle of Braintenance
Computation: If a man is six feet tall, this means that he is 6 feet tall divided by 0.032808399 feet/centimeter, or approximately 183 centimeters tall.
Then, if we take his height (in centimeters) of 183, and divide it by 45.72 centimeters/cubit, we find that our six foot tall man is also approximately four cubits in height.
Douglas E. Castle [http://aboutDouglasECastle/blogspot.com]
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