Colin Dicky takes a gander at a cocked quibble, in the essay “Pitch Battles—HOW A PARANOID FRINGE GROUP MADE MUSICAL TUNING AN INTERNATIONAL ISSUE“: “In 1988, more than a dozen of opera’s greatest superstars—including Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, and Birgit Nilsson [pictured here]—added their names to a petition before the Italian government, asking it to […]
Tag: standard
Towards standard measurement scales for crispy, crackly and crunchy foods
Those involved in the field of ‘Texture Studies’ (with regard to food) often find a need to measure and categorize crispness, crackliness and crunchiness of various foodstuffs (* see example below). For such measurements to be meaningful, however, the methods and terms need to be accurately defined first. In 2008 considerable steps towards definitions of […]
A cup of tea and some Smoots: One must or can celebrate standards
A core definition of Britishness, the official six-page specification for how to make a cup of tea, is officially “under review”. But don’t panic. It is standard procedure for the British Standards Institution (BSI) to do a “systematic periodic review” of each of its many specifications which, piecemeal, define nearly everything British. Belying stereotypes of […]
Non-Uniform Day versus World Standards Day
Today’s cogno-intellectual exercise: Compare and contrast Non-Uniform Day with World Standards Day
She of the industrial standard breasts
From the book World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement by Robert P. Crease: Rita Mazzella is the doyenne of bra fit models. Lingerie companies use her breasts — size 34C — to construct new brassiere lines, then scale the size down to A and B, and up to D. […]