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[james_davis_nicoll]

I was going to put a rant here but I think it would be prudent for me to wait a month until the book that triggered it sees print. Even if I friends-lock it, that doesn't mean the publisher might not get wind of my comments and take offense.

So, to fill the time until then:

Is writing Heinlein young adult novel pastiches primarily a male occupation? I can't off-hand think of a female writer who tried her hand at a Heinlein young adult novel, at least not in the centenary wave of Heinlein pastiches.

[This might be a stupid question but if it is mainly a guy subgenre, why would that be?]

In a unrelated comment, metric _or_ American imitation of Imperial, people. Not both or at least not both in the same sentence.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

43,560 square feet in an acre. I know it off the top of my head, because I use it all the time at work. Does the metric system have something analogous to that remarkably useful measure of volume, the acre-foot?

Incidentally, I'm 97% sure that the official proper name for the version of the Imperial system that Americans use is the "U.S. Customary Units" system. There's an Official Government Publication (something about highways, I think) at work that says it's the U.S. Customary Units version. My eye snags on the text on that binder sometimes when I'm changing the paper in the plotter.

--Cally

[krfsm.livejournal.com]

Does the metric system have something analogous to that remarkably useful measure of volume, the acre-foot?

Yes, the millimeter (when used as a measure of precipitation, it's millimeter per m², that is, a liter per square meter).

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Most Americans, or at least most American editors I've talked to*, think they use the Imperial System. I've never been certain whether this indicates a lack of education on measuring systems, or a Freudian slip about how they view America :-/


*OK, all American editors I've talked to except Loren Wiseman.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

"A pint's a pound the whole world round" except, well, where it isn't. Which would be anywhere outside the US.

[j-larson.livejournal.com]

The metric unit used for land is the hectare, which is 100 meteres by 100 metres. (There is also the "are", which is 10 metres by 10 metres, but no one uses it; if you need a smaller unit, use the square metre.) If I needed to talk about covering a whole hectare with something, I would talk about it in cubic metres or tonnes.

[(Anonymous)]

> There is also the "are", which is 10 metres by 10 metres, but no one uses it
You vanished my mother. Prepare to die.

Ewa Pawelec, Poland