Fred's Measuring Cup

May 21, 2008 – 12:15 am

Over the past few days, friends have been asking me "have you seen this measuring cup?" They were all abuzz about this new gag measuring cup that featured markings on it for things like "20,000 grains of rice" or "volume of half a human brain." I knew I had to feature it. It's like the physical embodiment of this site.

You can see the other side of the Fred Equal Measure measuring cup over at Amazon.com.

Does it seem odd that this measuring cup is suddenly all over the net a month after I launched this blog? It was even on Gizmodo yesterday. Did I somehow enter the forefront of an offbeat measurements zeitgeist that is about to sweep the web? Will I be in the right place at the right time?

Well, maybe next week when I talk about odds (which are different than statistics, and we'll get into why that is next week), we can try to calculate the odds of of that meme going nuclear and that rising tide lifting this boat. Or maybe I'll just compare my odds of winning the lottery to my odds of being attacked by killer bees. Whatever's fun.

Thanks to Cathie for being the first to bring the cup to my attention and Dr. Stone at USC for being the straw that broke the camel's back in deciding to feature this. And yes, if you send me a cool tip or idea that I use, I will mention you and link to your site if you have one.