So my Friday newspaper (old guy, likes to read an actual newspaper while eating breakfast) has an automotive section with a Car Talk question and answer, and a profile of a vehicle. In today’s paper it was the Porsche Macan. Apparently it was written in Germany because the power figures were given in KW and PS and the torque figure in Nm. I did a quick search on the internet and located a website called Convert Units - Measurement Unit Converter. Thought I’d mention it in case anyone else finds it useful.
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I just assume PS = HP, they’re about equal.
They are very close.
I just type it into the search bar, 100 ps to hp etc.
Power
100
Metric horsepower
98.632
Mechanical horsepower
Length
65
Kilometer
213255
Foot
Formula
for an approximate result, multiply the length value by 3281
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Clear as mud, huh? As said what difference does it make? They had one of those parked outside the front door of a hotel we were staying at in Germany. One of those models anyway. I thought the paint was good and the interior was nice but I think the price was well over 100,000 Euros back when normal cars were in the 30’s.
Now the other question that comes to mind is how does one eat breakfast and read a newspaper at the same time? I’ve tried but never been able to do it. Gotta hold the paper or lay it down, then stop eating to get a better look, and find your place again, etc. Just never worked for me. I can watch the TV news or the radio but not a newspaper or computer. Like smoking and swimming, gotta do one or the other.
The one I use is this:
I was going to work one morning in OK City rush hour traffic while on my Harley.
A guy pulled out in a Lincoln and was beside me at 45 MPH.
He had a newspaper opened up, a doughnut in one hand, and a cup of coffee in the other; now and then glancing up at the roadway.
This made me a bit antsy so I backed off and got clean away from him.
Guess he’s the greatest multi-tasker ever. Steering with his knees I guess…
Actually it is quite clear. Metric units are used to calculate PS and SAE units are used to calculate HP. PS happens to be 1.4% less than HP. Read all about it here:
Now the other question that comes to mind is how does one eat breakfast and read a newspaper at the same time?
It’s all in “the Art of the Fold.” I do not know your age so I do not know if you have ever seen a "newspaper boy/girl riding their bicycle down the middle of the street and tossing newspapers all the way up onto the front porch of the recipient’s house. And, how many comedy shows have shown newspapers siting on the roof of the front porch… You have to know how to fold the paper and back in the 1960s, we did not have cute little plastic bags to put the paper in or use rubber bands…
I and my best friend shared three routes between us. He rode down one side of the street with me on the other side and we never had to back track, we could complete our routes faster than most others could do just one route… Our Route Manager made sure we knew how to fold a paper for throwing. He did not want to hear complaints that a newspaper had opened up was blowing all over the neighborhood or on the porch roof.
In fact, once a year, he held a picnic for his carriers, hot-dogs, hamburgers and soda. He also held contests for the Best Carrier. He brought along a couple of bikes and newspapers. Some of the contests included the longest toss, the most accurate toss, tossing the newspaper into a pail while riding a bike, and more…
Back to the art of the fold (back in the “old days” when folk got their news from the paper and not their smart phone…), if you have ridden a train, a bus, flown in an airplane, or even read the newspaper at the kitchen table, you fold the pages over backwards, and then in half and in half again. When you do that, the newspaper is hardly the size of a standard piece of paper…
The photo below shows that we had to fold the papers before we started our routes. They stacked nice and neat vertically so we could just grab one and toss it while riding our bikes. And the photo of the woman passenger shows she knows the Art of the Fold…
Agree 100% I have read the paper for many years that way while setting at a truck stop counter without bothering any one who was setting next to me.
It’s not the folds, it’s the eyes.
But yeah, 5:00 am, bag of papers on the kid’s bike delivering the papers when he was off to camp or somewhere. We didn’t throw the papers but placed them gently on the customer’s door step or whatever their special instructions were. Kinda peaceful at that time of day though.
I never sold papers as a kid but would sell sweet corn door to door. I thought it was far more civilized to work in the afternoons than at five am, but whatever, guess I was just more privileged as a kid.
see what you have done being one of the first door to door delivery services. only if you stuck with the idea. LOL
All this conversion is the reason why we are resistant to the metric system. If you use just one system and never use a conversion formula, then it is easier to accept one system. Converting feet to meters, liters to gallons etc to the 18th place past the decimal point is how school systems enforce our resistance to converting to the metric system.
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We use metric at work, except for room temperature. Conversion in your head is easier if you remember a few easy conversions, like a half meter is about 18 inches or 5 centimeters is about 2 inches.
Oh boy, I just filled up the tank for a trip down Memory Lane and you’re invited to come along…
When I was up at 5:00 AM, it was not to deliver papers. It was to either go fishing or hunting. My younger brother had the morning edition of one of our routes. We also lived in upstate New York; very suburban, even sub-rural (we had 17-acres in our back yard…). The morning edition was the Knickerbocker and the afternoon (my route…) was the Times Union.
But, even with the winters, it’s a lot more fun when there are two to enjoy (or should I say suffer/endure/tolerate…) the cold, the ice, the snow, the wind, and the rain. I’ve always said, “shared sweat” makes easier work.
As for my brother, he had it rough; like you said, “5:00 AM” is not a fun time to be delivering papers…
During the winters, when we could not use our bikes, we loaded the papers into milk crates strapped to out sleds and we “plowed” ahead pulling our sleds. Tossing papers in the winter was not so easily done. Not everyone had a shoveled porch, and our Route Manager didn’t want to hear that a customer did not get their paper (when it just might be buried in a bit of snow…).
Back then, milk was delivered by Milkmen, who stopped several times a week to deliver dairy products (Milk, Cream, Butter, Eggs, and some even carried a selection of vegetables…). The two biggies in our area was Norman’s Kill (the “Kill” is Dutch for Creek…), and Borden’s, their mascot was Daisy the Cow.
Since most folk had a milk box on their porch, we put the papers into the boxes when it was raining or snowing if the folks did not have a covered porch.
Our milkman was from Norman’s Kill and we got our milk un-harmonized, that mean the cream rose to the top. My mother and Grandmother would siphon off some of the cream for their tea.
If you are still with me, thanks for coming along on my trip down Memory Lane… Maybe, in another posting, I reminisce about the Breadman, In our area, in the 1950’s, Freihofer’s Bakery still had horse drawn wagons that delivered bakery products to individual homes until 1958…
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Yeah and a liter is a quart plus a martini.
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Duck hunting season was up about 4:00 or so to be able to get the boat and in position in the reeds by dawn when you could shoot. Except opening day was noon. Yeah it was cold in October but those are some of the best times I remember with my dad and sometimes my uncle.
Now back to modern times, we had a paper girl for a while and they used white plastic bags for the paper. She would throw the paper onto the driveway. More than once it had snowed and I’d hit that dang paper with the snow blower. It would stop it cold and I’d have to haul it back in the garage to clean all the shredded paper out. Then go down and buy a new paper. Later on then they must have gotten complaints and switched to orange bags so at least you had a chance to see it.
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My wife had an interesting experience with our paper delivery once. We also had our paper delivered and the carrier put the paper in one of those plastic bags. My wife was backing the car down the driveway and she rolled over the paper just right. The opening was facing down the driveway and as she backed up, the tire closed the opening and as she rolled back, the air was compressed in the bag, until it popped and I even heard it while I was out back. She came running, saying that the paper blew up the tire… All we had was a flattened paper with a blown out bag, no tire damage. But from that day forward, my wife never drove over the paper…
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