bushels of acres

Also in the potentially helpful I-had-no-idea category:

How much is a bushel? I was envisioning a bushel as one of those baskets you put apples in at apple-picking places. Not so. It's much bigger: 2,150 cubic inches, which is about as helpful as "a bushel". More helpful, if you're a baker: a bushel is approximately 42 pounds of flour, so if you imagine 42 of those 1-pound sacks of flour, you can see that a bushel = a lot. All this information comes from this site, which notes, helpfully: "The average person may never actually measure anything in terms of a bushel, but having a basic understanding of this form of measurement may certainly help city folk during that next visit to the orchard or farm." Also it will helps me understand the $19.99 for a bushel of apples sign on Leavenworth St. (a lot of apples: 42-48 pounds-worth). This is confusing, because it appears to be both a volume metric and a weight metric, but I guess 44 pounds of apples takes up approximately 2,150 cubic inches. I think it would be cool to start measuring things in terms of bushels, say, when moving: I guesstimate (my favorite form of math) I have about 150 bushels worth of stuff, give or take. Next time I move, I'll try to remember to measure it.

And an acre? Well, I was interested to discover that an acre is a measure of area and therefore does not require a particular shape. Similarly, a "square foot" need not be one foot by one foot square--it could be a rectangle with some fraction of a foot on one side and a foot plus a fraction on another side--or it could be a nonrectilinear shape altogether. An acre is equal to 43,560 square feet. For you sports fans out there, it's about 76% of a football field, or 100% of a football field minus the end zones and about 9 yards from one end. A square 40-acre parcel (e.g. "40 acres and a mule") is 1/4 mile by 1/4 mile. The other way to get a good idea for this is to go on to your county assessor's website, look up a property you're familiar with, and see if the acreage is listed.

Happy measuring.

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loan v. lend

This is something I did not know. Lent is the past tense of lend. Loaned is the past tense of loan. I always hesitated at lent, believing loaned was proper. Lend-lent has a bring-brang, mend-ment tend-tent, feel to me, I don't know why--it's not like there isn't send-sent, bend-bent, rend-rent, or that I thought lend-lended was right. But loan, the verb, is historically incorrect (although it's considered correct in the US now). Here are the rules, from bartleby.com:

USAGE NOTE: The verb loan is well established in American usage and cannot be considered incorrect. The frequent objections to the form by American grammarians may have originated from a provincial deference to British critics, who long ago labeled the usage a typical Americanism. Loan is, however, used to describe only physical transactions, as of money or goods; for figurative transactions, lend is correct: Distance lends enchantment. The allusions lend the work a classical tone.

Happy Tuesdays, all.

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p.s.

as you can see over there in the corner, I'm trying to rebuild my een per dag habit.
If you want me to take on a weekly theme, let me know, and feel free to suggest themes. I guess we'll see if anybody's still bothering to read this ol' blog.

DIY

I am now the world's foremost authority on troubleshooting thermostats. I still don't have a working one, but I have determined that fault is in the thermostat, and not in the installation. And I know how to put one on upside-down, even.

debutante

A colleague and I will be talking about Legal Aid of Nebraska, foreclosures, and other consumer-law issues on tv tonight for a local public-access show called the Latino Perspective (channel 22).

Omaha

For the first time ever, I will be voting in a place where my vote might actually change something.

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