Chin Yui Yat Sang (Theme song from the movie "The Killer" (1989) directed by John Woo) - Sally Yeh
If dogs could speak...
Sunday, August 13, 2006
 
Asahi Super Dry Weather
Weather is complicated business, even before the arrival of Michael "The Hurricane" D. Brown and FEMA. First there is this confusion about Fahrenheit and Celsius. Personally I think the use of Celsius should be limited to police reports and autopsies where numbers don't really matter anymore. For example, the patient dies of acute interoginkoba sceptomicenkolititis, and had a body temperature of 419.2C when found. See, something like that might make you think that the physician really earned his golf club membership, even if the most doctor-like thing he ever did was to spend several months at Club Med.

But it is not only temperature that influences weather. There is also humidity and wind speed, both of which can change how comfortable you feel. 75.2F at 22% humidity and 9 mph wind might feel like 23C at 59% humidity and 12 mph wind. But you can't really expect people to always have a supercomputer with them to calculate these things, or to run to weather pages on the web to look it up each time they plan a trip.

Leave it to the Japanese to figure it out, and what they came up with is truly ingenious, better than anything they have ever put into your Toyota SUV or Mazda submarine. Yahoo Japan's online weather service has started to provide four new indices this summer to tell you just exactly how it is outside. They have a "UV index," a "sweat index," a "heat exhaustion index," and finally a "beer index." The first three are somewhat self-explanatory. The last one is too, I suppose, and here they rate each day on a scale of 0 to 100, and that rating value helps you decide how many beers are best to drink. For instance, a 0-19 day deserves one beer, a 20-39 day gets two beers and so on, up to five beers for a 80-100 day.

Instead of saying that it is partly cloudy in Tokyo with a temperature of 79F, humidity of 83%, and wind of 9 mph from the South, you say simply that today is a four-beer day in Tokyo. Very straightforward and to the point. We all understand what a four-beer day is, no further explanations needed. I am sure that some people might claim that every day is a many-beer day, but at least now they can point to the supporting evidence. If it's on the web, it must be true.

That really makes these dog days of summer a lot easier to accept. I have a feeling that today is going to be a beautiful six-pack scorcher already.

Comments:
I think there is a weather site that gives summer weather forecasts measured in ice cream scoops. Since I don't drink beer, that's more my type of weather.
 
Great idea. A big thumbs up from here.
 
Ahh, thankfully it's never less than a four-beer day here. At -55 it's closer to a six-beer day, so how does that compute out?
 
Weather can be really funny indeed. Here in the south of Brazil it was supposed to be really cold at this time of the year, but we are getting weird 30ÂșC temperatures down here.

I also came here to tell you that you are tagged.
Come over to my blog to see what to do.
 
My dad (the geologist) always felt that temperature should be only in Kelvin.
 
Its always a 2x Six pack day here in Australia
 
Connecticut,
The web site must be sponsored by Baskin-Robbins. What a strange coincdence!

Tim,
Great name. Are you really from there?

John,
At -55, doesn't the beer turn into ice cubes? I want to drink it, not eat it. Never heard of having to microwave beer before.

Raisa,
That must be another sign of global warming. Al Gore is right. Tugh thing for huskies. Sorry for the late response to the tag.

Turbo's Human,
Kelvin degrees are too much like monopoly money. I don't want to think of 300 degree days.

Charlie,
You lucky dog!
 
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