Hectares for Dummies

hectare to acre

Since so many of the staffers here at the Antisocial Network have a science background, it stands to reason that many of them are careful about accuracy when it comes to numbers, especially conversion factors. It is our experience, however, that many freelance writers with a... "creative writing" background are less interested in accuracy and more interested in style. That may be why eHow.com became the laughingstock of the internet just before it was blitzed by Google's Panda II update. Be that as it may, a lot of their work survives, including the Sciencing.com post, "How to Calculate Hectares," created by Todd Whitesel.

Converting to Gallons for Dummies

US and Imperial gallons, compared

We are well aware that the world-wide web is, indeed, world-wide. Since many of us are of a scientific bent, we tend to be aware of the multitude of conversion factors necessitated by the rather bizarre units used in the Imperial system, especially as compared to metric units. We suspect, however, that a British journalism grad would not be our first choice for attempting to explain some of those conversions We base that suspicion on the lousy job eHow.com's Mark Slingo performed on "How to Convert a Container Size to Gallons" at HomeSteady.com.

Square Yards for Dummies (Metric System 1)

fabric comes in linear yards

It's said that a lot of Americans can't quite comprehend the metric system, though why a system of measures that leverages powers of ten; as opposed to 12, 3, 4, 16, 36, 8 and the like; confuses us. Many an American almost proudly wears a dunce cap when it comes to arithmetic. Like Barbie supposedly said, "Math is hard!" (she didn't, but that's another story). So when it comes to conversions between metric and imperial units, all bets are off. It becomes even worse when one of the units is "confusing,"as was apparently the case for eHow's Rose Kerr, seen holding forth on "How to Convert Square Meters to Linear Yards," now found at Sciencing.com (ptui!)