Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson for February 16, 2014

As my friend used to say to me, it’s tough not being normal sized…. (he’s 5" taller than me)

In unicorn that must be 0.4

interesting guide lines for measuring things. Now how does one measure a Pegasus? In Unicorn, hands or Pegisi? or maybe there on Metric?

How tall is Marigold in Phoebe’s?

James T. Kirk: I’m not sure but I think I’ve been insulted.Bones McCoy: I’M sure.

Tell-me-those-number-are-rounded-or-my-math-will-twitch! Badly!

The unicorn’s have not agreed on a unit standard. One individual unicorn must be designated as the standard unicorn for all others to be measured against. With their egos, that would be a difficult agreement to achieve.

So Phoebe’s a little over three and a half feet tall?

Buildings? Bridges? Mountains?

“I am no horse.” I felt the chilliness of that line just reading it.

I see now.

“I am just as many unicorns tall as is required, Sire.” Misquote from “Amadeus”

“Well, that’s not a particularly useful form of measurement, then, isn’t it?” “Um. unicorn.” “Yes, that one.” “Third base.”

One hand is four inches, so that’s saying Phoebe is 4’ tall. But a horse’s height is measured from the ground to the withers (base of the neck, where the mane ends and the back begins), so maybe Phoebe’s height is minus her head.

D0 y0’ F___ (Fox Newsin’) math: 1/.9 is not 1.1. Your’e allowed to use calculator.

I’m afraid Marigold very adroitly put Phoebe in her place: Humans will NOT be measured in Unicorns!

How many unicorns can dance on the tip of a horn?

I’m betting Phoebe is measured like anyone else, 10.8 hands would put her at roughly 43 inches.

I was never clear on “hands.” How many inches to a hand? Is a hand measured across the palm, or from thumb to little finger spread-out? What and how?

A hand is four inches, the typical width measured across the hand from the base of the thumb. This is as opposed to the palm, which is three inches, measured across the palm above the thumb, and the span, from the stretched-out tip of the thumb to the stretched-out tip of the little finger, or nine inches. These and many more used to be used all the time.

The hand is an example of an obsolete measure that still has some fossilized applications. Horses are measured in hands, just as racetracks are measured in furlongs (660 feet, or ⅛ of a mile), and shoes are measured in barleycorns (⅓ of an inch).

Because I have nothing better to do, I did some calculations.10.8 hands comes out to 4 feet after rounding down in inches.In the scale of the 2-9-14 strip Phobe is 99 pixels tall, thus 1 foot = 25 inches (Rounded up from 24.75 pixels).From that same strip Marigold is 185 pixels tall from hoof to the tip of the horn.Plug that into the previously established formula and you get roughly 7 feet and 5 inches.(Also, Phobe is 0.540540540540540… Unicorns tall.)Oh god I’m such a nerd.

Actually, the correct wording is, “hands high!”

Marigold is right to say that she’s “no horse”. She has cloven hooves, and a horse has uncloven hooves.

According to Incredible Comparisons (©1996) by Russell Ash, the average height of a 10-year-old is 4½ feet, or 54 inches. 54 divided by 5 is 10⅘, so, according to Marigold, perhaps a unicorn hand is 5 inches, as opposed to 4 inches for the type of hand that is used to measure horses. Perhaps, when applied to unicorns, it measures their height from the ground to the withers; when applied to humans, it measures their overall height. With unicorn hands, the decimal presumably works as it would in most cases, except for with horse hands; a horse measuring 5 feet 3 inches at its withers is 15.3 hands, whereas a unicorn measuring 5 feet 3 inches at its withers is 12.6 hands. When hands are used to measure a horse’s height from its withers to the bottom of its hooves, and there are an extra 1 to 3 inches, these are included after the decimal point.

If so, this makes Marigold about 4½ feet high at the withers, 11 feet in overall length, and perhaps 450 pounds in mass, with a 2-foot-long horn. Based on what she’s saying, it makes Florence about 4 feet 1 inch high at the withers, 10 feet long, and 340 pounds in mass, with a 21⅝-inch horn.