19 lines
2.9 KiB
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19 lines
2.9 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>ISO standard cup of tea</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../I.html" title="I"/><link rel="previous" href="ironmonger.html" title="ironmonger"/><link rel="next" href="ISP.html" title="ISP"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">ISO standard cup of tea</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="ironmonger.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">I</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="ISP.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="ISO-standard-cup-of-tea"/><dt xmlns="" id="ISO-standard-cup-of-tea"><b>ISO standard cup of tea</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> [South Africa] A cup of tea with milk and one teaspoon of sugar,
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where the milk is poured into the cup before the tea. Variations are ISO
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0, with no sugar; ISO 2, with two spoons of sugar; and so on.</p><p>This may derive from the “<span class="quote">NATO standard</span>” cup of coffee
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and tea (milk and two sugars), military slang going back to the late 1950s
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and parodying NATO's relentless bureaucratic drive to standardize parts
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across European and U.S. militaries.</p><p>Like many ISO standards, this one has a faintly alien ring in North
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America, where hackers generally shun the decadent British practice of
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adulterating perfectly good tea with dairy products and prefer instead to
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add a wedge of lemon, if anything. If one were feeling extremely silly,
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one might hypothesize an analogous <span class="firstterm">ANSI standard
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cup of tea</span> and wind up with a political situation distressingly
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similar to several that arise in much more serious technical contexts.
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(Milk and lemon don't mix very well.)</p></dd><dd><p>[2000 update: There is now, in fact, an ISO standard 3103:
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‘Method for preparation of a liquor of tea for use in sensory
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tests.’, alleged to be equivalent to British Standard BS6008:
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<i class="citetitle">How to make a standard cup of tea.</i>
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—ESR]</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="ironmonger.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../I.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="ISP.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">ironmonger </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> ISP</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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