ISO standard cup of tea

   [South  Africa]  A  cup  of  tea with milk and one teaspoon of sugar,
   where  the milk is poured into the cup before the tea. Variations are
   ISO 0, with no sugar; ISO 2, with two spoons of sugar; and so on.

   This  may derive from the "NATO standard" cup of coffee and tea (milk
   and  two  sugars),  military  slang  going back to the late 1950s and
   parodying  NATO's  relentless bureaucratic drive to standardize parts
   across European and U.S. militaries.

   Like  many  ISO standards, this one has a faintly alien ring in North
   America,  where  hackers generally shun the decadent British practice
   of  adulterating  perfectly  good  tea with dairy products and prefer
   instead  to  add  a  wedge of lemon, if anything. If one were feeling
   extremely silly, one might hypothesize an analogous ANSI standard cup
   of  tea  and wind up with a political situation distressingly similar
   to  several that arise in much more serious technical contexts. (Milk
   and lemon don't mix very well.)

   [2000  update:  There  is now, in fact, an ISO standard 3103: `Method
   for  preparation  of  a  liquor  of  tea  for use in sensory tests.',
   alleged  to  be  equivalent to British Standard BS6008: How to make a
   standard cup of tea. --ESR]

[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {ANSI standard pizza}]