Time To Start *The* Flamewar On Misc.Metric-system
Wallace Greer
Why Won't the US Go Metric?
Personal Viewpoint: Having spent much of my life outside the US as a child,
an education as an engineer and pilot, and much time overseas as an adult,
it perhaps is easier for me to deal with "thinking" in metric. Hey, I'm a
geek.
I'm also a geek who bleeds olive drab, and and has generations of inbreeding
to thank for my outlook on life. The only way to get the US to change is
cold turkey, and that will be after the holocaust that kills off everybody
but the geeks in America. It's a culture war thing, guys. It's also a legacy
system thing, with all the horrors that implies.
Meanwhile, the "stealth" metrification will continue, bitterly opposed by
the occupations most stuck in the mud of everyday usage- like everyone who
drives a car, or does home improvement, or uses three-ring binders, or sends
print jobs off to be mangled by commercial printers, or cooks, or.....
Wally.
syne...@hotmail.com
For what its worth, here are my personal, totally unsubstantiated,
thoughts and feelings on this as a New Zealander living in the US:
Although outwardly, much of the US is very modern with new technology
etc, below the surface, there is a great resistance to change. Some of
this is obviously related to its size but there seems to be some sort
of culture component too. I get the feeling that many Americans equate
the metric system with the unknown, wierd and alien universe outside
its borders. I think its the only country that calls foreigners
"aliens".
They are especially suspicious of anything European. Let the metric
system in and the next thing you know we're on a slippery slope to
things like public healthcare, more than two weeks vacation a year,
sensible drug and gun laws, wierd governments comprised of more than
two parties, equal rights for gay couples, reluctance to fight in wars
and on and on. "America must be strong and resist these evil things."
Well, maybe that's a bit dramatic but it is the general feeling I get
sometimes.
Cheers
Ross
Stefano MacGregor
> Why Won't the US Go Metric?
Inertia. There's just no desire to take the effort to change to a
better, easier system. For the same reason, we're pretty much stuck
with the qwerty keyboard, despite the existance of the vastly superior
Dvorak keyboard.
Now here's one way to get the US caught up with the rest of the world:
Everyone calls a cent a "penny". So change it to that, and redo the
monetary system so that we have coins worth 1d, 2d, 3d, and 6d, and
larger coins worth twelve pence, called "shillings". Then we could
have more coins worth 1s, 2½s, 5s, and 10s, and bills worth twenty
shillings, called "pounds", so there would be bills for £1, £2, £5,
£10, £20, £50, and £100.
Now then, after a few years of trying to calculate compound interest
and file income-tax forms, the nation would be crying out for a return
to metric money. Many of them may also say to themselves, "Say, self.
Do you think that metric everything-else just might be easier, too?"
Or, the government could just take it upon themselves to use
metric-only for all government purposes. Government offices would
have all personnel data in metric, where needed, and would use metric
paper sizes. Cars would be ordered with speedometers and odometers in
km. Veterans' hospitals would record patients' weights in kg and
heights in cm.
Federal money given to states for highways could be contingent upon
there being speed-limit signs and distance-to-next-exit in metric.
Now at last, this first could be made almost unnoticable. Where there
is now a speed limit of 55 mph, there would be the sign that says
"SPEED LIMIT 55 MPH", but just below it, there could be an additional
round sign with the number "88" on it.
Later, the signs could be changed so that the top one says "90", and
just below, one that says "56 mph". Finally the bottom one could just
be left off.
Replacing the distance-to-next-exit signs, we could have ones that
read, for example:
THUNDERBIRD RD 400 m (1/4 MI)
BELL RD 2000 m (1 1/4 MI)
UNION HILLS RD 3600 m (2 1/4 MI)
Same with signs giving distances to cities further along the road. No
new signs, no federal money. The new signs would come up pretty
quickly.
The government is a big customer for many companies. If they order
ten thousand bales of copy paper, size A4, a few times a week, there
would be plenty metric-sized paper produced, and the rest of us would
be able to buy it, too, and not as a specialty item.
The government could impose a tax of 10¢/ream on wombat[1]-sized
paper, escalating it by another dime every few years, until no one
wanted to use the obsolete sizes any more.
When metric is measurably less expensive than wombat, it will become
very popular.
--
Stefano
http://www.steve-and-pattie.com/esperantujo
[1] wombat = "Way Of Measuring Badly in America Today",
or, if you'd rather, "Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time".
Julian Bradfield
> Now here's one way to get the US caught up with the rest of the world:
> Everyone calls a cent a "penny". So change it to that, and redo the
> monetary system so that we have coins worth 1d, 2d, 3d, and 6d, and
> larger coins worth twelve pence, called "shillings". Then we could
> have more coins worth 1s, 2½s, 5s, and 10s, and bills worth twenty
> shillings, called "pounds", so there would be bills for £1, £2, £5,
> £10, £20, £50, and £100.
You forgot the 1/2d and the 1/4d and the 2s coins.
However, there were (in modern times) no 10s coins apart from gold
half-sovereigns, which haven't been used for a long time, and the 5s
coin (crown) was obsolete even before my time, apart from
commemorative issues. There were 10s notes; there was never a £2 note,
as far as I know. Beware of filling in patterns - that makes it too
easy for the foreigners!
> Now then, after a few years of trying to calculate compound interest
> and file income-tax forms, the nation would be crying out for a return
> to metric money. Many of them may also say to themselves, "Say, self.
But since we have computers and calculators (and the calculators could
of course be designed to deal with real money), it wouldn't be hard at
all.
Did I forget to mention in the last few flame wars that I also regret
decimalization? 240d to the pound is so much more convenient than
100p!
Andreas Prilop
> 240d to the pound is so much more convenient than 100p!
If you really believe this then you should write
180d to the pound is so much more convenient than 84p!
--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?
Sebastian Brocks
> Idle question: do US cars have speedos in miles and km or only miles?
> Idle question for the rest of Europe? As above for km and miles?
In Germany, they're only in kilometers.
--
"Falls auf Ihrer Tastatur noch keine "any key"-Taste vorhanden sein sollte,
können Sie die Funktion erreichen, indem Sie folgende Tasten gleichzeitig
gedrückt halten: <Linke STRG> <ALT> <F1> <ESC> <ALTGR> <P> <I> <PAUSE>"
-aus der Anleitung des Spiels "Das Hexagon-Kartell"
Paul Neubauer
>
>Idle question: do US cars have speedos in miles and km or only miles?
Cars sold in the U.S. have speedometers that read out in miles, with
smaller markings for kilometers. I think this may have started around
the time of the (misguided) big push for metrification in the 1970s.
Fancier models might have a switch to simply change the readout and
just have one set of numbers. Canadian cars are the reverse - the
larger marks are for km, smaller for mi.
What was misguided about the 1970s metrification push was that it was
too much too fast. That soured many people on metrification. The current
slow drifting to metric may seem ponderous and hopeless, but until those
memories fade, that's all the speed there will be in it.
Had it been better thought out and slowly phased in, everywhere else would
still complain about the lack of speed in conversion, but the U.S. would be
farther along in changing. Some things, though, would likely never really
change.
--
Paul Neubauer, N9IOG
Ned Flat: "Why are you acting like this?"
Yakko : "We're not acting. We really are like this."
Wakko : "Aren't we lucky?"
DWT
| Idle question: do US cars have speedos in miles and km or only miles?
That's not an idle question; it's a motion question. Neither mi/hr nor km/hr
register when a car is idling.
US cars do not have Speedos. Even Cadillacs don't have them, but the
Cadillacs did. Some US people have Speedos, including many who should not.
Paul Neubauer has already answered about speedometers, which are not known
as "speedos" here. (To explain the previous paragraph, Speedo is the brand
name of a line of very skimpy swimwear. Cadillac is a make of passenger
automobile from General Motors. Like other cars, it does not wear Speedos.
The Cadillacs, however, were a 1950s doo-wop group; their lead singer, Earl
Carroll, was nicknamed Speedo [or Speed-o or Speedoo].)
--
David W. Tamkin
The reply address may be invalid after midnight US Central Time on 05Feb2004.
Wallace Greer
America- We won't turn out like our parents...
Wally.
<syne...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:cd0f55df.04012...@posting.google.com...
Wallace Greer
There are so many ways that this would not work, I won't bother
deconstructing them at all.
Basically you are asking every driver (read "voter") in the US to rip out
the operating system in their heads. A previous poster got it right in
another thread- english usage has many smaller everyday units that are more
convienient to visualize. Example: I'm 6 feet, 2 inches tall. That's 193 cm.
Which one of the two numbers is easier to visualize? Six (people want close
approximations, but not to the last ten digits). Span of control is a
factor. Seven digits were picked for the US phone numbering system for just
that reason. I agree that the metric number is "better" (as I whole
heartedly agree that the metric system is better), but there is a reason
many of those shorthand english measures persist.
Secondly, you *grossly* underestimate the difficulties of transition. LEGACY
SYSTEM, LEGACY SYSTEM, LEGACY SYSTEM. You are asking everyone to trash the
entire collection of tools and Operating Systems that they have used thier
entire lives. And I mean physical tools as well. It will be centuries until
the last three-ring binder gets tossed, the last bookshelf that is sized for
Letter gets replaced, etc, etc...
You are also asking the (currently) most powerful nation on Earth to take a
massive loss of pride. There's a reason Bush is identifed with the social
and cultural conservatives of this country. Hist'ry don' apply to us, boah!
We aint gonna turn out like the Redcoats, no!
Third, your examples show another flaw: the geek factor. Only a geek would
round 55 to 88 km/hr. 90 km/hr works. This is why the 70's metric effort
failed in part- geeks ramming geekstuff down the public throat. Yes, you
have converted the velocity into the closest whole km/hr (good for you,
you're a geek), but ignored the fact that you lost the public by not
rounding to the nearest convieniently visualized division point (dumshit,
you pissed off the public). Look at the dollar coin. Coin geeks love it, the
public sees it as a curiosity and collectible. To them, a dollar is "real
money", paper. (Note $1 in 1960 is roughly $6.00 in current dollars, but the
public doesn't like thinking a buck is really seventeen cents...)
We'll have to wait until the chinese and Europeans take over, economically,
for the metric system to be implemented. Won't be long at this rate.
Wally.
Wallace Greer
Wally.
"Wallace Greer" <wdg...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:jXmSb.2515$uM2....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Joona I Palaste
> David Marsh <see...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>> Idle question: do US cars have speedos in miles and km or only miles?
>> Idle question for the rest of Europe? As above for km and miles?
> In Germany, they're only in kilometers.
In Finland, they're only in kilometres too. The same goes, I think, for
Sweden and Norway, and also for France, Italy and Spain. I don't know
about the UK. They're the ones who invented the whole imperial system in
the first place, gosh darn it.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"Make money fast! Don't feed it!"
- Anon
Joona I Palaste
> Stefano:
> There are so many ways that this would not work, I won't bother
> deconstructing them at all.
> Basically you are asking every driver (read "voter") in the US to rip out
> the operating system in their heads. A previous poster got it right in
> another thread- english usage has many smaller everyday units that are more
> convienient to visualize. Example: I'm 6 feet, 2 inches tall. That's 193 cm.
> Which one of the two numbers is easier to visualize?
193 cm. I have to convert those strange alien foot-and-inch thingies to
metric to know how long they are. It's the way I've been taught all my
life.
All you people who are claiming that no one will ever learn metric are
blissfully ignoring the fact that over 200 million continental Europeans
learn metric, and *ONLY* metric, right from their childhood.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"Ice cream sales somehow cause drownings: both happen in summer."
- Antti Voipio & Arto Wikla
Ignatios Souvatzis
> Why Won't the US Go Metric?
Which reminds me of ``3.5"'' - floppies. If I actually apply a ruler to
one, it is 90.0mm wide, 93.5mm long. Significantly different from 88.9mm.
-is
Michael Dahms
>
> Which reminds me of ``3.5"'' - floppies. If I actually apply a ruler to
> one, it is 90.0mm wide, 93.5mm long. Significantly different from 88.9mm.
You should measure the disk-diameter.
Michael Dahms
Leo Herranen
> Example: I'm 6 feet, 2 inches tall. That's 193 cm. Which one of
> the two numbers is easier to visualize? Six (people want close
> approximations, but not to the last ten digits).
Two. Or more precisely, ~10 cm under two meters. HTH.
--
(
-
Markus Kuhn
>What you do is put up a sign saying "90 km/h" (which happens to be a common
>speed limit elsewhere (not that the USA shows any interest in standardising
>its roadsigns with the rest of the world ;-/)), and at the same time
>redefine the speed limit law to mandate 90 km/h (rather than 55 mph)
>as the limit, and after a couple of years (but no longer than that)
>take down the "55" sign.
Why not take down the 55 sign at the same day you put up the 90 sign?
That's how Canada did it:
During the Labor Day weekend in 1977 every speed limit sign
in the country was changed from mph to km/h. From the same time
every new car sold had to have a speedometer that showed speed
in km/h and distance in km. The distances on road signs were
changed to kilometres during the next few months. Gasoline
pumps changed from imperial gallons to litres in 1979.
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/internat.htm#canada
Dual labeling is futile and causes far more friction, resistance and pain
than a fast and clean switchover.
Perhaps the best textbook example of how to introduce the metric
system properly in a large English-speaking country is Australia:
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/internat.htm#australia
Markus
--
Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ || CB3 0FD, Great Britain
Markus Kuhn
>> Which reminds me of ``3.5"'' - floppies. If I actually apply a ruler to
>> one, it is 90.0mm wide, 93.5mm long. Significantly different from 88.9mm.
>
>You should measure the disk-diameter.
From the Metric System FAQ:
The so-called "3.5 inch floppy disk" (ISO 9529) is in fact a fully
metric design, originally developed by Sony in Japan. It was first
introduced on the market as the "90 mm floppy disk", and it is
exactly 90 mm wide, 94 mm long, and 3.3 mm thick. The disk inside
has a diameter of 85.8 mm. Not a single dimension of this disk
design is 3.5 in (88.9 mm).
Julian Bradfield
> Julian Bradfield <j...@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>> 240d to the pound is so much more convenient than 100p!
> If you really believe this then you should write
> 180d to the pound is so much more convenient than 84p!
Not really. While I happen to think it would be better if we'd grown
up with a base 12 numbering system, the reason 240 is nice is because
it's divisible by 12 *and* 10, so you could divide a pound
by 2,3,4,5,6,8,10,12,15,16,20,24,30,40,48,60,80,120,240. I'm
not favouring 12 over 10 here.
Joona I Palaste
Complain to evolution of not having us develop six digits on each limb
instead of five.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"You have moved your mouse, for these changes to take effect you must shut down
and restart your computer. Do you want to restart your computer now?"
- Karri Kalpio
Michael Dahms
>
> Michael Dahms füllte insgesamt 8 Zeilen u.a. mit:
> >
> >> Which reminds me of ``3.5"'' - floppies. If I actually apply a ruler to
> >> one, it is 90.0mm wide, 93.5mm long. Significantly different from 88.9mm.
> >
> > You should measure the disk-diameter.
>
Then, all possiblities are checked. Sometimes, reading the FAQ is
better. :-)
Michael Dahms
Markus Kuhn
>Not really. While I happen to think it would be better if we'd grown
>up with a base 12 numbering system, the reason 240 is nice is because
>it's divisible by 12 *and* 10, so you could divide a pound
>by 2,3,4,5,6,8,10,12,15,16,20,24,30,40,48,60,80,120,240.
No thanks. Dividing the British pound into 100 pence already causes
me to carry more than enough coins around with me. Thankfully,
towns like Cambridge have evolved an entire industry of people eager
to assist in the disposal of unwanted change. I wonder, whether the
begging business is so much more evolved here than on the
Continent because of Britain's still relatively recent history
of even far more cumbersome coin denominations. Did these make
customers even less interested in using use up their small change when
paying?
Nollaig MacKenzie
On 2004.01.30 07:10:14,
the amazing <wdg...@earthlink.net> declared:
<snip!>
>
> Secondly, you *grossly* underestimate the difficulties of transition. LEGACY
> SYSTEM, LEGACY SYSTEM, LEGACY SYSTEM.
I dunno. Has there been any empirical study of countries that
have gone through the change? I don't recall it being so hard
for us (in Canada). But I'd had enough science that the units
were familiar (for some reason I knew the cgs better than the
MKS). And the government had the compelling argument that we
had to go metric because the US was going to.
<snip!>
> ... Look at the dollar coin. Coin geeks love it, the
> public sees it as a curiosity and collectible. To them, a dollar is "real
> money", paper.
The introduction of the $1 and $2 coins went pretty smoothly
here, I think. Maybe it helped that the $1 coin had a picture
of a loon on it, and was therefore called a "Loony", and was
thus loveable :-)
Cheers, N.
--
Nollaig MacKenzie <nol...@amhuinnsuidhe.cx>
http://www.amhuinnsuidhe.cx
Chris Kaese
> Stefano:
>
> There are so many ways that this would not work, I won't bother
> deconstructing them at all.
>
> Basically you are asking every driver (read "voter") in the US to rip out
> the operating system in their heads. A previous poster got it right in
> another thread- english usage has many smaller everyday units that are more
> convienient to visualize. Example: I'm 6 feet, 2 inches tall. That's 193 cm.
> Which one of the two numbers is easier to visualize? Six (people want close
> approximations, but not to the last ten digits). Span of control is a
> factor. Seven digits were picked for the US phone numbering system for just
> that reason. I agree that the metric number is "better" (as I whole
> heartedly agree that the metric system is better), but there is a reason
> many of those shorthand english measures persist.
>
> Secondly, you *grossly* underestimate the difficulties of transition. LEGACY
> SYSTEM, LEGACY SYSTEM, LEGACY SYSTEM. You are asking everyone to trash the
> entire collection of tools and Operating Systems that they have used thier
> entire lives. And I mean physical tools as well. It will be centuries until
> the last three-ring binder gets tossed, the last bookshelf that is sized for
> Letter gets replaced, etc, etc...
>
>>
> Wally.
1.93 m or 193 cm is clearly easier to remember. I need three digits
and one unit only.
With the imperial system I need two to three digits, two different
units and the knowledge about the unit conversion factor (12 inches to
one foot). I also need to remember two unit symbols (apostrophe for
feet, quotation mark for inches) that don't provide me with the
mnemonic help the metric units have built-in (m = meter).
About the road signs: Many other nations have converted without any
problems. Why are Americans so timid and shy and think so little of
their country and fellow countrymen? Why wouldn't Americans be able to
do what others have done?
Julian Bradfield
> to assist in the disposal of unwanted change. I wonder, whether the
> begging business is so much more evolved here than on the
> Continent because of Britain's still relatively recent history
> of even far more cumbersome coin denominations. Did these make
> customers even less interested in using use up their small change when
> paying?
No. It's because we got Thatcherism before you did.
(Seriously...I hardly ever saw beggars before the Thatcher era.)
Besides which, at the time of decimalization small change was worth
a lot more than it is now.
Stephen Graham
Paul Neubauer <va...@conmicro.cx> wrote:
>What was misguided about the 1970s metrification push was that it was
>too much too fast.
As others have done, I'd say it was too slow. The Metric Conversion Act
was passed in 1975 without specifying an end date. Reagan suspended
it in 1982. That's seven years without any particular progress.
--
Erwan David
> David Marsh wrote in <slrnc1j95q....@pepper.viewport.lan>:
>
> | Idle question: do US cars have speedos in miles and km or only miles?
>
> That's not an idle question; it's a motion question. Neither mi/hr nor km/hr
> register when a car is idling.
>
> US cars do not have Speedos. Even Cadillacs don't have them, but the
> Cadillacs did. Some US people have Speedos, including many who should not.
>
> Paul Neubauer has already answered about speedometers, which are not known
> as "speedos" here. (To explain the previous paragraph, Speedo is the brand
> name of a line of very skimpy swimwear. Cadillac is a make of passenger
> automobile from General Motors. Like other cars, it does not wear Speedos.
> The Cadillacs, however, were a 1950s doo-wop group; their lead singer, Earl
> Carroll, was nicknamed Speedo [or Speed-o or Speedoo].)
And I doubt that Cadillac (Anthoine de La Motte, baron de Cadillac,
who founded Detroit) wore them.
--
Erwan
Paul Neubauer
There was an initial rush which was rather enthusiastic, at least by
some, and that wound up being a flash in the pan. I can quite agree
with the suspension as by 1982 there was no point in claiming something
was happening when nothing was.
DWT
<87smhx5...@bretagne.rail.eu.org>:
| And I doubt that Cadillac (Anthoine de La Motte, baron de Cadillac,
| who founded Detroit) wore them.
The question is whether Earl Frazier, lead singer of the Impalas (another
doo-wop group that shared its name with a General Motors vehicle), who
was also nicknamed "Speedo," wore them.
--
David W. Tamkin
The reply address may be invalid after midnight US Central Time on 07Feb2004.
DWT
<bvd80p$4c9$2...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>:
| All you people who are claiming that no one will ever learn metric are
| blissfully ignoring the fact that over 200 million continental Europeans
| learn metric, and *ONLY* metric, right from their childhood.
Sorry, but the analogy fails. To learn metric and only metric from childhood
would work fine (I wish we did), as it does almost everywhere else in the
world; to learn the old units and metric together from childhood would work
as well, like growing up bilingual. But it's quite another matter to have
gone through one's life -- at least as far back as one can remember --
knowing only one system and now having to keep a second system in one's head
alongside the first.
Perhaps I had an advantage. My parents' two failed experiments at having a
son before they finally did it right both went into engineering, so I had
more childhood exposure to SI than most Americans of my vintage.
Joona I Palaste
> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in
> <bvd80p$4c9$2...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>:
> | All you people who are claiming that no one will ever learn metric are
> | blissfully ignoring the fact that over 200 million continental Europeans
> | learn metric, and *ONLY* metric, right from their childhood.
> Sorry, but the analogy fails. To learn metric and only metric from childhood
> would work fine (I wish we did), as it does almost everywhere else in the
> world; to learn the old units and metric together from childhood would work
> as well, like growing up bilingual. But it's quite another matter to have
> gone through one's life -- at least as far back as one can remember --
> knowing only one system and now having to keep a second system in one's head
> alongside the first.
Continental Europe wasn't always metric. Before the end of the 18th
century, continental Europe also used various imperial-style systems.
But somehow they managed to change to metric. There *MUST* have been
people who had to live with two systems alongside each other, just like
Americans are in danger of doing now.
If Europe could do it, why can't the USA?
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"My absolute aspect is probably..."
- Mato Valtonen
Errol Cavit
news:bvfnv5$nsn$1...@panix2.panix.com...
<snip>
>
> Sorry, but the analogy fails. To learn metric and only metric from
childhood
> would work fine (I wish we did), as it does almost everywhere else in the
> world; to learn the old units and metric together from childhood would
work
> as well, like growing up bilingual. But it's quite another matter to have
> gone through one's life -- at least as far back as one can remember --
> knowing only one system and now having to keep a second system in one's
head
> alongside the first.
>
every morning, and life carries on without too much hassle. Things you need
to know for day-to-day living are learnt quickly, while other things take
longer.
--
Errol Cavit | errol...@hotmail.com | "If you have had enough, then I have
had enough. But if you haven't had enough, then I haven't had enough
either." Maori chief Kawiti to Governor George Grey, after the Battle of
Ruapekapeka 1846.
Erik Naggum
| 1.93 m or 193 cm is clearly easier to remember. I need three digits
| and one unit only.
Today's rerun of Science Shack on BBC World gave us a rather curious
demonstration of how English-speaking people refer to metric measures.
Some measurement was probably 6.15 m, but the narrator explained that
it was «six meters fifteen». It could easily have been 6.015 m.
The other day, I noticed that the CNN financial news anchors refer to
0.7% growth rate as «seven tenths of a percentage point growth rate».
I have not noticed this braindamage before, but it could just be that
I have ignored it and not paid attention to the many displays of how
unmathematical and unscientific the English-speaking peoples are.
The curious thing is that none of the people I know in the U.S. or the
U.K. have any problems whatsoever with metric units, so I have been
insulated from the lack of mathematical sophistication in the general
population. Once I started looking, however, it is ridiculous that so
many people are so completely inept at handling numbers.
--
Erik Naggum | Oslo, Norway 2004-031
Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.
Julian Bradfield
> Today's rerun of Science Shack on BBC World gave us a rather curious
> demonstration of how English-speaking people refer to metric measures.
> Some measurement was probably 6.15 m, but the narrator explained that
> it was «six meters fifteen». It could easily have been 6.015 m.
There's nothing particularly English-speaking about that.
Germans say "ein Meter siebzig", and French say "un metre
soixante-dix". (And these constructions are not only applied to
people's heights.)
Erwan David
Yes and 6.015 is said in french "six mčtres zéro quinze (6 metres zero
fifteen)).
No problem with this.
--
Erwan
Sebastian Brocks
> Today's rerun of Science Shack on BBC World gave us a rather curious
> demonstration of how English-speaking people refer to metric measures.
> Some measurement was probably 6.15 m, but the narrator explained that
> it was «six meters fifteen». It could easily have been 6.015 m.
I, and pretty much every one I know refers to 6.15m as 6 meter 15. That's
nothing unusual, even in pure-metric countries.
--
"Falls auf Ihrer Tastatur noch keine "any key"-Taste vorhanden sein sollte,
können Sie die Funktion erreichen, indem Sie folgende Tasten gleichzeitig
gedrückt halten: <Linke STRG> <ALT> <F1> <ESC> <ALTGR> <P> <I> <PAUSE>"
-aus der Anleitung des Spiels "Das Hexagon-Kartell"
Erik Naggum
| Complain to evolution of not having us develop six digits on each limb
| instead of five.
There may be 10 digits on both hands, but there are 12 phalanges in
the four fingers on each hand, not counting the thumb. There is some
historic evidence that these were used for counting and that the whole
base 12 thing started that way.
Jim Riley
MacGregor) wrote:
>"Wallace Greer" <wdg...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<eP2Sb.1683$F23...@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
>
>> Why Won't the US Go Metric?
>
>Inertia. There's just no desire to take the effort to change to a
>better, easier system. For the same reason, we're pretty much stuck
>with the qwerty keyboard, despite the existance of the vastly superior
>Dvorak keyboard.
>
>Now here's one way to get the US caught up with the rest of the world:
>
>Everyone calls a cent a "penny".
The coin with a value of one cent is called a penny by almost
everyone. Noone looks for 63 pennies in their coin purse. They look
for 27 cents, with some combination of quarters (quarter-dollar),
dimes, nickels (5 cent coin), and pennies (one cent coin).
>Federal money given to states for highways could be contingent upon
>there being speed-limit signs and distance-to-next-exit in metric.
>
>Now at last, this first could be made almost unnoticable. Where there
>is now a speed limit of 55 mph, there would be the sign that says
>"SPEED LIMIT 55 MPH", but just below it, there could be an additional
>round sign with the number "88" on it.
Does the metric system define minutes and hours? Wouldn't it be
better to define velocities in meters per second? How does a traffic
engineer determine a safe velocity for traversing a curve? What about
the safety engineer determining the forces of a collision? How many
lives have been lost because of errors in unit conversions?
So what are the benefits of the 88 (km/h) sign? The traveller can
determine that if he maintains that speed he will travel 88 kilometers
in the next hour (about 90, if he is an English speaker). Or perhaps
that he can travel 30 kilometers in 20 minutes (29.3 if he speaks
German).
But the same sort of benefits are possible if the sign read 25 meters
per second. It is trivial to determine the distance traveled in a
kilosecond (almost 17 shillings, er... minutes). But it can also be
understood in units that the ordinary driver can understand.
--
Jim Riley
DWT
| There may be 10 digits on both hands, but there are 12 phalanges in
| the four fingers on each hand, not counting the thumb. There is some
| historic evidence that these were used for counting and that the whole
| base 12 thing started that way.
We should have stuck with it.
DWT
| It's harder, yes, but as has been proven several times, the sun still rises
| every morning, and life carries on without too much hassle. Things you need
| to know for day-to-day living are learnt quickly, while other things take
| longer.
And things you can make up excuses to resist take longer yet. Growing up
with SI (with or without another system alongside it) is just plain a
different ball game from growing up without it and learning it later. My
exposure as the much younger sibling of two engineering majors certainly
gave me a leg up.
DWT
| Continental Europe wasn't always metric. Before the end of the 18th
| century, continental Europe also used various imperial-style systems.
| But somehow they managed to change to metric. There *MUST* have been
| people who had to live with two systems alongside each other, just like
| Americans are in danger of doing now.
| If Europe could do it, why can't the USA?
Now that's the right question.
Two of the factors that come to mind:
Society everywhere is more complicated now than then, populations are larger
and a greater fraction of the population is involved in measurements, and
there is more entrenched technology.
Big business sees only the short-term cost and not the long-term benefit.
--
David W. (giving my weight in kg makes me sound so skinny) Tamkin
Harvey Van Sickle
-snip-
> All you people who are claiming that no one will ever learn metric
> are blissfully ignoring the fact that over 200 million continental
> Europeans learn metric, and *ONLY* metric, right from their
> childhood.
Precisely. And all you people who are claiming that it is a
straightforward thing for a nation to change its system seem to be
blissfully ignoring the fact that over 300 million people learned
another system -- and *ONLY* that system -- right from their childhood.
You seem to think that's an irrelevancy, and want them to change to
your system instead -- the system you learned from your childhood, and
they didn't.
This group tends to be the deaf speaking to the deaf.
Dr John Stockton
news:misc.metric-system, Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> posted
at Sat, 31 Jan 2004 09:42:05 :-
>Continental Europe wasn't always metric. Before the end of the 18th
>century, continental Europe also used various imperial-style systems.
>But somehow they managed to change to metric. There *MUST* have been
>people who had to live with two systems alongside each other, just like
>Americans are in danger of doing now.
When Continental Europe, which does not for this include the British
Isles and perhaps not Scandinavia, went metric, the inhabitants - or, at
least, those who traded from place to place - were already accustomed to
a multitude of measurement units. So adding one more system was no
great problem; and looking forward to not needing all the old units
revealed obvious advantage.
The UK and the US each managed to move to much more nearly a single
system, which makes the change less attractive.
The UK has seen, within the last half-century, the benefit to be
expected from the change; all that is left to deal with are things that
directly affect all voters in their ordinary life - Governments get
rather conservative about things like that.
--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk / ??.Stoc...@physics.org ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Correct <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line precisely "-- " (SoRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SoRFC1036)
Wallace Greer
Now you're gonna have to whack at least 1/3 of the US population to
implement it.
Wally.
"Markus Kuhn" <n04W05...@cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:bvdhts$plr$1...@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk...
> David Marsh <see...@127.0.0.1> writes:
> >What you do is put up a sign saying "90 km/h" (which happens to be a
common
> >speed limit elsewhere (not that the USA shows any interest in
standardising
> >its roadsigns with the rest of the world ;-/)), and at the same time
> >redefine the speed limit law to mandate 90 km/h (rather than 55 mph)
> >as the limit, and after a couple of years (but no longer than that)
> >take down the "55" sign.
>
> Why not take down the 55 sign at the same day you put up the 90 sign?
>
> That's how Canada did it:
>
> During the Labor Day weekend in 1977 every speed limit sign
> in the country was changed from mph to km/h. From the same time
> every new car sold had to have a speedometer that showed speed
> in km/h and distance in km. The distances on road signs were
> changed to kilometres during the next few months. Gasoline
> pumps changed from imperial gallons to litres in 1979.
>
> http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/internat.htm#canada
>
> Dual labeling is futile and causes far more friction, resistance and pain
> than a fast and clean switchover.
>
> Perhaps the best textbook example of how to introduce the metric
> system properly in a large English-speaking country is Australia:
>
> http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/internat.htm#australia
Wallace Greer
"Dr John Stockton" <sp...@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:K5guSyL0...@merlyn.demon.co.uk...
Matthew Smith
wrote:
> | All you people who are claiming that no one will ever learn metric are
> | blissfully ignoring the fact that over 200 million continental Europeans
> | learn metric, and *ONLY* metric, right from their childhood.
>
> Sorry, but the analogy fails. To learn metric and only metric from childhood
> would work fine (I wish we did), as it does almost everywhere else in the
> world; to learn the old units and metric together from childhood would work
> as well, like growing up bilingual. But it's quite another matter to have
> gone through one's life -- at least as far back as one can remember --
> knowing only one system and now having to keep a second system in one's head
> alongside the first.
You make it sound as though people can't learn metric at a later date. I
learnt metric as a child but my parents and my grandparents learnt the
imperial system. Neither my parents or grandparents have a problem with
metric.
I never learnt imperial or US measures as a child, when there is metric
there is no need to. It's a waste of time. I have no need for it. Why
have both systems in existance when metric will do? It takes less effort
to learn than either the US or imperial systems.
--
Matthew Smith
(to reply via email remove xxx)
Joona I Palaste
And here's the problem with that idea. You make it sound like the only
way to ever learn metric is to already have learned it. Therefore,
because the USA isn't metric yet, it can never become metric either.
Not if people are expected to actually learn it, anyway - the only
hope is that metric will somehow come out of the bright blue sky and
instantly change everyone's minds.
Don't you see? People who think like that are holding back change.
Not just from imperial to metric, but any change at all.
I myself witnessed the change from Finnish marks to Euros in my middle
twenties. It took me less than a year to stop converting Euros to
marks in my head, and start converting the other way around. Now when
my father talks about how many marks he has to spend, I have to convert
them to Euros to visualise them.
This shows that people are capable of learning new systems other than
what they were born with. But maybe some people don't want to learn?
And as I've said in my other reply, Europe wasn't born metric.
Europeans had to learn the metric system just like everyone else.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"Parthenogenetic procreation in humans will result in the founding of a new
religion."
- John Nordberg
DWT
<matty_d-0A95F2...@duster.adelaide.on.net>:
| You make it sound as though people can't learn metric at a later date.
No, just that they'll resist it.
--
David W. Tamkin
The reply address may be invalid after midnight US Central Time on 08Feb2004.
Joona I Palaste
> <matty_d-0A95F2...@duster.adelaide.on.net>:
> | You make it sound as though people can't learn metric at a later date.
> No, just that they'll resist it.
I wouldn't be surprised if the official standpoint of the current US
administration (before they hopefully get replaced in November) is that
the US officially resists the metric system, and sticks to the old
mediæval system (which they call "free", because it's American).
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"Show me a good mouser and I'll show you a cat with bad breath."
- Garfield
Dr John Stockton
news:misc.metric-system, Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> posted at Sat, 31
Jan 2004 20:47:20 :-
>* Joona I Palaste
>| Complain to evolution of not having us develop six digits on each limb
>| instead of five.
>
> There may be 10 digits on both hands, but there are 12 phalanges in
> the four fingers on each hand, not counting the thumb. There is some
> historic evidence that these were used for counting and that the whole
> base 12 thing started that way.
A pity that the nails were not counted separately, which would give
hexadecimal.
Paul Neubauer
>
>I never learnt imperial or US measures as a child, when there is metric
>there is no need to. It's a waste of time. I have no need for it. Why
>have both systems in existance when metric will do? It takes less effort
>to learn than either the US or imperial systems.
This arguement works the other way, too:
I never learned metric as a child, when there is a working imperial
system in place, there is no need to. It's a waste of time. I have
no need for it. Why =have both systems in existance when imperial will do?
As for effort, I expect for a child the effort is the same for either
system. For those older, either system - if it isn't the one they are
familiar with - will seem foriegn and a needless complication to a
proven system. You might not like imperial, but it is used and by many
who will ask "What is the (economic) advantage of a change that outweighs
the expenses?"
As soon as there are clear, demonstrable proofs that a change would
be economically sound rather than an irresponsible waste of money, the
change will be rapid. Meantime, folks will continue to not waste their
money.
Markus Kuhn
>Matthew Smith <mat...@macxxx.com> wrote:
>| You make it sound as though people can't learn metric at a later date.
>No, just that they'll resist it.
The resistance depends a gread deal on how quick and energetic
the changeover is. The Australian government had great success with
a mid 1970s law that temporarily banned the manufacture, import and
sale of any measuring equipment that shows non-metric units.
Companys simply took away all non-metric measurement equipment
overnight and observed that staff usually got perfectly
used to the metric-only ones within much less than a week.
I doubt that there would be great resistance if the change is
introduced with determination and leadership and when hard
deadlines make it unambiguously clear that even thinking
in the old units is a waste of time from tomorrow on, as
all references to them will be gone. The U.S. had plans to do
something similar in the mid 1970s, but these were watered down
by politicians to an unspecific recommendation that nobody
felt necessary to take seriously.
To introduce the metric system, all the U.S. executive and legislative
have to do is to set a hard deadline ("M-day") for:
a) the loss of legal validity of non-metric measurements in
price indications and new contracts
b) the unavailability of government calibration and procurement
for measuring devices that display non-metric measurement results
c) the removal of any reference to non-metric measurements in
legislation and procurement at all levels
d) the elimination of the use of non-metric units in school teaching
e) phasing out government procurement of products that are incompatible
with a small list of global standards (A4-format office paper
comes to mind as a particular example)
There is no practical or economic reason at all for why M-day can't be as
early as 1 January 2006. I doubt that the entire initiative would
cost the U.S. taxpayer significantly more than 100 million dollars,
a tiny amount in the U.S. budget well worth the enormous simplification
and business opportunities that it would bring.
Phil McKerracher
> ...all you people who are claiming that it is a
> straightforward thing for a nation to change its system seem to be
> blissfully ignoring the fact that over 300 million people learned
> another system -- and *ONLY* that system -- right from their childhood.
>
> You seem to think that's an irrelevancy, and want them to change to
> your system instead -- the system you learned from your childhood, and
> they didn't...
It's not irrelevant, but the metric system is demonstrably better, and
using one system instead of two is demonstrably better, so yes, we
want you to change. The rest of the world has, there's no hypocrisy
involved.
In fact I learnt imperial from childhood (in Australia), and I admit
the change to metric was a nuisance at the time (especially with
things like plumbing fittings) but now that the change there is
essentially complete, it's bliss not to have to do conversions all the
time. That includes all the conversions that used to be necessary
under the imperial system, such as converting feet and inches to
inches and back again in order to work out an area, conversion factors
for pressures, densities and forces and so on.
Paul Neubauer
>I didn't say "Speedos", I said "speedos". Case is significant.
>What do you call speedos in the USA, then?
Speedometers. Though I have heard "speedle needle" a time or two.
Harvey Van Sickle
> Harvey Van Sickle <harve...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
> news:<Xns9481DEE2...@130.133.1.4>...
>
>> ...all you people who are claiming that it is a
>> straightforward thing for a nation to change its system seem to
>> be blissfully ignoring the fact that over 300 million people
>> learned another system -- and *ONLY* that system -- right from
>> their childhood.
>>
>> You seem to think that's an irrelevancy, and want them to change
>> to your system instead -- the system you learned from your
>> childhood, and they didn't...
>
> It's not irrelevant, but the metric system is demonstrably better,
> and using one system instead of two is demonstrably better, so
> yes, we want you to change.
> The rest of the world has, there's no hypocrisy involved.
We want "you" to change, kemosabe? ;)
I'm an ex-pat Canadian who's lived in England for over 20 years and
travelled widely on the continent. I've long been fluent in the two
systems, and have very little difficulty switching back and forth.
(I'm actually fluent in *more* than two systems -- as a topographical
historian, I've had to become fully conversant with things like
acres/roods/perches and pounds/shilling/pence -- systems which I didn't
grow up with and also had to learn as an adult. It was as hard to
learn to conceptualise in those systems as it was to conceptualise in
metric.)
Having learned multiple additional measurement systems as an adult, I
have little patience with the smug arrogance of those who have only
ever worked in one system -- from childhood -- who proceed
to pontificate on how it's merely prejudice and superstition which
keeps people from learning *their* system.
Simply put, I've never found it easy to learn to *think* in another
system -- not merely to convert, learning to conceptualise in it. It's
*way* more than merely a "nuisance" (as you seem to have found it) --
or, at least, I've found it to be bloody hard work every time I've
needed to learn to conceptualise in a different system (be that an
historic or a modern system).
I respect your views on this, as you've undergone the learning curve --
as I have.
I have no respect for those who learned a system as a child, and then
who see fit to pontificate to others how stupid they are. Not having
undergone the process as adults, how on earth can they know what
they're talking about?
> In fact I learnt imperial from childhood (in Australia), and I
> admit the change to metric was a nuisance at the time (especially
> with things like plumbing fittings) but now that the change there
> is essentially complete, it's bliss not to have to do conversions
> all the time. That includes all the conversions that used to be
> necessary under the imperial system, such as converting feet and
> inches to inches and back again in order to work out an area,
> conversion factors for pressures, densities and forces and so on.
--
Cheers,
Harvey
For e-mail, change harvey to whhvs.
Joona I Palaste
> who see fit to pontificate to others how stupid they are. Not having
> undergone the process as adults, how on earth can they know what
> they're talking about?
This is all very nice, but...
You make it sound like that to be able to educate Americans about the
metric system, we Europeans should switch *away* from it, to experience
what Americans are about to experience. Think about it from *our* point
of view. How would switching *away* from a system be any good for our
cause of getting others to switch *to* that system? It seems to further
the exact opposite cause.
We Europeans, who are writing to this newsgroup, already have the metric
system, and we like it. It's not our fault that our countries went
metric decades before we were born, and we're not probably going to get
our countries to switch away from it even if we try.
Of course, as I said before, I have experienced the change from Finnish
marks to Euros, as an adult thank you very much, and had no problems
whatsoever.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"We sorcerers don't like to eat our words, so to say."
- Sparrowhawk
Erik Naggum
| Simply put, I've never found it easy to learn to *think* in another
| system -- not merely to convert, learning to conceptualise in it.
| It's *way* more than merely a "nuisance" (as you seem to have found
| it) -- or, at least, I've found it to be bloody hard work every time
| I've needed to learn to conceptualise in a different system (be that
| an historic or a modern system).
The best way to succeed in this matter is not to try.
If you really want to conceptualize in any language or measurement
system, you get the best results if you never convert or translate to
some other language or system. It should be obvious why this is so:
You did not /learn/ the language or system you currently consider the
default by comparing it to something else all the time, you learned it
by relating real-world things with individual words and measurements.
For instance, I grew up in a Norwegian home, but we had Swedish and
British TV channels, some of my friends had Danish and German parents,
and my first love grew up in France. An American NATO officer and his
family moved in across the street from us and had kids my age, so I
had a Coloradan accent by the time we started English in school. I
had one major problem with the way languages were taught in school,
however: My teachers wanted me to /translate/ and I had no idea how to
do this to their satisfaction, because saying something that had been
expressed in one language in another language would never just be the
translation they wanted. I was perfectly happy with the original, and
forcing it into a different language always seemed like a profoundly
useless thing to do. Later, I came to realize that it is because I
learn new languages (including programming languages) afresh, without
the need to find the same expression I had liked in another language,
that I can work with so many of them. Consequently, I think that the
real barrier to learning anything new is precisely the irrational urge
to translate from something you already know. The way we learn things
the first time evidently works wonders, because all over the world,
people speak foreign languages like they were their native tongues (I
don't use smileys), but speak languages that «natives» speak fluently
with the most atrocious accents and they keep using metaphors and
idioms from the first language they learned. So my conclusion is that
the way we learned the first language is correct, and the way we learn
second languages is severely misguided. Translation is an /additional/
skill, orthogonal to knowing how to express yourself and understand
others in different languages, and it simply /does not work/ to try to
learn a new language through a specialized skill that only works when
you already know both languages extremely well.
| I have no respect for those who learned a system as a child, and then
| who see fit to pontificate to others how stupid they are.
Meeting perceived disrespect with conscious disrespect seems to be one
of those other American things the world could easily do without.
| Not having undergone the process as adults, how on earth can they know
| what they're talking about?
Perhaps they do know what they're talking about?
--
Erik Naggum | Oslo, Norway 2004-032
Joona I Palaste
> * Harvey Van Sickle
(snip)
> | Not having undergone the process as adults, how on earth can they know
> | what they're talking about?
> Perhaps they do know what they're talking about?
Or, it could just be, that because we Europeans have had the metric
system since our birth, the imperial system is actually better. =)
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"C++ looks like line noise."
- Fred L. Baube III
Harvey Van Sickle
> Harvey Van Sickle <harve...@ntlworld.com> scribbled the
> following:
>> I have no respect for those who learned a system as a child, and
>> then who see fit to pontificate to others how stupid they are.
>> Not having undergone the process as adults, how on earth can they
>> know what they're talking about?
>
> This is all very nice, but...
> You make it sound like that to be able to educate Americans about
> the metric system, we Europeans should switch *away* from it, to
> experience what Americans are about to experience.
I have said no such thing -- this appears to be some strange a
preconceived notion that you have projected, based (I suspect) on what
you expect me to be saying, rather than reading what I have actually
said.
I noticed that you've snipped the part where I explain that I have
indeed learned not only the metric system but a number of other
systems.
If you could set aside your preconceived conception of this "paper
tiger", you might realise how see how hysterical you sound by making
such a silly inference.
> from *our* point of view. How would switching *away* from a system
> be any good for our cause of getting others to switch *to* that
> system? It seems to further the exact opposite cause.
This is entirley a paper tiger -- I made no such suggestion; the
inference is yours, and it is wrong.
> We Europeans, who are writing to this newsgroup, already have the
> metric system, and we like it.
Yes, we Europeans indeed do. I am a EU citizen; I know this.
> It's not our fault that our countries went metric decades before
> we were born, and we're not probably going to get our countries to
> switch away from it even if we try.
And no one has recommended that you do so -- to repeat, this is a paper
tiger.
> Of course, as I said before, I have experienced the change
> from Finnish marks to Euros, as an adult thank you very much, and
> had no problems whatsoever.
Currencies are easy -- I switched 20 years ago from Canadian dollars to
pounds Sterling, and have no difficulty using euro[1] or the multitude
of European currencies before the euro.
[1] Incidentally, as an enthusiast of pan-European systems, you really
should use the official forms of this word. The EU recommends "euro"
rather than "Euro", and the recommended plural of "euro" is "euro" --
not "euros". Repeat after me: "one euro; two euro; ten euro;
twenty euro".
Joona I Palaste
> On 01 Feb 2004, Joona I Palaste wrote
>> Harvey Van Sickle <harve...@ntlworld.com> scribbled the
>> following:
>>> I have no respect for those who learned a system as a child, and
>>> then who see fit to pontificate to others how stupid they are.
>>> Not having undergone the process as adults, how on earth can they
>>> know what they're talking about?
>>
>> This is all very nice, but...
>> You make it sound like that to be able to educate Americans about
>> the metric system, we Europeans should switch *away* from it, to
>> experience what Americans are about to experience.
> I have said no such thing -- this appears to be some strange a
> preconceived notion that you have projected, based (I suspect) on what
> you expect me to be saying, rather than reading what I have actually
> said.
You wrote: "I have no respect for those who learned a system as a
child, and then who see fit to pontificate to others how stupid they
are. Not having undergone the process as adults..." I take this to
mean that because we did not switch from any system to any other
system, our arguments about the change of systems are automatically
invalid.
> I noticed that you've snipped the part where I explain that I have
> indeed learned not only the metric system but a number of other
> systems.
This is irrelevant. You said above whom you have no respect for.
You could say the same thing even if you knew every system in the
world.
I understand you know the metric system. But do you like it? Do you
prefer it?
> If you could set aside your preconceived conception of this "paper
> tiger", you might realise how see how hysterical you sound by making
> such a silly inference.
>> from *our* point of view. How would switching *away* from a system
>> be any good for our cause of getting others to switch *to* that
>> system? It seems to further the exact opposite cause.
> This is entirley a paper tiger -- I made no such suggestion; the
> inference is yours, and it is wrong.
>> We Europeans, who are writing to this newsgroup, already have the
>> metric system, and we like it.
> Yes, we Europeans indeed do. I am a EU citizen; I know this.
Didn't you say you were Canadian? Or have I misunderstood and you're
British? If it's the latter, then I apologise for the mixup. Replace
"you" with "the Americans" in my argument and it applies. Nothing
personal.
> [1] Incidentally, as an enthusiast of pan-European systems, you really
> should use the official forms of this word. The EU recommends "euro"
> rather than "Euro", and the recommended plural of "euro" is "euro" --
> not "euros". Repeat after me: "one euro; two euro; ten euro;
> twenty euro".
Point taken. I will try to say it like that in English, but not, repeat
NOT, in Finnish. Finnish grammar enforces word endings far too heavily
for me to suddenly start artificially dropping them from one word.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your
relatives."
- MAD Magazine
Harvey Van Sickle
> Harvey Van Sickle <harve...@ntlworld.com> scribbled the
> following:
>> On 01 Feb 2004, Joona I Palaste wrote
>>> Harvey Van Sickle <harve...@ntlworld.com> scribbled the
>>> following:
>>>> I have no respect for those who learned a system as a child,
>>>> and then who see fit to pontificate to others how stupid they
>>>> are. Not having undergone the process as adults, how on earth
>>>> can they know what they're talking about?
>>> This is all very nice, but...
>>> You make it sound like that to be able to educate Americans
>>> about the metric system, we Europeans should switch *away* from
>>> it, to experience what Americans are about to experience.
>> I have said no such thing -- this appears to be some strange a
>> preconceived notion that you have projected, based (I suspect) on
>> what you expect me to be saying, rather than reading what I have
>> actually said.
> You wrote: "I have no respect for those who learned a system as a
> child, and then who see fit to pontificate to others how stupid
> they are. Not having undergone the process as adults..." I take
> this to mean that because we did not switch from any system to any
> other system, our arguments about the change of systems are
> automatically invalid.
It is not that your arguments are "automaticallly invalid"; but they
*are* untested, and in commenting on change it would be appropriate if
you showed some self-awareness of the fact that you are speaking
without personal experience of a wholesale change of systems.
When someone who has never needed to change systems as an adult claikms
that it's a straightforwarad thing to do and that any perception of
difficulty is irrational -- then, yes: I think those views are
invalid, because they have never been tested.
Rational argument is fine, whatever one's personal experience. But the
outright dismissal of the views of those who have such experience -- or
who are being told to undergo such experience -- is either the mark of
a person with insufficient awareness of the limits of their own
experience, or has more in common with religious fervour rather than
intellectual analysis.
>> I noticed that you've snipped the part where I explain that I
>> have indeed learned not only the metric system but a number of
>> other systems.
> This is irrelevant. You said above whom you have no respect for.
> You could say the same thing even if you knew every system in the
> world.
> I understand you know the metric system. But do you like it? Do
> you prefer it?
Yes, I do: I like it, and prefer it.
BUT: that does *not* mean that I view all other systems as entirely
without merit. That, to my mind, is an arrogant, undeducated and
counterproductive point of view, and such extremism tends to appear too
often in these discussions.
-snip-
>>> We Europeans, who are writing to this newsgroup, already have
>>> the metric system, and we like it.
>> Yes, we Europeans indeed do. I am a EU citizen; I know this.
> Didn't you say you were Canadian? Or have I misunderstood and
> you're British?
Born in Canada, but more British than Canadian now. (For what it's
worth, I no longer have a Canadian passport; I've no need for one. I
think I mentioned that I am an expatriate Canadian who has lived for
over 20 years -- most of my adult life -- in the UK.)
> If it's the latter, then I apologise for the mixup. Replace "you"
> with "the Americans" in my argument and it applies. Nothing
> personal.
Don Aitken
wrote:
>[Interleaved quotes: read to end for all comments]
>begin quote from Markus Kuhn in misc.metric-system
> about: Re: Time To Start *The* Flamewar On Misc.Metric-system
>
>> No thanks. Dividing the British pound into 100 pence already causes
>> me to carry more than enough coins around with me. Thankfully,
>
>If I'm not mistaken, we have the same coin denominations in
>pounds/pennies as euro/cents?
>
>Perhaps you're just not being cunning enough in getting rid of your
>small change (something that is really easy to accumulate), Markus?
>
>If the total comes to a.bc (and I don't have the exact amount), I always
>pay n.0c in order to get rid of any small change less than 10p, otherwise
>you find that you end up with lots of low-value coins very quickly!
>Of course, these days, I don't use actual cash for payment very much
>anyway.
>
>
>> towns like Cambridge have evolved an entire industry of people eager
>> to assist in the disposal of unwanted change. I wonder, whether the
>> begging business is so much more evolved here than on the
>> Continent because of Britain's still relatively recent history
>> of even far more cumbersome coin denominations.
>
>Yes, but back in the 'olden days' those small coins were actually worth
>something, but inflation has eroded their value. I think beer cost
>something like 20p/pint when decimal currency was introduced - I'll leave
>the back-conversion to shillings for those who can be bothered (compare
>the price now!).. I can certainly remember buying a Mars bar for 10p
>when I was young, nowadays it's 40p or more..
The "brown money", as a friend of mine calls it, should have been
demonetised long ago - it's worth less than farthings or hapennies
were when they went. The only problem is that it would involve the
government in actually admitting that the last thirty years' worth of
inflation actually happened. Now that we are officially "waiting for
the euro" we are probably stuck with it until af and when.
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the addresses given in the headers is no longer being
read. To mail me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com".
Erik Naggum
| When someone who has never needed to change systems as an adult
| claikms that it's a straightforwarad thing to do and that any
| perception of difficulty is irrational -- then, yes: I think those
| views are invalid, because they have never been tested.
What would it take for you to understand that anyone who has lived for
any period of time in the U.K or the U.S. will have had to relate to
their stupid units? These are not the days of horse carriages and
months of travelling to get to a different country. Our esteemed FAQ
maintainer is German but now lives in the U.K. I have spent two years
in the U.S. Lots of my friends have been exchange students. I worked
for IAESTE once, helping people find work in foreign countries and
taking care of foreigners coming to work in Oslo. Everyone who speaks
English as a second language will have had to deal with your stupid
units. The smarter ones avoid translation between units just as they
avoid translating from one language to the other, and they don't even
care what the conversion factors are, because it never matters.
Take a very simple thing that people appear to believe is very hard:
The speed limit for roads. The fact is that normal people have no
idea at all what any rate of speed actually means. They see a sign
that says the speed limit is X number of units, and they look at their
speedometer to check that it shows at most X number of the same unit.
If you translate this X to some other unit system, like m/s, chances
are high that the value is completely meaningless to you, and there is
absolutely no use for the information provided by the translation. It
is a fundamentally confused mistake to believe that the numbers or the
units have any /intrinsic/ meaning. Numbers with units are just like
words -- they have a meaning apart from the mathematical values, which
are like the letters that make up the spelling of words. It is just
as /meaningless/ to transliterate from one unit to another as it is to
use Greek letters instead of Latin. You have to relate the /word/ to
something else in your frame of reference. (And anyone who has tried
to read scholarly editions of Euclid or Aristotle knows that as long
as you keep insisting on understanding the individual letters, you
will not understand the word, just as anyone who insists on looking up
every word in a dictionary will never learn the language.)
Or take people's height and weight. People obtain these measurements
from applying some measuring apparatus to their body and obtain some
numbers. If you want to use different units, there are two ways of
obtaining the measurements in the new units: Either you find a table
of conversion factors, or you do exactly the same thing you did the
first time you measured yourself: Apply different measuring apparatus
to your body. If you do the conversion factor thing, you will have to
work with numbers that are never going to give the right «feel» to
you, because the measurements were originally approximations and the
conversion factors end up with accurate conversionf of approximate
values, which is just wrong. Take me. I'm 183 cm tall and weigh in
at 82 kg when I measure and weigh myself here in Norway, but if I
measure and weigh myself in the U.K., I'll be 6 ft tall and weigh in
at 13 stone. It's the same body, and it is the body that is being
measured that matters, not the numbers. The numbers are merely an
artifact of how other people express weights and measures. The sane
way to deal with this is to use whatever those you communicate with
use, and so whether I spell «artifact» or «artefact» depends on the
audience (although I certainly prefer American English to that heap of
ridiculous dialects that passes for British English these days).
The measurements are not the important thing here. It's what we have
measured and for which purpose that matters. If you can understand
that the numbers representing your height and weight are not some kind
of numerologically important numbers, but just some measurement with
some measuring apparatus, there will be no «conversion» when you go to
metric. You'll just measure things and read the values off measuring
apparatus, which is no different from what you did before. That the
numeric values have changed should have zero impact on their relation
to other numeric values of other things. Unless, of course, you are
really screwed up mentally and regard numbers as some kind of magic.
DWT
<slrnc1q4ho....@pepper.viewport.lan>:
| That should be km/h, thanks..!
OK. I guess where we don't have distinct FF units, we may still have
distinct FF abbreviations, such as "hr" for hour(s).
I went on to say,
| > Paul Neubauer has already answered about speedometers, which are not
| > known as "speedos" here.
And Mr. Marsh asked,
| What do you call speedos in the USA, then?
As I said right there, and Paul Neubauer has said both previously and since,
we call speedometers "speedometers." Here's something that will really make
Marsh's blood boil: we pronounce "kilometer" to rhyme with "speedometer."
--
David W. Tamkin
There are 100 links in a chain, ten chains in a furlong, ten square chains
in an acre, and ten acres in a square furlong. Who says US measures aren't
decimal?
DWT
we decimalized on our own in the eighteenth century). Wasn't that already a
given?
--
David W. Tamkin
The reply address may be invalid after midnight US Central Time on 09Feb2004.
DWT
| Or take people's height and weight.
In SI you don't state people's weights. You weigh yourselves but your scale
reports the corresponding amount of mass and you state your mass in kg rather
than your weight in newtons. That's fine, except that you then call it
"weight" and say that you "weigh" that amount of mass! That's screwy. Your
mass is your mass, and it's imprecise to say that you weigh it; better to say
that you comprise it, or you've amassed it, or you check in at it. If you're
playing tennis with Sandra, Jocasta, Alec, and David, don't go calling it
"doubles."
--
David W. (What the hell is the US unit of mass anyway?) Tamkin
Joona I Palaste
> | Or take people's height and weight.
> In SI you don't state people's weights. You weigh yourselves but your scale
> reports the corresponding amount of mass and you state your mass in kg rather
> than your weight in newtons. That's fine, except that you then call it
> "weight" and say that you "weigh" that amount of mass! That's screwy. Your
> mass is your mass, and it's imprecise to say that you weigh it; better to say
> that you comprise it, or you've amassed it, or you check in at it. If you're
> playing tennis with Sandra, Jocasta, Alec, and David, don't go calling it
> "doubles."
Fine, but how does that invalidate Erik's argument? Or is that all the
fault you could find in it?
> David W. (What the hell is the US unit of mass anyway?) Tamkin
The pound, and the ounce. They're defined in terms of kilograms.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"Remember: There are only three kinds of people - those who can count and those
who can't."
- Vampyra
DWT
<bvkuck$iqk$2...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>:
| Fine, but how does that invalidate Erik's argument?
It doesn't. It wasn't intended to. Dispute, disseent, and disproof are
not the only reasons to post a follow-up. Squabbling may make your world
go 'round, but many of us are not like you. I wasn't disagreeing with
Erik in the slightest, just saying something brought to mind by a phrase
in his post.
| Or is that all the fault you could find in it?
Let's see. I found a fault in the parlance -- which, for all I know, might
not even happen in Finnish -- of stating weights in units of mass. You say
that I found a fault in Erik's argument, so you must believe that at some
point in his post Erik was supporting the conflation of units of mass with
those of weight. I must have missed that part. Seems to me he was talking
about foot-dragging in conversion to metric.
| > What the hell is the US unit of mass anyway?
| The pound, and the ounce.
If that's true, shame on us. Bad enough that "ounce" already denotes several
unequal measures of weight plus one of capacity; loading mass onto it aggra-
vates the situation. Which of the assorted weights called an "ounce" does
one ounce of mass weigh?
Some idiot -- some idiot in history, not one on this newsgroup -- noted that
each is divided into sixteen parts called "ounces" and came up with "a pint's
a pound the world around": arrant nonsense that ignores the differenes in
density among substances. Yet the catchphrase was taught in schools and many
take it as gospel. I once witnessed a heated quarrel stemming from confusion
of the avoirdupois ounce with the fluid ounce under the expectation that they
will always match up as if the universe were made of margarine. ("That isn't
a quart. A quart is thirty-two ounces. That weighs only twenty-four ounces.
You're cheating your customers." "No, a quart is twenty-four ounces. It
says on this container that it's a quart, and you see that it's filled, and
it weighs twenty-four ounces.") As the incident occurred during my child-
hood, I could not intervene but had to stand there and roll my eyes.
Score another for SI: no conflicting multiple duties for names of units.
Using kilograms for both weight and mass is a multiple duty but it doesn't
cause a conflict. It's sloppy, especially in a system whose advocates pride
themselves on its precision and which takes the trouble to use different
units for capacity from those for volume, but it's not nearly so bad as what
we have in the US.
--
David W. Tamkin
Joona I Palaste
> <bvkuck$iqk$2...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>:
> | Fine, but how does that invalidate Erik's argument?
> It doesn't. It wasn't intended to. Dispute, disseent, and disproof are
> not the only reasons to post a follow-up. Squabbling may make your world
> go 'round, but many of us are not like you. I wasn't disagreeing with
> Erik in the slightest, just saying something brought to mind by a phrase
> in his post.
OK, I understand.
> | Or is that all the fault you could find in it?
> Let's see. I found a fault in the parlance -- which, for all I know, might
> not even happen in Finnish -- of stating weights in units of mass. You say
> that I found a fault in Erik's argument, so you must believe that at some
> point in his post Erik was supporting the conflation of units of mass with
> those of weight. I must have missed that part. Seems to me he was talking
> about foot-dragging in conversion to metric.
So your only cause for follow-up was to say that Erik should have said
"mass" when he said "weight"? And you otherwise agree with him?
BTW, Finnish also uses the word "weight" in everyday use when talking
about mass. People tend to express their "weight" in kilograms, rather
than newtons, in Finnish too. It's sloppy, but it hails back from the
days when "weight" and "mass" weren't separate concepts.
> | > What the hell is the US unit of mass anyway?
> | The pound, and the ounce.
> If that's true, shame on us. Bad enough that "ounce" already denotes several
> unequal measures of weight plus one of capacity; loading mass onto it aggra-
> vates the situation. Which of the assorted weights called an "ounce" does
> one ounce of mass weigh?
> Some idiot -- some idiot in history, not one on this newsgroup -- noted that
> each is divided into sixteen parts called "ounces" and came up with "a pint's
> a pound the world around": arrant nonsense that ignores the differenes in
> density among substances. Yet the catchphrase was taught in schools and many
> take it as gospel. I once witnessed a heated quarrel stemming from confusion
> of the avoirdupois ounce with the fluid ounce under the expectation that they
> will always match up as if the universe were made of margarine. ("That isn't
> a quart. A quart is thirty-two ounces. That weighs only twenty-four ounces.
> You're cheating your customers." "No, a quart is twenty-four ounces. It
> says on this container that it's a quart, and you see that it's filled, and
> it weighs twenty-four ounces.") As the incident occurred during my child-
> hood, I could not intervene but had to stand there and roll my eyes.
> Score another for SI: no conflicting multiple duties for names of units.
> Using kilograms for both weight and mass is a multiple duty but it doesn't
> cause a conflict. It's sloppy, especially in a system whose advocates pride
> themselves on its precision and which takes the trouble to use different
> units for capacity from those for volume, but it's not nearly so bad as what
> we have in the US.
But SI does *not* use kilograms for both weight and mass. It's just
people who use metric in everyday use who *say* that kilograms measure
"weight", because the concept of "weight" is older, and easier to
intuitively visualise, than "mass". Most languages don't even have a
native word for "mass", but have borrowed it from whatever language
English got it from too. For example in Finnish "weight" is "paino" and
"mass" is "massa".
What this all means is that *both* SI *and* imperial are guilty of the
exact same thing: muddling the difference between "weight" and "mass".
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"I wish someone we knew would die so we could leave them flowers."
- A 6-year-old girl, upon seeing flowers in a cemetery
DWT
| So your only cause for follow-up was to say that Erik should have said
| "mass" when he said "weight"?
My only cause for follow-up was to say that people in general -- not Erik in
particular -- should speak of weighing X newtons or (perhaps) comprising (or
heck, just *having*) Y kilograms, because pairing a verb for weight with a
unit for mass in reporting human body bulk is a sloppy practice.
| And you otherwise agree with him?
And I otherwise have no comment. It's the dead of night in my time zone (six
hours west of UT; my netnews and email provider is five hours west of UT but
I connect remotely), and I don't remember what else he said nor have the
inclination to fetch his post again to reread it. My eyes are strained and
burning.
| But SI does *not* use kilograms for both weight and mass.
Indeed not: as you said,
| It's just people who use metric in everyday use ...
I agree: it's *people* who use the terms that way. It's not a problem of
SI specifications nor of conversion plans, but one of language. Don't the
French also use a comparable syntax? My high-school French textbooks did.
| What this all means is that *both* [users of] SI *and* [users of]
| imperial are guilty of the exact same thing: muddling the difference
| between "weight" and "mass".
Right. But the wombat world (sorry, but I just cannot apply the term "im-
perial" to US measurement) is worse. SI users state weights with a noun
for mass -- or from another perspective, they state masses with a verb for
weight -- but the system does not force them to. SI provides names for the
two units and a language could have verbs for the two concepts. On the other
hand, here not only do we have "ounce" for several different units of force,
a unit of mass, and a unit of capacity, but also it's the proper term for all
of them: we have no choice but to use that noun or add a cumbersome quali-
fier. The other approach, to use different verbs -- possibly "weigh" for
weight, "occupy" for capacity, "comprise" for mass -- can't get a foothold
as long as sharing a noun keeps the concepts confused with one another.
--
David W. (but giving my weight in dynes makes me sound so fat) Tamkin
Matthew Smith
va...@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Paul Neubauer) wrote:
> On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 18:25:33 +1100, Matthew Smith <mat...@macxxx.com> wrote:
> >
> >I never learnt imperial or US measures as a child, when there is metric
> >there is no need to. It's a waste of time. I have no need for it. Why
> >have both systems in existance when metric will do? It takes less effort
> >to learn than either the US or imperial systems.
>
> This arguement works the other way, too:
>
> I never learned metric as a child, when there is a working imperial
> system in place, there is no need to. It's a waste of time. I have
> no need for it. Why =have both systems in existance when imperial will do?
But imperial does not do. Metric is already in use in the USA for many
things. Most other countries only use metric.
Joona I Palaste
> "Wallace Greer" <wdg...@earthlink.net> writes:
>> convienient to visualize. Example: I'm 6 feet, 2 inches tall. That's 193 cm.
>> Which one of the two numbers is easier to visualize?
> Neither. I'd say that 188cm is easier.
Let me guess, that's your height? About time I met someone about as tall
as myself. I'm tired of everyone being shorter than me.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"You have moved your mouse, for these changes to take effect you must shut down
and restart your computer. Do you want to restart your computer now?"
- Karri Kalpio
Julian Bradfield
> Some idiot -- some idiot in history, not one on this newsgroup -- noted that
> each is divided into sixteen parts called "ounces" and came up with "a pint's
> a pound the world around": arrant nonsense that ignores the differenes in
> density among substances. Yet the catchphrase was taught in schools and many
Particularly idiotic, since as every Imperialist outside the
U.S. knows, "a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter" :)
Ignatios Souvatzis
> No. It's because we got Thatcherism before you did.
> (Seriously...I hardly ever saw beggars before the Thatcher era.)
Similar here. When I came to Bonn, in the year of Kohl's inauguration,
there was exactly one beggar in all of the town. Nowadays, it's full of
them.
-is
Ignatios Souvatzis
> This shows that people are capable of learning new systems other than
> what they were born with. But maybe some people don't want to learn?
> And as I've said in my other reply, Europe wasn't born metric.
> Europeans had to learn the metric system just like everyone else.
Maybe Europe should export some metric porn to the USA - giving anatomic
measurements in m and cm and kg - to make them interested.
-is
Dean Tiegs
> On the other hand, here not only do we have "ounce" for several
> different units of force, a unit of mass, and a unit of capacity,
A small correction: there is only one ounce that measures force, two
for mass, and two for volume. Here are the five ounces still in use
today:
ounce avoirdupois -- mass -- 28.3 g
ounce troy -- mass -- 31.1 g
ounce force -- force -- 0.278 N
imperial fluid ounce -- volume -- 28.4 ml
U.S. fluid ounce -- volume -- 29.6 ml
--
Dean Tiegs, NE¼-20-52-25-W4
“Confortare et esto robustus”
http://telusplanet.net/public/dctiegs/
oz1dcv
>In SI you don't state people's weights. You weigh yourselves but your scale
>reports the corresponding amount of mass and you state your mass in kg rather
>than your weight in newtons. That's fine, except that you then call it
>"weight" and say that you "weigh" that amount of mass! That's screwy. Your
>mass is your mass, and it's imprecise to say that you weigh it; better to say
You could also "weigh anchor", but I must admit it's a completely
different aspect of the word.
In relation to the groups charter I think the distiction is a kind of
hairsplitting.
Hans Erik Busk
Denmark
Hans Erik Busk
Gene Nygaard
>Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> wrote in <2004-032-9...@naggum.no>:
>
>| Or take people's height and weight.
>
>In SI you don't state people's weights. You weigh yourselves but your scale
>reports the corresponding amount of mass and you state your mass in kg rather
>than your weight in newtons. That's fine, except that you then call it
>"weight" and say that you "weigh" that amount of mass! That's screwy.
No, you are screwy. That's the original meaning of the word "weight,"
which entered Old English over a thousand years ago meaning the
quantity we measure with a balance. That quantity is mass, not force.
American Society for Testing and Materials, Standard for Metric
Practice, E 380-79, ASTM 1979.
3.4.1.2 Considerable confusion exists in the use of the
term weight as a quantity to mean either force or mass.
In commercial and everyday use, the term weight nearly
always means mass; thus, when one speaks of a person's
weight, the quantity referred to is mass.
...
Because of the dual use of the term weight as a quantity,
this term should be avoided in technical practice except
under circumstances in which its meaning is completely
clear. When the term is used, it is important to know
whether mass or force is intended and to use SI units
properly as described in 3.4.1.1, by using kilograms for
mass or newtons for force.
We do use those SI units properly when we measure our "weight" in
kilograms.
Here's how the official keepers of our standards in the U.S. A. weigh
in on this:
NIST Special Publication 811 (1995 ed.), _Guide for the Use of the
International System of Units (SI)_ by Barry N. Taylor
http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/sec08.html
In commercial and everyday use, and especially in common
parlance, weight is usually used as a synonym for mass.
Thus the SI unit of the quantity weight used in this
sense is the kilogram (kg) and the verb "to weigh" means
"to determine the mass of" or "to have a mass of".
Examples: the child's weight is 23 kg
Weight, of course, is an ambiguous word, one with several different
meanings. In the jargon of physics, it is often used to mean a
particular kind of force, and in the jargon of archery it is used for
a different kind of force for the "draw weight" of a bow. But the
important thing for you to remember, Mr. Wise Guy, is that those of us
who continue to use the word "weight" in its original meaning have a
prior claim to it by more than three-quarters of a millennium.
Since Erik Naggum, the person to whom you were responding, is from
Norway, there is another important factor which shows quite clearly
that the only science involved here is linguistics. When physicists
using the Norwegian language were shopping for their jargon word for
this purpose, they had more sense than those using the English
language. They did not choose 'vikt' (vekt, wægt, etc in earlier
spellings), the cognate of the English word 'weight,' for this
purpose. Instead, they chose a different word, 'tyngde.'
--
Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/
"It's not the things you don't know
what gets you into trouble.
"It's the things you do know
that just ain't so."
Will Rogers
Markus Kuhn
>Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> wrote in <2004-032-9...@naggum.no>:
>| Or take people's height and weight.
>In SI you don't state people's weights. You weigh yourselves but your scale
>reports the corresponding amount of mass and you state your mass in kg rather
>than your weight in newtons.
Actually, the term "weight" is colloquially used in metric countries
to refer to mass. ISO 31-3 says in section 3-9.2 that "[i]n common
parlance, the word 'weight' continues to be used to mean mass, but
this practice is deprecated."
I doubt this practice will disappear until someone comes up with
a mass equivalent of the verb "to weigh" in all major languages.
Is there actually any language that has a short colloquial form for
the activity "to measure mass" as opposed to "to weigh".
In any case, unlike with the pound, the units kg and N make
the distinction between mass and gravitational force unambiguously
clear, therefore little harm is done if the term "weight" is
colloquially applied occasionally to both quantities.
[If you really want to be pedantic, then I would like to point
out that your bathroom scale does not only measure your weight,
but it also subtracts your buoyancy which depends on your volume
and the local density of air. The 1901 CGPM definition of
"weight" requires the measurement to take place in vacuum,
which is not very healthy ... :-]
Markus
--
Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ || CB3 0FD, Great Britain
Gene Nygaard
> On the other
>hand, here not only do we have "ounce" for several different units of force,
>a unit of mass, and a unit of capacity, but also it's the proper term for all
>of them: we have no choice but to use that noun or add a cumbersome quali-
>fier.
One unit of force, not "several."
Many units of mass at various times in various parts of the world are
identified by the English word "ounce"; two of them still in use,
including one which even today in the 21st enjoys a special exception
to the metrication laws of places like the United Kingdom and
Australia (even though the pound on which it is based was outlawed in
Great Britain back in the 19th century).
You must be confused because the troy system is called a "system of
weights." But the troy "units of weight" are ALWAYS units of mass.
There is not and never has been a troy ounce force or a troy pound
force.
Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/
Markus Kuhn
> Unless, of course, you are really screwed up mentally and
> regard numbers as some kind of magic.
Having spent a a year in Indiana, living in an apartment
number 12, with apartment no 11 on one side and apartment no
14 on the other side, I'm afraid I have to report that some people
there seem magically afraid of selected natural numbers.
In particular, what I started to call the "set of supernatural
numbers" = IN \ {13, 666} really seems to be commonly used in
the U.S. to number rooms, floors and seats, no matter how
inconvenient it is even for simple arithmetic.
Nollaig MacKenzie
On 2004.02.02 07:31:32,
the amazing <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> declared:
> DWT <nobody@[127.0.0.1]> scribbled the following:
>
>> David W. (What the hell is the US unit of mass anyway?) Tamkin
>
> The pound, and the ounce. They're defined in terms of kilograms.
>
I vaguely remember being taught that:
If you report mass in pounds, report force in poundals.
If you report force in pounds, report mass in slugs.
.....N.
(I was taught that in Canada, but the US would be the same.)
--
Nollaig MacKenzie <nol...@amhuinnsuidhe.cx>
http://www.amhuinnsuidhe.cx
Chris Kaese
> >
> As soon as there are clear, demonstrable proofs that a change would
> be economically sound rather than an irresponsible waste of money, the
> change will be rapid. Meantime, folks will continue to not waste their
> money.
It is extremely easy to demonstrate that metric instead of imperial
saves large amounts of money. I used to work in Canada and had to do
many unit conversions in my line of work (each one a potential source
for error). Now I am in Britain, essentially doing the same job, but
everything is metric. My time and the money of my employer are saved.
I remember an American engineer calculating the suction power of a
vacuum cleaner in imperial. He filled three pages with his
calculations for a formula that I can do as trivial mental arithmetic
(air pressure times air flow equals suction power--- l/s times kPa
equals watts. Try this formula with inches of water column and cubic
feet per minute and see whether (and when) you'll arrive at the
result. 30 l/s times 20 kPa equals 600 W can't be beaten by 60 cfm
times 80 inches water equals 600 W.
That engineer couldn't do anything else while he was calculating. Lost
Money, lost time, lots of potential sources for error (think of the
Mars Explorer).
Harvey Van Sickle
> * Harvey Van Sickle
>> When someone who has never needed to change systems as an adult
>> claikms that it's a straightforwarad thing to do and that any
>> perception of difficulty is irrational -- then, yes: I think
>> those views are invalid, because they have never been tested.
>
> What would it take for you to understand that anyone who has
> lived for any period of time in the U.K or the U.S. will have
> had to relate to their stupid units?
What would it take for you to read my post and understand what I said?
I am happy to consider the view of those who have "lived for any period
of time" in another system, and "had to relate" to those units.
My dismissal is of those who have *not* lived for any period of time in
another system, but who still feel they are qualified to rubbish the
other system.
Next time, kindly pay attention to what is written before going off
half-cocked.
Joona I Palaste
Erik has a point, you know. You said "...when someone who has never
had to *CHANGE SYSTEMS*..." Erik pointed out that he has had to learn
the imperial system without having to change to it. Is his view
invalid then?
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"Keep shooting, sooner or later you're bound to hit something."
- Misfire
Stefano MacGregor
> In SI you don't state people's weights. You weigh yourselves but your scale
> reports the corresponding amount of mass and you state your mass in kg rather
> than your weight in newtons.
Okay, then, when you're filling out a form comparable to one in the US
where we put some number of pounds in the "Weight" blank and some feet
and inches in the "Height" blank, you put some cm in the "Height"
blank, but what is the blank called in which you enter kg?
> What the hell is the US unit of mass anyway?
The pound. It's the amount of mass that weighs one pound. Unless
you're a scientist, and then it's the kilogram. In der olden days,
like when I was in college, it was the slug. A one-pound force will
accelerate a one-slug mass at the rate of one foot per second per
second. A slug weighs about 32 pounds.
Alternatively, the unit of mass could be the pound, and the unit of
weight would be the poundal. A one-poundal force will accelerate a
one-pound mass at the rate of one foot per second per second. A pound
weighs about 32 poundals.
--
Stefano
How many slugs to a metric buttload?"
Harvey Van Sickle
-snip-
> Erik has a point, you know. You said "...when someone who has
> never had to *CHANGE SYSTEMS*..." Erik pointed out that he has had
> to learn the imperial system without having to change to it. Is
> his view invalid then?
>
Assuming that he had to think and work in the adopted/learned system --
that is, he was forced to conceptualise distances in both his native
and learned systems -- whenever he was working in the second system, he
had indeed "changed" systems.
I'm assuming, of course, that Erik managed to learn the other system
well enough to be comfortably fluent in it -- that is, that he wasn't
merely doing temporary conversions, but had learned to relate to
distances and weights expressed in both. (I may be giving him too much
credit; I assumed he'd learned to conceptualise in both systems.)
There's a big difference between those states -- not only in reality of
learning alternative systems, but also in the amount of credence I'd
give to his views of (a) the relative merits of systems, and (b) the
difficulty of switching between them.
Wallace Greer
Wally.
"Ignatios Souvatzis" <igna...@fourier.cs.uni-bonn.de> wrote in message
news:bvlffd$pu4$2...@f1node01.rhrz.uni-bonn.de...
Wallace Greer
equations in english measurments.
Wally.
"Nollaig MacKenzie" <nol...@amhuinnsuidhe.cx> wrote in message
news:0vi2f1-...@amhuinnsuidhe.cx...
Wallace Greer
"Joona I Palaste" <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
news:bvlb9m$qkm$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi...
Wallace Greer
"Joona I Palaste" <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
news:bvlb9m$qkm$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi...
Erik Naggum
| What would it take for you to read my post and understand what I said?
It appears that you feel insulted and believe that the proper response
is to insult someone on purpose in return. This is /so/ American and
/such/ a Fred Flintsone Reaction. It is very tiresome, and it is very
hard to deflate the self-inflated pompousness of people who think that
only more insults can help their hurt feelings.
| My dismissal is of those who have *not* lived for any period of time
| in another system, but who still feel they are qualified to rubbish
| the other system.
Do you have any evidence of the existence of those people?
Or perhaps you do not understand that implying that people who argue
against you do not know what they are talking about is very hostile?
If you do not understand this, does this explain why you feel the need
to be even more hostile when others try to make you /think/?
| Next time, kindly pay attention to what is written before going off
| half-cocked.
Perhaps you could return the favor by controlling your emotions so you
don't have to /invent/ the insults you use to defend your own attacks?
Sheesh, dude. Calm down.
--
Erik Naggum | Oslo, Norway 2004-033
Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.
Gene Nygaard
>Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in
><bvkuck$iqk$2...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>:
>
>| Fine, but how does that invalidate Erik's argument?
>
>It doesn't. It wasn't intended to. Dispute, disseent, and disproof are
>not the only reasons to post a follow-up. Squabbling may make your world
>go 'round, but many of us are not like you. I wasn't disagreeing with
>Erik in the slightest, just saying something brought to mind by a phrase
>in his post.
>
>| Or is that all the fault you could find in it?
>
>Let's see. I found a fault in the parlance -- which, for all I know, might
>not even happen in Finnish -- of stating weights in units of mass. You say
>that I found a fault in Erik's argument, so you must believe that at some
>point in his post Erik was supporting the conflation of units of mass with
>those of weight. I must have missed that part. Seems to me he was talking
>about foot-dragging in conversion to metric.
>
>| > What the hell is the US unit of mass anyway?
>
>| The pound, and the ounce.
Pounds. Ounces, troy and avoirdupois. Tons, long and short. Grains
troy for bullets, and still sometimes in grains per gallon for water
hardness. And, of course, grams and kilograms and the like. Also
carats, a non-SI unit of weight equal to 1/5 of a gram. Rarely any
more,, the pennyweight (and there is no pennyweight force); we'll
usually use grains or fractional troy ounces instead.
In the U.S., we don't use a couple of other English mass units--the
stone and the long hundredweight.
>
>If that's true, shame on us. Bad enough that "ounce" already denotes several
>unequal measures of weight plus one of capacity; loading mass onto it aggra-
>vates the situation.
You have it ass-backwards.
It's the pound mass which is the ancient and venerable unit, and the
pound force which is the recent bastardization, not the other way
around.
Pounds force were never well-defined units before the 20th century,
and even today they don't have an official definition.
Pounds are officially defined as 0.45359237 kg, exactly, around the
world since a 1959 international agreement among six of countries
which then used English units. But before that, they had been defined
as a slightly different exact fraction of a kilogram for 66 years in
the United States, and had already been defined as the same fraction
of a kilogram that was later adopted internationally for 6 years in
Canada. But in the U.K., they were still defined as the mass of an
independently maintained standard at that time.
>Which of the assorted weights called an "ounce" does
>one ounce of mass weigh?
Confusion reigns supreme. The ounce force is such a recent invention
that it is uniquely identified by that name. Of all the hundreds of
different ounces used at various times and places throughout history,
only one has spun off a unit of force which has seen any significant
use.
There is no troy ounce force, for example. Troy ounces are always
units of mass. Of course, from the time of Henry VIII until after
1850, there was no independent standard for the avoirdupois pound.
Now the avoirdupois pound is now defined as an exact fraction of a
different mass standard, the kilogram. But there were several
centuries in the past where it was defined as an exact fraction of a
different standard of mass, the troy pound.
>Some idiot -- some idiot in history, not one on this newsgroup -- noted that
>each is divided into sixteen parts called "ounces"
It's 12 parts called ounces for the troy pound. Of course, ounce and
inch both derive from the same Latin word, and I think it meant 1/12
in Latin.
>and came up with "a pint's
>a pound the world around": arrant nonsense that ignores the differenes in
>density among substances. Yet the catchphrase was taught in schools and many
>take it as gospel. I once witnessed a heated quarrel stemming from confusion
>of the avoirdupois ounce with the fluid ounce under the expectation that they
>will always match up as if the universe were made of margarine. ("That isn't
>a quart. A quart is thirty-two ounces. That weighs only twenty-four ounces.
>You're cheating your customers." "No, a quart is twenty-four ounces. It
>says on this container that it's a quart, and you see that it's filled, and
>it weighs twenty-four ounces.") As the incident occurred during my child-
>hood, I could not intervene but had to stand there and roll my eyes.
When I complained (over 20 years ago) to the Washington Post about
them carrying ads from grocery stores claiming to sell a "quart" of
ketchup, pointing out that it was two pounds, and only about 26 fluid
ounces, I got a letter back from the Food Editor there insisting that
"32 ounces is a quart."
>Score another for SI: no conflicting multiple duties for names of units.
Not within SI. But we still see many vestiges of the use of the once
acceptable kilograms force. I have a torque wrench in "meter
kilograms," and they are still readily available. You can still often
see pressure gauges in "kg/cm²." Thrusts of rocket and jet engines
are still sometimes given in kilograms force (some encyclopedias, Tom
Clancy's nonfiction Airborne, 1997), and those were the standard units
used in the Russian space program until at least the late 1980s or
early 1990s.
In SI there is also the "mole"--another confusing unit sharing its
name with the pound mole, the kilogram mole, and maybe even on very
rare occasions the slug mole. Too bad nobody has the guts to give it
a name such as the "loschmitt."
>Using kilograms for both weight and mass is a multiple duty but it doesn't
>cause a conflict.
While kilograms force are still used, it is almost never for anything
which is called "weight" in anybody's book. If kilograms are used for
weight, there is no "multiple duty." Those kilograms are units of
mass. It is the word "weight" which is ambiguous in this case,
>It's sloppy, especially in a system whose advocates pride
>themselves on its precision and which takes the trouble to use different
>units for capacity from those for volume, but it's not nearly so bad as what
>we have in the US.
Especially when we have idiots, including many teachers with Ph.D.'s
in the hard sciences, who don't understand the simple fact that pounds
are units of mass.
Look into those poundals mentioned by Stefano MacGregor in his reply
also. Look into the time line. That foot-pound-second absolute
system of units with the poundal as the unit of force is much older
(dating back to 1879) than the foot-pound force-second gravitational
system of units, a 20th century invention which didn't appear in
physics textbooks until after 1940. That should give you another clue
to the fact that pounds mass came first, and pounds force are the
confusion-causing newcomers.
Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/t_jeff.htm
But if it be thought that, either now, or at any future time, the
citizens of the United States may be induced to undertake a thorough
reformation of their whole system of measures, weights and coins,
reducing every branch to the same decimal ratio already established
in their coins, and thus bringing the calculation of the principal
affairs of life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply
and divide plain numbers, greater changes will be necessary.
U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson
Phil McKerracher
> ...Having learned multiple additional measurement systems as an adult, I
> have little patience with the smug arrogance of those who have only
> ever worked in one system...
Well, yes, but I suggest that we who have been fortunate enough (??)
to experience more than one system at first hand shouldn't be too smug
or arrogant either, because we're used to change and have to
appreciate that those who aren't have more to lose.
> ...Simply put, I've never found it easy to learn to *think* in another
> system...
It's never easy, but it's not impossible either. The classic example
is the move from Fahrenheit to Celsius temperatures. You have to learn
all over again what is "hot" and "cold" and when to take a jumper. In
the beginning, everyone has a conversion chart pinned up somewhere to
remind them - it doesn't "come naturally" and most people can't do the
9/5 + 32 calculation in their heads. A year later though you wonder
what all the fuss was about.
Similarly, most people initially have to learn the hard way (by rote)
what their own weight and height are in metric. After a while these
naturally become a reference point for other heights and weights.
Most people actually find this learning fun - it's fear of
embarrassment when they get muddled that I think is at the root of
most of the objections.
Erik Naggum
| Assuming that he had to think and work in the adopted/learned system
| -- that is, he was forced to conceptualise distances in both his
| native and learned systems -- whenever he was working in the second
| system, he had indeed "changed" systems.
Look, you are the one to argue that this is difficult. Your claim is
bogus. People who are either smarter than you are not as damaged as
you are, simply do not have your insurmountable problems.
| I'm assuming, of course, that Erik managed to learn the other system
| well enough to be comfortably fluent in it -- that is, that he wasn't
| merely doing temporary conversions, but had learned to relate to
| distances and weights expressed in both.
I have told you already that I never was any good at this translation
and conversion business. If I purchase a bottle of soda and it says
it contains 16 fl oz, I have no need to translate or convert this to
any other unit system, but I keep my eyes open and pay attention, so
it takes me approximately no time to realize that's a pint. The same
applies to all other units where I can actually relate /physically/ to
the measured quantity. Say, when we drove along at a merry 60 mph, a
mile is simply that which it took a minute to cover, so a distance of
120 miles would take two hours to cover. I had no interest at all in
knowing the number of feet /or/ meters in a mile. The same applies to
driving at 90 km/h, when a distance of 60 km would take 40 minutes to
cover. Let me put this in even more direct terms: I relate to the
real world, not to some set of units. I am sufficiently mathematical
that /numbers/ are not difficult concepts that require a special level
of attention: I see the relationship that they are intended to express
more or less directly.
However, when your unit system is a mess of multipliers that relate to
eachother in unpredictable ways, there is no wonder that you want to
believe that other people will also need to keep those multipliers in
mind and need conversion and translation tables. Take following a
recipe for a making a meal. It says it's supposed to feed 4 people,
which is what I want, and requires a whole bunch of measurements of
various ingredients, but all I care about is that I have a recipe that
prescribes a specified quantity of a specified unit, and I have some
measuring device that lets me know that I have the correct quantity.
I'm quite certain that it matters a lot to people who have to compute
in this bogus unit system how many fl oz is in a pint, but if you only
relate to the real world, it does not matter. There is no need to
«conceptualize» a quart of milk as a number of fl oz any more than you
«conceptualize» a liter of milk as a number of 25 ml servings.
Do I need to tell you this even more explicitly? I DO NOT CONVERT.
Neither do I translate between English and Norwegian. I do not read
French and German by translating to either English or Norwegian. I
even have a hard time talking about pints and quarts and fl oz and all
those weird units when I do not write or speak in English, exactly the
same way I have a host of different and untranslatable terminology for
parliamentary procedures in the 7 or so cultures whose news I follow.
My friends even tell me I have a different body language according to
which language I speak.
Some people learn only the first thing naturally, and then force any
later experience into the mold defined by their first experience. I
am not one of those people. I argue that the only way you can ever
really /learn/ something is to regard it as /new/, i.e., that is not
something you already know. Those who do all this bogus translation
and conversion, lack this ability to look at the real world with new
and open eyes, and somehow insist that the world they have already
seen should set the standard for the world of their future. I think
these people are broken and should be returned for a refund, because
the days when people could expect to learn something that held true
for the rest of their lives are /history/. The normal course of action
in the modern world is that everything you believed to be true becomes
invalidated sooner or later, and if you keep believing it, you will
hurt yourself or others. In a world of constant change, you cannot
/afford/ to shut your eyes and say «I already know what out there!».
I actually believe that the /order/ in which each of us observes any
aspect of the real world is the only truly random thing in the whole
entire universe. Those who regard the order in which they observed
the real world as somehow superior to other orders are /insane/.
| (I may be giving him too much credit; I assumed he'd learned to
| conceptualise in both systems.)
And what's the proper unit to conceptualize what you are full of?
| There's a big difference between those states -- not only in reality
| of learning alternative systems, but also in the amount of credence
| I'd give to his views of (a) the relative merits of systems, and (b)
| the difficulty of switching between them.
Oh, this is just priceless! When you have been proven wrong, you just
/define/ all counter-arguments to lack credibility.
You were not on the debating team in high school, were you?
Irrwahn Grausewitz
>Niilo Siljamo <sil...@xenon.fmi.fi> scribbled the following:
>> "Wallace Greer" <wdg...@earthlink.net> writes:
>>> convienient to visualize. Example: I'm 6 feet, 2 inches tall. That's 193 cm.
>>> Which one of the two numbers is easier to visualize?
>
>> Neither. I'd say that 188cm is easier.
>
>Let me guess, that's your height?
Another 'guess': 6ft2in = 188cm, not 193cm !!!
HTH ;D
--
Irrwahn
(irrw...@freenet.de)
Joona I Palaste
Dang! If I had actually had a reason to learn the mediæval system, I
would have caught that. Luckily I can manage just fine in metric only.
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"The question of copying music from the Internet is like a two-barreled sword."
- Finnish rap artist Ezkimo
Andreas Riedel
> Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> writes:
>> Today's rerun of Science Shack on BBC World gave us a rather
>> curious demonstration of how English-speaking people refer to
>> metric measures. Some measurement was probably 6.15 m, but the
>> narrator explained that it was «six meters fifteen». It could
>> easily have been 6.015 m.
>
> There's nothing particularly English-speaking about that.
> Germans say "ein Meter siebzig", and French say "un metre
> soixante-dix". (And these constructions are not only applied to
> people's heights.)
It is not very logical, at least in German (I think it's the same in
English, but I'm not sure):
a) sechs Komma siebzehn Meter = 6.17m
b) sechs Meter siebzehn = 6.17m
but
a) sechs Komma drei Meter = 6.3m
b) sechs Meter drei = 6.03m
The b)-form is only used with Meter. Nobody would understand something
like "sechs Gramm drei".
Greetings
Andreas
--
Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security,
will not have, nor do they deserve, either one. (T. Jefferson)
DWT
<e6c3c9t...@toolo.inf.ed.ac.uk>:
| Particularly idiotic, since as every Imperialist outside the
| U.S. knows, "a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter" :)
See, it specifies the substance. (It also uses a different size of pint.)
--
David W. Tamkin
The reply address may be invalid after midnight US Central Time on 10Feb2004.
Julian Bradfield
>> "a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter" :)
>
> It would be _very_ interesting to see just how _few_ people, in the UK,
> if given the first part of the phrase, could tell you the latter.
> I'd put money on nobody under 40 knowing.
Oh well, here's a data point: in my tutorial today, I asked the four
British students whether they could complete the phrase "a pint of
water weighs...". Three looked totally blank, one said "er, about half
a kilo?".