The metric system sucks
Andrew Usher
LEFTIST POLITICS is one of the great errors of our age. [ By leftism I
mean specifically the quasi-religious crusading ideology identified by
Ted Kaczyncki (I always have trouble spelling that name!), and not (as
he pointed out) any policies that happen to fall on the left-wing side
(which I support myself when it comes to economic matters). ] Leftists
attempt to insinuate themselves in every field in which they can,
contaminating it with their poison. It is imperative, then, that they
be stopped wherever this can be done without injury.
One such place is the imposition of the metric system. All conversion
to the metric system today, and not only that compelled by government,
can safely be put under this head, as anyone that had good reasons to
convert unrelated to ideology would have done so already. Besides this
political argument, there are many inherent reasons to consider the
metric system distasteful, especially when given universal
application.
It should be noted that arguments over current systems of measure have
nothing to do with pseudohistorical speculation about ancient systems
of measure. Any attempt by pro-metric advocates to link opposition to
metrication with that ought to be dismissed, just as an attempt by pro-
fluoridation sources to link opposition to it with claims of a
communist conspiracy.
The metric system for our purposes can be identified with the SI
[ Note that SI is a French abbreviation, reminding everyone of the
French nature of the idea ], for thee great crusade to impose metric
did not truly gain momentum until the codification of the SI, and it
has decreed within itself that it should replace all other metric
units. Not only, then, the replacement of traditional [ i.e. English
or Imperial ] units with those of the metric system, but often the
replacement of older metric units, can be considered a target.
II. Pro-metric bias
As with other leftist causes, metrication (an ill-formed word; anyone
with a decent education would write 'metrification' - I use it only
because it is now standard) relies on the subversion of language. By
language is meant not only the way we speak but also the way we think,
as foretold by Orwell (This was one of the areas where Orwell really
was far-sighted. It's no accident that his Oceania had adopted the
metric system!), for our higher thinking is done in accordance with
language. They manipulate our minds to believe silly things in favor
of metric, when an accurate look would show otherwise. Let's take some
examples.
The first of all the metric lies is that we must adopt metric because
it is the world standard. The costs of translation between languages,
though, certainly exceed those of translation between measuring
systems, should we then ask that everyone speak only English? Again,
learning a new system of measure is much easier than learning a new
language; for example, all halfway-educated Americans know metric, but
comparatively few are fluent in any foreign language. It is surely not
unreasonable to ask that people learn our system of measures when
needed for communication; it is certainly much less an imposition than
the need to learn English. And there is no more reason that we should
necessarily adopt metric than that they should adopt our measures,
when standardisation really is required, which is much less often than
they would have you believe.
The next is the concept that metric is somehow more scientific, or
that scientific calculations can only properly be done in it. Of
course, the people this message is targeted at are not scientists;
they get an impression that the traditional units are always and only
a waste of time, and that one must convert to metric before doing any
serious calculation with them. No system (other than natural units)
can be said to be more scientific than any other, and I shall have
more to say about this below in sections IIX and IX.
News stories related to mishaps surrounding unit conversion invariably
get attributed by the media and influential sources to use of the
traditional units, which is absurd. It could as easily be said that
they are due to the metric system, for if English units were used
consistently, they would be avoided. For a real example, just look at
the Mars Climate Orbiter crash: if NASA has never moved toward metric
conversion (which they had no need to do, and only started because of
an amendment snuck into a 1988 Act of Congress), it could not have
happened.
Finally, and related to my first point, the cost of converting to
metric is constantly minimised, and invariably said to pay for itself
within a short time even though there is little evidence for it. But
the reverse - that converting from the metric to the traditional units
- is never examined at all, and surely if it did ever come up they
would do the exact opposite. This shows that they are not truly
interested in saving money or time at all, but only in promoting
metric for its own sake.
Further examples can be drawn from my Section V and exposure of one
campaigner's fallacy. Finally, I should point out the classic book
'The Metric Fallacy' ( http://books.google.com/books?id=2AYKAAAAIAAJ&dq=pro-metric&source=gbs_navlinks_s
), possibly the most comprehensive investigation of how measures are
really used. Everything in it remains true in principle today, and it
shows that the pro-metric people were spewing the same nonsense then
as now.
III. Metric prefixes
The system of prefixes is the unique character of the metric system,
abstracted from the particular units used, and is what distinguishes
it from all pre-metric proposals of a decimal system. This is often
touted as an advantage of metric, but I think it is more usually a bad
thing. How can that be?
Above I compared the difficulty of learning measures with that of
learning a language, and that is appropriate here also; for learning
the differing words for the units in the traditional system - as inch,
foot, mile or ounce, pound, ton - as not much more difficult than
learning a similar number of new words in a language, or not very hard
at all. In addition, the traditional names are shorter and can't be
confused.
More serious is the competition between prefixes and scientific
notation. There is no question about the convenience of the
exponential notation where large ranges of numbers must be used, or
where values far out of ordinary experience occur in science. And
before SI, physicists often used only scientific notation with the
base units (i.e. CGS). However, now with SI, the metric bureaucrats
and their mindset are pushing the universal applicability of SI
prefixes, introducing absurdities like 'zepto' and 'yotta' and God
knows what will follow them. This is insane: how can we expect people
to keep straight so many prefixes? In contrast scientific notation is
always unambiguous.
IV. The SI 'base units'
And now, for the most dramatic claim of them all: the SI derives every
unit we need from _just seven base units_! Strange, and I thought the
CGS system needed only three: why is seven any better? In fact only
three are sufficient (four if you use the SI electrical units, see
Section IIX), and the others redundant.
The Kelvin is merely a unit of energy given by Boltzmann's 'constant',
not a new base unit. The fact that temperature really is just energy
on a microscopic scale is the most important concept in
thermodynamics, yet our supposed perfect system of measures explicitly
denies it! You will see, if you work out the formulae (actually you
shouldn't have to if you're reasonably smart and have learned
thermodynamics) that they all can be written with 'T' in place of
'kT', and work perfectly.
The mole is not a unit at all, but a NUMBER - Avogadro's number. It's
related to the 'unit' 1 by that number, a conversion factor. Calling
it a separate base unit is as silly as saying the mile and inch are
both base units of the English system! (Come to think of it, some
metricists might, solely because their ratio isn't a power of 10 (as
if there were anything inherently special about 10!).) The 'unit' 1,
of course is one of mathematics, not physics, though there was a
serious proposal to officially designated 1 an SI unit named the 'uno'
- fortunately, the scientists had more sense than the French
bureaucrats and shot that down.
The candela is not a unit either. It's a response curve for the human
eye, which by the way is known to be inaccurate. Calling that a
physical unit is preposterous. If that's a base unit, then so is 'how
bad something smells' and 'how musical a sound is'. The response curve
of the eye is not not useful, of course, it's just not part of
physics.
V. Time and angle
It is no doubt familiar that our customary units of time, which are
nearly universal, involve factors of 60 and 24, and the units of
angle, of which the degree at least is still universal, factors of 60
and 90/360. These are highly divisible numbers in the mathematical
sense, and no doubt highly divisible numbers are preferable to those
that are not, ex. 113 or 38, if all other things are equal. But
according to the standards that the metric system acknowledges, all
bases are not equal: the decimal system is preferred, and they do have
a point, clearly.
Indeed, the argument for decimalisation of time is certainly stronger
than that for decimalisation of other common measures. We do freely
mix hours and minutes, or minutes and seconds. Conversion between the
units is very common, so much so that the most common values are
embedded in the minds of everyone, such as 48 hours = 2 days. And yet,
arguments about the inconvenience of conversion and mixing units are
the most used for the superiority of the metric system, in spite of
the fact that in most applications of length, weight, volume, etc. we
have eliminated the necessity for conversion, while in applications of
time they have not - and yet never mention it. This can't be honest.
In angle, the smaller divisions are less used (or known), yet degrees
are universal and seem to be understood by almost everybody. Still,
one might question their use for the same reasons as for time; the
divisibility by 3 of a right angle, while sometimes convenient, is
really no stronger an argument for angle than for time or length, and
a '30-60-90 triangle' would be better called a 'one-third [of a right
angle] triangle' anyway. Decimal degrees are now widely used for the
same reasons as other decimal measures; this would be fine if they
were used exclusively, but astronomers continue to use decimal
arcseconds as well, thus having two units of angle differing by 3600.
I shouldn't even mention measuring right ascension in units of time, a
completely unjustifiable practice which has no sense other than to
make things more complicated: if the connection with time really were
that important, we would measure terrestrial longitude that way also.
Finally, the use of base-60 units smaller than the second, in both
time and angle, disappeared after the introduction of decimals. If
base 60 is a good idea, why should this be? In truth, the traditional
units of time and angle deserve abolition a lot more than those of
length and weight which have the advantages of being at a natural
scale, and not creating substantially more calculational complexity in
actual use. This is another irrationality of the metric idea.
VI. A typical pro-metrication argument
I will now take, as an example, one pro-metric site I have come
across: http://www.metricationmatters.com/ and critique it. It is
neither the best nor the worst pro-metric argument I have seen, and I
think it may be taken as typical. Anti-metric arguments are not
necessarily better, of course, and I have seen some pretty silly ones
there, too.
In this paper: http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/CommentaryOnWilkinsOfMeasure.pdf
, he attempts, it seems, to show that the metric system was really
conceived in England, and hence should not be considered particularly
French. It should be remembered that even if this were true, it would
be no argument in its favor. But I do not see it. Wilkins did propose
something like a decimal system, but only as a small sidelight in his
paper. Thus it should be seen in context, but he takes it out of
context: if you consider that most of that work is presumably
impractical (and would be agreed so by everyone), why is wanting to
rationalise measures deserving of being singled out as insightful?
Obviously, only because of what happened in the future; but no one can
see the future. Anyway, the main difference between Wilkins's work
(and others) and the metric system is that he had not used prefixes,
which are the chief important change that metric actually did make.
In this one: http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/CommentaryOnWilkinsOfMeasure.pdf
, he makes many typical distortions, but due to its length I only
focus on the very beginning. He again credits Wilkins with inventing
the metric system, which is truly dishonest. Metric is thoroughly
French, despite any claims to the contrary; indeed, we are even forced
to use the French abbreviation SI, and he uses the French spelling
'metre'. The really laughable thing, though, comes on page 2, in the
entry about the beginning of the universe. He gives the diameter of
the observable universe as '285 yottametres', and says that before
'the metric system', scientists had difficulty referring to those
numbers! Of course, no one in his right mind would say '285
yottameters' (leaving aside the question of whether that distance is
meaningful at all), but 2.85e23 km (scientific notation) or 30 billion
ly or 9.2 Gpc. I can't believe he is ignorant of this, but if he's
not, he's lying.
Now that I've started reviewing the papers there, let me quickly go
through some others. This paper http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/CommentaryOnWilkinsOfMeasure.pdf
is almost obscene in its claims that metrication is one of the most
pressing issues that we face. Does he truly think the writers of those
questions were ignorant of it? The fact is that units of measurement
simply have no bearing on most issues, which do not care what units we
use. The cost of conversion is much lower than he asserts, especially
since it is largely automatic now. Worst, he claims that 'many, many'
hospital errors are due to incorrect conversion, while admitting he
doesn't know (and using a dishonest reference). There is, however,
another type of error that happens only with metric: the confusion of
one prefix for another. I KNOW that that happens with some regularity,
from seeing several stories about fatalities from that cause. This one
http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/USADecimalisationAndMetrication.pdf
makes the point that we extensively use decimalisation with English
units. Yes, because it has been found convenient. What's wrong with
that? Nothing, except for people that think going metric is a goal in
itself, some kind of crusade. This one
http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/Is07042007TheFourthOfJuly.pdf
is actually a pretty good idea - to use year-month-day whenever we
write dates in all figures. I don't do so myself, but it does make
sense and there is hardly any tradition behind the old ways anyway as
dates haven't been written in all figures for very long. Many of his
other articles (too many to enumerate) are devoted to showing how hard
the English units are to use. As typical, these don't correspond to
how people actually use the units, for they rarely mix or convert
units and do not actively use all the archaic units he lists. I
suppose I have now spent enough time on him, and have shown (and you
can check it yourself) that his arguments are considerably fallacious
and dishonest.
VII. Practical electrical units
The term 'practical' units in used in the sense it was in the 19c. -
that is, the units used in common uses of electricity, not just in the
laboratory or in theoretical discussions. These units are the volt,
ampere, farad, watt, etc., and they are now part of the SI. Metric
advocates say that these imply that we 'use metric' in all electrical
work and even that it is inconsistent for anti-metric advocates to use
any electrical devices because of their being 'in metric'. To the
latter point I may first say that the English system, unlike the
metric, does not pretend to be universal and meant to replace all
other units in every field; nor do we say that the utility of any
product has any relation to the units used to make it (Pro-metric
people, on the other hand, have implied such!).
The real history of electrical units shows that the situation is more
complicated than that. The practical electrical units were decided
long before there was an SI system, and the fact that the joule and
watt (coincidentally) happened to fit into the MKS mechanical system
was hardly noticed at the time, as almost all scientists then used
CGS. But once the electrical units were established, they would be
difficult to change and there was no really good reason for doing so.
Also, the fact that it is sometimes convenient to use the same unit of
power (Watts) for all uses, is no pro-metric argument given that until
recently metric users used calories for their unit of heat, and of
course it is the same difficulty to convert calories to joules as BTUs
(or foot-pounds, etc.) to joules; in addition, we often measure time
in units greater than a second and therefore factors of 60, 3600, etc.
come into play no matter what.
And of course, the electrical units actually confirm the anti-metric
argument! The fact that units, once established in a particular field,
can be suffered to endure in spite of being theoretically less than
perfect (as they were and still are) is precisely the argument that
has repeatedly been made against metrication, but metric advocates
always reject it then, exposing their typically leftist double-
standard.
IIX. Electromagnetic units
Now we discuss electrical units in a more theoretical context, such as
is used in physics. It is well known among almost everyone in physics
that SI units are unjustifiable and bad for any sort of theoretical
calculation. Not only does it introduce the unnecessary 'constants'
eps0 and mu0, which are even less justified than Boltzmann's
'constant' (which at least could be justified as a conversion between
the macroscopic and microscopic views of temperature), but it
introduces an unnatural and unnecessary fourth base unit to physics.
It could be justified (I say) if that new base unit were the charge on
the electron or something equally natural, but it is not; it is
completely arbitrary. For parsimony the base electrical unit, if not
natural, should be derived from mechanics, as scientists had always
done in CGS units.
The coherent system of CGS units, usually called Gaussian, has
developed in common usage, and the sole justification for it is its
close link with the three base mechanical units, not what those units
actually are, so again it does not show any superiority of metric
units over English or other by that fact. Actually, the modified
Gaussian system, using the magnetic unit of current, is really
superior for theory, given that Maxwell's equations take on their most
symmetrical form in it; also, the unit of inductance becomes cm (which
has always been used for calculation) rather than an impractically
large unit, and that of resistance becomes dimensionless.
The other obvious fact (shown by that unit of resistance which is, in
SI terms, Z/4pi) is that SI units clearly put an improper factor of
4pi into the equations. They hide the perfect symmetry between the
gravitational and electric force laws by forcing us to write 1/(4pi
eps0) in the latter. By so doing, they hide the factor of 4pi where it
should appear, and replace 2pi in certain magnetic equations with an
inexplicable 1/2; the 4pi and 2pi are derived correctly by the
integration over resp. a sphere or a circle.
IX. Theoretical physics
That last argument ought to be made more general. For theoretical
physics is the algebra of physics; just as algebra generalises
arithmetic, and in the calculation of algebraic formulae we avoid
substituting particular numbers, and that that makes the utility of
algebra; so it is with theoretical physics where results are derived
by the manipulation of formulae without using any actual numbers, and
again that is what makes it most useful. So with a system of units for
use in any theory it is important that it be conceptually simple, and
lacking arbitrary difficulties, and not that its quantities be of an
ordinary scale, though that is beneficial where possible. Hence the
popularity of various sorts of natural units in theoretical
calculation, where otherwise undesirable conversion factors would be
thrown in.
But where no dimensionless quantities can be obtained, formulae can
always be written without any conversion factor at all, as in
classical mechanics where all quantities can be reduced to mass,
length, and time so that all equations shall be satisfied equally by
any set of fundamental units. If anyone says then, that modern physics
is based on metric units, as many partisans would, they are in error;
the equations of mechanics may be used with the system based on the
meter, kilogram, and second, or the slug, foot, and second, or on
_atomic units_; and I have used all three in my own calculations.
The metric zealots, though, wish to impose SI units on everything,
which has the results that many theoretical formulae have pointless
complications that obscure the subject; these include not only the
electromagnetic as discussed above, but the thermodynamic, for
example. Every time I see thermodynamic relations written with 'kT' in
place of the clear 'T' I feel
sick, but it is necessitated by the SI unit of temperature, which is
wrongly called fundamental. Likewise when considering matter at atomic
or subatomic scales, it is clear that one should use a system of units
that at least takes the elementary charge to be unity, while insisting
on the SI is silly, but increasingly many do.
And to make the most general, we may say in truth that different units
are applicable to different purposes, that a diversity of units is not
necessarily a bad thing, so long as a profusion of different values
for the same unit (which has, with just a few exceptions, not existed
in the English-speaking world for many centuries) be avoided.
X. Conclusion
The English units of measure are part of the English language, and
indeed, of every European language once, even French. Most
particularly, it is true of Latin, the language of our common
heritage, and where we got our traditional units from.
Perhaps if I had total power, I would move to abolishing the metric
system everywhere, and establishing a non-metric basis for all
science, simply to drive the nail in the coffin of the absurd dream of
a universal, 'rational' system. But in the real world, it is not
necessary to do so everywhere, in particular, the areas where metric
was fully established by 1960 (which includes some, but not all, of
the sciences) and areas where it is used for standardisation only and
not to measure anything fungible.
But there is no need to insist upon it; it only is highly desirable to
use it where it has traditionally been, and where we naturally think
in the traditional units. And it needs to be observed that the precise
values of the English units are not critical, but only won by default
out of the thousands of different standards that once existed in
Europe.
Andrew Usher
Mark Borgerson
@c29g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>, k_over...@yahoo.com says...
> I. Introduction
>
> LEFTIST POLITICS is one of the great errors of our age. [ By leftism I
> mean specifically the quasi-religious crusading ideology identified by
> Ted Kaczyncki (I always have trouble spelling that name!), and not (as
> he pointed out) any policies that happen to fall on the left-wing side
> (which I support myself when it comes to economic matters). ] Leftists
> attempt to insinuate themselves in every field in which they can,
> contaminating it with their poison. It is imperative, then, that they
> be stopped wherever this can be done without injury.
>
>
> The English units of measure are part of the English language, and
> indeed, of every European language once, even French. Most
> particularly, it is true of Latin, the language of our common
> heritage, and where we got our traditional units from.
>
> Perhaps if I had total power, I would move to abolishing the metric
> system everywhere, and establishing a non-metric basis for all
> science, simply to drive the nail in the coffin of the absurd dream of
> a universal, 'rational' system. But in the real world, it is not
> necessary to do so everywhere, in particular, the areas where metric
> was fully established by 1960 (which includes some, but not all, of
> the sciences) and areas where it is used for standardisation only and
> not to measure anything fungible.
>
> But there is no need to insist upon it; it only is highly desirable to
> use it where it has traditionally been, and where we naturally think
> in the traditional units. And it needs to be observed that the precise
> values of the English units are not critical, but only won by default
> out of the thousands of different standards that once existed in
> Europe.
>
amongst the first non-scientific organizations in the US to adopt
and teach the metric system was the US military. As far back as
the war in Vietnam, soldiers commonly referred to distance in 'klicks'.
Hmmm---if the Chinese invade the US, will they have to teach their
soldiers miles and yards? ;-)
IIRC, the road signs in Iraq and Afghanistan also show distances
in km---but that may not be much of an issue if the place names
are in Arabic script! ;-)
Mark Borgerson
Yousuf Khan
> I. Introduction
<big snip>
Wow, you didn't just write over 400 lines worth of anti-metric system
rhetoric, did you? Only nutcases would do that. Get some help, will you?
Yousuf Khan
Ken S. Tucker
> I. Introduction
Agreed.
It's the frogs, 1 Napolean penis weighs 1 gram, and has a length
of 1 centimeter and climax's in 1 second, sounds scientific.
Base 12 is vital in architecture, I need 16" centres on a 4'x8'
ply, bingo, 16", that has no solution in a MeTric base 10 system.
Ken
....
Andrew Usher
> <big snip>
>
> Wow, you didn't just write over 400 lines worth of anti-metric system
> rhetoric, did you? Only nutcases would do that. Get some help, will you?
You can't be serious. Every one of those lines is quite rational.
Andrew Usher
Heidi Graw
>"Ken S. Tucker" <dyna...@vianet.on.ca> wrote in message
>news:732f921e-1220-42f9...@b10g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
...and mechanics in Canada use two sets of tools, one for metric
and one for non-metric. Car parts are now made all over the world
and are combined into one vehicle. This means certain parts require
metric tools and others not. It's a massively confusing thing to work
on a globally manufactured vehicle. Btw, my own husband prefers
the metric system.
Heidi
Uncle Al
>
> I. Introduction
> One such place is the imposition of the metric system.
HEY STOOOPID - tell us how many fluid ounces and how many weight
ounces there are in a cubic mile of water at 39.20 degrees Fahrenheit.
10^15 milliliters and 10^15 grams in a km^3 of 4 C water.
idiot
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz4.htm
Frogwatch
> >"Ken S. Tucker" <dynam...@vianet.on.ca> wrote in message
This evening, I did a calculation of the amount of charge necessary to
levitate a dust particle on thge moon. Using SI units, I could do all
of it in my head because there is then no conversion of pounds of
force to anything else or Volts/foot to some other units. The old
english units are simply stupid and unnatural confusing so many people
that they never like technical subjects. If we went metric,
engineering would be so much motre obvious that we would have more
American engineering students. The old english system simply promotes
stupidity.
Andrew Usher
> This evening, I did a calculation of the amount of charge necessary to
> levitate a dust particle on thge moon. Using SI units, I could do all
> of it in my head because there is then no conversion of pounds of
> force to anything else or Volts/foot to some other units.
I rather doubt you did, as your 'problem' is not well-defined.
Nevertheless, if you could do it, it would be because you have
memorised some values - specifically, Newton's and Coulomb's constants
- in SI units. If you had the same in English units it would be
equally easy.
> The old
> english units are simply stupid and unnatural confusing so many people
> that they never like technical subjects.
I doubt you can provide any evidence of this. If people lack the
intelligence to understand units of measure, they should not be in
technical subjects anyway.
> If we went metric,
> engineering would be so much motre obvious that we would have more
> American engineering students.
Sure, that's why American engineering has been declining just as
engineering has been going metric. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?
> The old english system simply promotes stupidity.
Stupidity is not bothering to think for yourself but instead
regurgitating tired metric propaganda.
Did you even try to read my essay?
Andrew Usher
Andrew Usher
> HEY STOOOPID - tell us how many fluid ounces and how many weight
> ounces there are in a cubic mile of water at 39.20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Such a problem would never arise, which is why it's ridiculously
biased. Also, water is not the only substance in the world, and if
metric sets the density of water to 1 (well, almost!), it can't set
the density of anything else to a simple number.
The problem is not difficult if one has the appropriate conversion
factors, which one would in any line of work where this problem might
come up. It's no harder than it is in the metric system for any
substance other than water, or indeed for water at a more normal
temperature.
Andrew Usher
Andrew Usher
> HEY STOOOPID - tell us how many fluid ounces and how many weight
> ounces there are in a cubic mile of water at 39.20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Such a problem would never arise, which is why it's ridiculously
Andrew Usher
> HEY STOOOPID - tell us how many fluid ounces and how many weight
> ounces there are in a cubic mile of water at 39.20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Such a problem would never arise, which is why it's ridiculously
Andrew Usher
> Btw, my own husband prefers
> the metric system.
And why should his opinion matter, if he hasn't looked at it from the
perspective I have?
Andrew Usher
Heidi Graw
>"Frogwatch" <dbo...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
>news:b743d9a3-3aeb-478e-a827>>
>>Heidi had written:
>> ...and mechanics in Canada use two sets of tools, one for metric
>> and one for non-metric. Car parts are now made all over the world
>> and are combined into one vehicle. This means certain parts require
>> metric tools and others not. It's a massively confusing thing to work
>> on a globally manufactured vehicle. Btw, my own husband prefers
>> the metric system.
>>
>> Heidi
> Frogwatch wrote:
> This evening, I did a calculation of the amount of charge necessary to
> levitate a dust particle on thge moon. Using SI units, I could do all
> of it in my head because there is then no conversion of pounds of
> force to anything else or Volts/foot to some other units. The old
> english units are simply stupid and unnatural confusing so many people
> that they never like technical subjects. If we went metric,
> engineering would be so much motre obvious that we would have more
> American engineering students. The old english system simply promotes
> stupidity.
Which reminds me: It's not known as "German Engineering" for nothing.
These top-notch masterminds use the metric system. When was the
last time anyone extolled the virtues of American Engineering? Or,
British Engineering? As a global customer what sort of engineering
might you pick of those three?
Heidi
Heidi Graw
"Andrew Usher" <k_over...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:59061f76-2ea5-4dc4...@z41g2000yqz.googlegroups.com...
As a Canadian he has experience working with both systems.
He prefers the metric. It's easier to learn and easier to use.
I also prefer metric for those same reasons.
Heidi
Bart Goddard
942438...@u41g2000yqe.googlegroups.com:
> This evening, I did a calculation of the amount of charge necessary to
> levitate a dust particle on thge moon. Using SI units, I could do all
> of it in my head because there is then no conversion of pounds of
> force to anything else or Volts/foot to some other units. The old
> english units are simply stupid and unnatural confusing
It seems natural to want to divide units into halves, thirds and
fourths. It's not often that a person needs to levitate a
dust particle to the moon. But note that it takes more
mental effort to divide a meter into thirds than it does
a foot.
B.
--
Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
Uncle Al
>
> On Feb 2, 7:06 pm, Uncle Al <Uncle...@hate.spam.net> wrote:
>
> > HEY STOOOPID - tell us how many fluid ounces and how many weight
> > ounces there are in a cubic mile of water at 39.20 degrees Fahrenheit.
>
> Such a problem would never arise,
idiot
Lying coward. Ambulatory rectal bolus. YOU CAN'T DO IT. Go ahead
STOOOIPD - show us your work.
[(100 cm/m)(1000 m/km)]^3 = 10^15 cm^3/km^3
1 g/cm^3, good to more than 4.5 sig figs.
How many 64ths of an inch are in a mile, idiot? 10^9 micrometers/km.
How many slugs are in a hundredweight at one gee, moron?
What is the volume of a bbl? How many firkins are in a plinth
(African plinth not European plinth)?
Bart Goddard
@hate.spam.net:
> HEY STOOOPID - tell us how many fluid ounces and how many weight
> ounces there are in a cubic mile of water at 39.20 degrees Fahrenheit.
>
> 10^15 milliliters and 10^15 grams in a km^3 of 4 C water.
Hey Genius, what if someone wants to multiply or divide by
something besides powers of 10? Note that there is NO reason
to compute the number of millilitres in a cubic kilometer of
water. You may as well brag that you're a 43-degree wizard
in <whatever fantasy game>.
Bart Goddard
> He prefers the metric. It's easier to learn and easier to use.
> I also prefer metric for those same reasons.
Which is also a reason for choosing Cosmetology school
over Engineering.
Joshua Cranmer
> I. Introduction
I know better than to succumb, but oh well.
> LEFTIST POLITICS is one of the great errors of our age. [ By leftism I
> mean specifically the quasi-religious crusading ideology identified by
> Ted Kaczyncki (I always have trouble spelling that name!),
That is obviously evidence of a homogeneous ethnic environment where you
grew up. Eastern European names aren't really that bad to spell. Or
pronounce, for that matter.
> One such place is the imposition of the metric system. All conversion
> to the metric system today, and not only that compelled by government,
> can safely be put under this head, as anyone that had good reasons to
> convert unrelated to ideology would have done so already.
You overestimate the propensity of people to change when there are many
clear good reasons to do so. Inertia counts for a lot in politics and
general management. Indeed, it probably counts even more so in politics:
it's extraordinarily hard to undo something. Just ask the U.S. Congress,
European Commission, or the Japanese Diet [1].
> The metric system for our purposes can be identified with the SI
> [ Note that SI is a French abbreviation, reminding everyone of the
> French nature of the idea ],
Oh, so it's bad just because it's French? If you want to boycott French
ideas, please reverse all of your chemistry knowledge back to
discussions about "phlogiston" (possibly even earlier). Which probably
means you should give up all synthetic fibers or drugs. And you'll
probably need to start learning to sew by hand, for I believe the French
were instrumental in the development of sewing machines. And the French
also made significant forays into mechanical looms (including, most
notably, the Jacquard loom, the first use of programming a century
before the Babbage engines and two centuries before the first electronic
computers).
And having a French acronym does not necessarily mean it's a French
invention, to boot. French was, and still remains, an important business
language. Until the middle of the 20th century, it was more likely to be
the international language one learned instead of, say, English.
> The first of all the metric lies is that we must adopt metric because
> it is the world standard. The costs of translation between languages,
> though, certainly exceed those of translation between measuring
> systems, should we then ask that everyone speak only English?
One of the Mars rovers crashed into Mars. Why? Because one group of
people were using SI units and the others Imperial units. I'm sure that
the potential damage due to mixing up unit systems is much worse than
mixing up languages. This would mostly be due to the fact that you often
calculate using units and not with languages. Unfortunately, trying to
statically cart around units is a lot harder in practice than you would
think.
> And there is no more reason that we should
> necessarily adopt metric than that they should adopt our measures,
> when standardisation really is required, which is much less often than
> they would have you believe.
Except the fact that approximately 5.3% of the world population (U.S.,
Liberia, and Burma) uses the Imperial units and 94.8% use SI. Even if
you want to measure by GDP impact, you've still got a hefty 20-80% split.
> Finally, and related to my first point, the cost of converting to
> metric is constantly minimised, and invariably said to pay for itself
> within a short time even though there is little evidence for it. But
> the reverse - that converting from the metric to the traditional units
> - is never examined at all, and surely if it did ever come up they
> would do the exact opposite. This shows that they are not truly
> interested in saving money or time at all, but only in promoting
> metric for its own sake.
The cost is in conversion, period. Mostly because most people of my
generation would be used to thinking in Imperial units as opposed to SI;
for Europeans, they would be used to thinking in SI. I have a pretty
good intuition of what 50�F looks like, but not of 20�C. The inverse
would be true for non-Americans.
> Above I compared the difficulty of learning measures with that of
> learning a language, and that is appropriate here also; for learning
> the differing words for the units in the traditional system - as inch,
> foot, mile or ounce, pound, ton - as not much more difficult than
> learning a similar number of new words in a language, or not very hard
> at all. In addition, the traditional names are shorter and can't be
> confused.
Here are all of the prefixes that I see commonly used for measurements:
milli
centi
<none>
kilo
Most people will know of "mega", "giga", and "tera" from computers, no
matter where they live (even if there is confusion between 1024-based
and 1000-based values for these units).
> However, now with SI, the metric bureaucrats
> and their mindset are pushing the universal applicability of SI
> prefixes, introducing absurdities like 'zepto' and 'yotta' and God
> knows what will follow them. This is insane: how can we expect people
> to keep straight so many prefixes? In contrast scientific notation is
> always unambiguous.
How often do you measure stuff in terms of 10^21? Indeed, the media
seems to think that most people already can't handle numbers larger than
a trillion (million billion and billion billion starts becoming popular).
You've magically missed the argument that most people use when
advocating metric: units are a lot more intuitive. How many feet are in
a rod? How many square feet per acre? Acres per square mile--are you
talking about statute or nautical miles? Please convert knots to miles
per hour. And then there are fluid ounces (distinct from avoirdupois
ounces and troy ounces!), gills, cups, pints, quarts, gallons... and
barrels and hogsheads.
So, if the United States imports 13.1 million barrels of oil per day,
and the average car gets 27 mpg, how many miles would the average car be
able to drive on the imported oil, assuming perfect conversion of oil to
gasoline?
[ Snip hoopla about base units ]
Base units really don't make that much of a difference. Consider it a
historical aberration.
> In angle, the smaller divisions are less used (or known), yet degrees
> are universal and seem to be understood by almost everybody.
I seem to use radians a lot more when doing calculations. And I'm sure
many surveyors may prefer gradients to degrees.
> The English units of measure are part of the English language, and
> indeed, of every European language once, even French. Most
> particularly, it is true of Latin, the language of our common
> heritage, and where we got our traditional units from.
You are so insensitive, you know that? What about the Japanese and their
koku of rice? Or their ri? The Chinese li? The ancient cubit? You're
being so Amerocentric. And what about the Anglo-Saxons' units, before
the Romans imposed their unit system onto them?
[1] I know, I know, I shouldn't be so biased towards the
economically-advantaged nations, but unfortunately my media sources
provide me with too little information on third world countries.
--
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth
Andrew Usher
> > The metric system for our purposes can be identified with the SI
> > [ Note that SI is a French abbreviation, reminding everyone of the
> > French nature of the idea ],
>
> Oh, so it's bad just because it's French? If you want to boycott French
> ideas, please reverse all of your chemistry knowledge back to
> discussions about "phlogiston" (possibly even earlier).
No I don't, certainly not in pure science. This is only a straw man.
> And having a French acronym does not necessarily mean it's a French
> invention, to boot.
But it is a French invention, indisputably.
> > The first of all the metric lies is that we must adopt metric because
> > it is the world standard. The costs of translation between languages,
> > though, certainly exceed those of translation between measuring
> > systems, should we then ask that everyone speak only English?
>
> One of the Mars rovers crashed into Mars. Why? Because one group of
> people were using SI units and the others Imperial units.
I did mention this in my post. Had NASA never started to convert
things like this, the problem could never have arisen.
> > And there is no more reason that we should
> > necessarily adopt metric than that they should adopt our measures,
> > when standardisation really is required, which is much less often than
> > they would have you believe.
>
> Except the fact that approximately 5.3% of the world population (U.S.,
> Liberia, and Burma) uses the Imperial units and 94.8% use SI. Even if
> you want to measure by GDP impact, you've still got a hefty 20-80% split.
Now this is oversimplified. All countries including the US use metric
for some purposes. Equally, there is some use of English in countries
that are officially metric. But so what of the numbers? The US clearly
has a heck of a lot of power to impose its will on the rest of the
world.
> > Finally, and related to my first point, the cost of converting to
> > metric is constantly minimised, and invariably said to pay for itself
> > within a short time even though there is little evidence for it. But
> > the reverse - that converting from the metric to the traditional units
> > - is never examined at all, and surely if it did ever come up they
> > would do the exact opposite. This shows that they are not truly
> > interested in saving money or time at all, but only in promoting
> > metric for its own sake.
>
> The cost is in conversion, period.
If that's so, then there's no reason to prefer metric.
> Mostly because most people of my
> generation would be used to thinking in Imperial units as opposed to SI;
> for Europeans, they would be used to thinking in SI. I have a pretty
> good intuition of what 50�F looks like, but not of 20�C. The inverse
> would be true for non-Americans.
I suppose so. But there's no reason one can't acquire both, whether
you're American or not. And yet, the metric people tell us how easy it
is for us to understand Celsius, but pretend that no one else in the
world can understand Fahrenheit.
> Here are all of the prefixes that I see commonly used for measurements:
> milli
> centi
> <none>
> kilo
Obviously you're not counting electricity, in which many prefixes
beyond those are used regularly. Anyway, the point was that the number
of independent words is not really any strike against traditional
units.
> Most people will know of "mega", "giga", and "tera" from computers, no
> matter where they live (even if there is confusion between 1024-based
> and 1000-based values for these units).
There wouldn't be any if not for (as usual) the meddling of standards
organisations. 1024-based units are to be used for computer data (and
there's a sound reason why) and 1000-based units for everything else.
> > However, now with SI, the metric bureaucrats
> > and their mindset are pushing the universal applicability of SI
> > prefixes, introducing absurdities like 'zepto' and 'yotta' and God
> > knows what will follow them. This is insane: how can we expect people
> > to keep straight so many prefixes? In contrast scientific notation is
> > always unambiguous.
>
> How often do you measure stuff in terms of 10^21?
Not often, I suppose. But how do you specify, say, the mass of the
Earth?
> You've magically missed the argument that most people use when
> advocating metric: units are a lot more intuitive. How many feet are in
> a rod? How many square feet per acre? Acres per square mile--are you
> talking about statute or nautical miles? Please convert knots to miles
> per hour. And then there are fluid ounces (distinct from avoirdupois
> ounces and troy ounces!), gills, cups, pints, quarts, gallons... and
> barrels and hogsheads.
I know all these conversions in my head. Most people don't, but they
will quickly pick up any that they need to use frequently. And how
much calculation do people do without a machine anymore?
> So, if the United States imports 13.1 million barrels of oil per day,
> and the average car gets 27 mpg, how many miles would the average car be
> able to drive on the imported oil, assuming perfect conversion of oil to
> gasoline?
About 20 million vehicle-miles. More precision is unnecessary because
of the conditions.
That took me about 15 seconds to do mentally.
> [ Snip hoopla about base units ]
>
> Base units really don't make that much of a difference. Consider it a
> historical aberration.
No, the fact that the kilogram (base unit) has a prefix is a
historical aberration but I don't mention that. The fact that the
'seven base units', adopted in the 1960s, are promoted as illustrating
the logical nature of the SI, is not.
> > In angle, the smaller divisions are less used (or known), yet degrees
> > are universal and seem to be understood by almost everybody.
>
> I seem to use radians a lot more when doing calculations. And I'm sure
> many surveyors may prefer gradients to degrees.
Radians are of course preferred for math but in practical engineering
they have an obvious problem in not being rationally related to the
circle. And grads (not 'gradients', that's something different!) may
be used by some surveyors, but the great majority of people only know
degrees.
Andrew Usher
Frogwatch
Whenever I need to do any calculations involving physical quantities,
I first convert to metric, do the calculation and then convert back to
english. This avoids bizarro conversions such as feet in a mile or
psi to something else.
I even had one professor who worked in a system where all independent
constants (c, q, permativitty of free space, etc) were all equal to
1. Using SI, you could then simply insert the correct units at the
end knowing it was correct with no conversions.
One of the few truly arbitrary things in metric system is temp using
Celsius but true SI uses Kelvin whose units of temp happens to be the
same size as Celsius degrees.
In SI units, I can readily calculate things as varied as time to fall
to earth for an object, period of a pendulum, amount of fuel needed to
change an orbit, ALL IN MY HEAD. In english units, no way.
Let me see, 12 inches in a foot, 5280 feet/mile, a cubic foot of water
weighs ...........I dunno. However, a cubic meter of water is
obviously 1000 Kg. One does need to remember a few basic constants
such as c, q, mass of electron and proton, Avagodros number, etc.
However, in english units you would not only have to remember such
constants but also conversions between various units. Ummmmmm, how do
you go from BTU/sec to hp? How is hp related to watts?
Calculating pressure, you say nobody does this, WRONG. I used to be
an oilfield engineer, the only way to deal with english units was to
memorize bizzaro conversions such as:
downhole pressure =.052*mudweight(pounds/gallon)*depth in feet.
Somewhere in that .052 number is the constant g (what is g in english
units, something like 32 ft/sec/sec) but this formula gives no
physical sense of what is happening. In SI, one simply uses the
formula Pressure =rho*g*h where rho(density) is in kg/m3 and g is
about 10 m/sec2 and h is in meters. This formula in SI would be
useful on the moon where g is 1/6 of that on earth whereas I have no
immediate idea how to modify the english one (probably divide .052 by
6 I think just to keep units correct).
Quite frankly, the cumbersome english units cause so much confusion
that we would have far better of understanding of physical concepts if
we simply used SI in everything (except temp where we would use
Celsius).
Heidi Graw
>"Bart Goddard" <godd...@netscape.net> wrote in message
>news:Xns9D13CCB0DF19Ego...@74.209.136.81...
> "Heidi Graw" <hg...@telus.net> wrote in
> news:tC4an.64378$PH1.2203@edtnps82:
>
>
>> He prefers the metric. It's easier to learn and easier to use.
>> I also prefer metric for those same reasons.
>
> Which is also a reason for choosing Cosmetology school
> over Engineering.
>
> B.
<chuckle> ...and lots of folks do just that. A good question
to ask is, "How do you get the most using the least amount of
energy?" If cosmetology earns one an adequate living, and it
requires less energy and effort, then why not?
Haven't you noticed that those who earn the most conserve
the most energy? Being an energy efficient person can be
rather quite profitable. ;-)
Heidi
Frogwatch
> >"Bart Goddard" <goddar...@netscape.net> wrote in message
The observation that various fields use variations on units is one of
the great "Duh" lines in the original rant. I work in x-ray
spectroscopy and routinely use eV for photon energy instead of the
usual Joule simply because it is easy to relate this to how the x-rays
are produced. Of course, I then convert to wavelength.
Andrew Usher
Obviously you can't use paragraphs ...
> Whenever I need to do any calculations involving physical quantities,
> I first convert to metric, do the calculation and then convert back to
> english. This avoids bizarro conversions such as feet in a mile or
> psi to something else.
This practice is ridiculous and one of the things I complained about.
It doesn't avoid any conversion; it only shifts them somewhere else
(at best).
> I even had one professor who worked in a system where all independent
> constants (c, q, permativitty of free space, etc) were all equal to
> 1.
Those are useful - but they are not metric.
> Using SI, you could then simply insert the correct units at the
> end knowing it was correct with no conversions.
You must be mistaken. If he truly was using natural units, you do need
to insert conversions to get to SI units. If he was using purely
mechanical formulae, then of course _any_ system of units is correct
(because there are no constants between M,L,T in classical mechanics)
- again I mentioned this in my essay.
> In SI units, I can readily calculate things as varied as time to fall
> to earth for an object, period of a pendulum, amount of fuel needed to
> change an orbit, ALL IN MY HEAD. In english units, no way.
Given that the formulae are exactly the same in English units, this
makes no sense.
> Let me see, 12 inches in a foot, 5280 feet/mile, a cubic foot of water
> weighs ...........I dunno. However, a cubic meter of water is
> obviously 1000 Kg.
That works only for water, of course.
> One does need to remember a few basic constants
> such as c, q, mass of electron and proton, Avagodros number, etc.
> However, in english units you would not only have to remember such
> constants but also conversions between various units.
How is that qualitatively different?
> Ummmmmm, how do
> you go from BTU/sec to hp? How is hp related to watts?
If you need to know, you will know. That's the point. If you use
Boltzmann's 'constant' (actually a conversion factor) frequently, you
will remember the first few figures of it (I remember it as 10,604.5 K/
ev).
> Calculating pressure, you say nobody does this, WRONG. I used to be
> an oilfield engineer, the only way to deal with english units was to
> memorize bizzaro conversions such as:
> downhole pressure =.052*mudweight(pounds/gallon)*depth in feet.
If I'm not mistaken, that number should be .134 , the number of cubic
feet in a gallon . You just convert the density into slugs/cubic foot
and then the simple formula works. If that .052 is correct, then there
is some other modification being done - which would need to be done
also in the metric version.
And how is using that number any harder than using 9.8 in the metric
version?
> Somewhere in that .052 number is the constant g (what is g in english
> units, something like 32 ft/sec/sec) but this formula gives no
> physical sense of what is happening. In SI, one simply uses the
> formula Pressure =rho*g*h where rho(density) is in kg/m3 and g is
> about 10 m/sec2 and h is in meters.
That formula isn't 'in SI'. It is universal and does not have units.
> This formula in SI would be
> useful on the moon where g is 1/6 of that on earth whereas I have no
> immediate idea how to modify the english one (probably divide .052 by
> 6 I think just to keep units correct).
Certainly! The pressure is going to be 1/6 of what it is on Earth no
matter what units you are using, that should be immediately obvious.
> Quite frankly, the cumbersome english units cause so much confusion
> that we would have far better of understanding of physical concepts if
> we simply used SI in everything (except temp where we would use
> Celsius).
If you have trouble with concepts due to choice of units, then you
don't really understand them at all.
Andrew Usher
Andrew Usher
> The observation that various fields use variations on units is one of
> the great "Duh" lines in the original rant. I work in x-ray
> spectroscopy and routinely use eV for photon energy instead of the
> usual Joule simply because it is easy to relate this to how the x-rays
> are produced. Of course, I then convert to wavelength.
Exactly! And I'm sure you don't go through Joules, etc., to do that.
Instead you memorise the conversion you use, which is 12,398 ev-A. Is
that easier just because it's 'metric'? (In fact ev are only half-
metric at best.)
Andrew Usher
Peter Webb
0.05% concentration. It was too much trouble to multiply 1.25m x 10m x 4m in
my head to get 50 cubic metres of water = 50 tons so I would need about 2.5
kgs.
Knowing that it doesn't make any difference to the calculation, instead I
decided that my pool was 0.4 chains long, 1.6 chains wide, and about 0.4
chains wide. Then I multiplied this out, and converted to gallons capacity.
Then I worked out how many ounces of the chemical I would need per gallon,
multiplied it out, and divided by 16 to get the weight in pounds. Same
thing.
The Chief Instigator
> On Feb 2, 6:47?pm, "Heidi Graw" <hg...@telus.net> wrote:
>
>>?Btw, my own husband prefers
>> the metric system.
>
> And why should his opinion matter, if he hasn't looked at it from the
> perspective I have?
>
> Andrew Usher
I bothered to learn both systems before I was out of elementary school
(i.e., early 1960s), and I'd rather have "1.84 m" on my driver's license.
Aside from that, we'll be a little cooler than usual for early February
around here, around 14 C. (That's 57 F for the old-timers.)
--
Patrick L. "The Chief Instigator" Humphrey (pat...@io.com) Houston, Texas
www.io.com/~patrick/aeros.php (TCI's 2009-10 Houston Aeros) AA#2273
LAST GAME: Houston 3, Abbotsford 1 (February 1)
NEXT GAME: Wednesday, February 3 vs. Peoria, 7:05
Andrew Usher
Is this some kind of a joke? No one would ever use chains here, those
figures are clearly wrong, and there are two unnecessary conversions
there. The way I would do it is surely
4.25 ft * 13 ft * 33 ft * 62 lb/ft^3 * 0.05% ~ 5.6 lb
which is hardly more difficult than the metric formula (considering my
converted numbers were harder to calculate with). Although I did this
in my head, anyone really doing it would use a calculator.
I really shouldn't have to respond to ridiculous stuuf like this!
Andrew Usher
Ken S. Tucker
> >"Ken S. Tucker" <dynam...@vianet.on.ca> wrote in message
Hi Heidi, if I knew there was a girl of the opposite sex
reading my post I wouldn't have mentioned the PP part.
I build houses, and very much respect an old 1940's decision
to base housing construction on 4" x 4" square, leading to
such things like 4'x8' plywood and 2"x4" studs, and much more.
That decision resulted in building high quality low cost homes,
that fit together with a minimum of customized thinking.
The base 12 of the foot is divisible by 2,3,4,6, the number
10 cannot be divided by those without screeeching decimals.
My wife finds MEtric to be annoying, when cooking, when table
spoons, ozs etc work fine. Cups, quarts and gallons works ok.
In Canada kms are too small cuz miles is what a big country
needs, 60 mph is a mile a minute.
In science I think in terms of metric, but science is only a
very small part of commerce and is not generally useful,
for 95% of people.
I figure ya gotta be bi-measureable now a days.
Common units work extremely well, but if you want your house
built in MeTric I'll add 25% to the cost, and you've got it.
Regards
Ken
Heidi Graw
"Ken S. Tucker" <dyna...@vianet.on.ca> wrote in message
news:2d8ea280-58fb-41da...@n33g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
>Ken wrote:
> I build houses, and very much respect an old 1940's decision
> to base housing construction on 4" x 4" square, leading to
> such things like 4'x8' plywood...
...that is 5/8" thick...
>... and 2"x4" studs, and much more.
...like those 2"x10"?
> That decision resulted in building high quality low cost homes,
> that fit together with a minimum of customized thinking.
Well...instead of building by the square foot, you could build
by the square metre.
> The base 12 of the foot is divisible by 2,3,4,6, the number
> 10 cannot be divided by those without screeeching decimals.
2.5 doesn't involve all that much screeching...no worse than
trying to finangle something that is 3/16" of whatever.
>
> My wife finds MEtric to be annoying, when cooking, when table
> spoons, ozs etc work fine. Cups, quarts and gallons works ok.
I use metric measures and metric recipes. Works just fine.
>
> In Canada kms are too small cuz miles is what a big country
> needs, 60 mph is a mile a minute.
Hey, I like driving 120 km/hr down the freeway. It gives me
the impression I'm going much faster than I'm actually driving. ;-)
> I figure ya gotta be bi-measureable now a days.
Yes, it comes in handy knowing both, especially when it
involves cross-border trade and tourism with the US. 70F also
sounds a lot warmer than 20C. No wonder the Americans
think Canadians live in igloos.
> Common units work extremely well, but if you want your house
> built in MeTric I'll add 25% to the cost, and you've got it.
No need. I wouldn't be hiring you anyway. My husband
built the house I designed. Custom? Very...and rather
quite unique.
Take care,
Heidi <...whose house is a mishmash of German metric and British standard.
Ken S. Tucker
On Feb 3, 2:38 am, "Heidi Graw" <hg...@telus.net> wrote:
> "Ken S. Tucker" <dynam...@vianet.on.ca> wrote in messagenews:2d8ea280-58fb-41da...@n33g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
>
> >Ken wrote:
> > I build houses, and very much respect an old 1940's decision
> > to base housing construction on 4" x 4" square, leading to
> > such things like 4'x8' plywood...
>
> ...that is 5/8" thick...
You're an expert. Went in to order some 5/8" during the MEtric
conversion and the guy asks if I want 16mm ply, ok that's the
same, then a few months later I went back and placed an order
for 16mm, and guys asks, do ya mean 5/8" ?
Canucks are really screwed up.
> >... and 2"x4" studs, and much more.
>
> ...like those 2"x10"?
Code on our floor calls for 2"x8" stud, I like a bit of bounce.
> > That decision resulted in building high quality low cost homes,
> > that fit together with a minimum of customized thinking.
>
> Well...instead of building by the square foot, you could build
> by the square metre.
>
> > The base 12 of the foot is divisible by 2,3,4,6, the number
> > 10 cannot be divided by those without screeeching decimals.
>
> 2.5 doesn't involve all that much screeching...no worse than
> trying to finangle something that is 3/16" of whatever.
My max tolerance is 1/8", the thickness of my carbide saw
blade. I draw two lines and cut between them, so my error
is less than a 1/64".
> > My wife finds MEtric to be annoying, when cooking, when table
> > spoons, ozs etc work fine. Cups, quarts and gallons works ok.
>
> I use metric measures and metric recipes. Works just fine.
But a gazillion cook books use, teaspoons, etc. stuff right
off the table.
> > In Canada kms are too small cuz miles is what a big country
> > needs, 60 mph is a mile a minute.
>
> Hey, I like driving 120 km/hr down the freeway. It gives me
> the impression I'm going much faster than I'm actually driving. ;-)
"120 klicks" you must be a hot-rodder. Are you that person
yapping into a cell while breezing past me in a sports car?
> > I figure ya gotta be bi-measureable now a days.
>
> Yes, it comes in handy knowing both, especially when it
> involves cross-border trade and tourism with the US. 70F also
> sounds a lot warmer than 20C. No wonder the Americans
> think Canadians live in igloos.
Yeah, 0F is cold and 100F is hot.
(there are 180 degrees between 32F and 212F, that's how
temperature was unitized, later Celius plagurized the degree,
and screwed it all up.
> > Common units work extremely well, but if you want your house
> > built in MeTric I'll add 25% to the cost, and you've got it.
>
> No need. I wouldn't be hiring you anyway. My husband
> built the house I designed. Custom? Very...and rather
> quite unique.
OK!, wife and I would like to see some pix's.
I'm trying to get a design together, have a look,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/46333912@N06/4260035955/
The Architectural consultants inform me that we have a lack
of washrooms, so I'm redesigning the plumbing.
> Take care,
> Heidi <...whose house is a mishmash of German metric and British standard.
Looking forward.
Ken
jmfbahciv
> "Heidi Graw" <hg...@telus.net> wrote in news:tC4an.64378$PH1.2203@edtnps82:
>
>
>> He prefers the metric. It's easier to learn and easier to use.
>> I also prefer metric for those same reasons.
>
> Which is also a reason for choosing Cosmetology school
> over Engineering.
>
> B.
>
think chefs.
/BAH
Bart Goddard
Don't tell me what to do, whippersnapper. I cook a lot
and I brew a whopping amount of beer. And I gotta say
that beer made with metric units just doesn't taste as
good. Malt in pounds, water in gallons, hops in ounces...
the way God meant it to be!
Bart Goddard
@edtnps82:
>>> He prefers the metric. It's easier to learn and easier to use.
>>> I also prefer metric for those same reasons.
>>
>> Which is also a reason for choosing Cosmetology school
>> over Engineering.
>>
>> B.
>
> <chuckle> ...and lots of folks do just that. A good question
> to ask is, "How do you get the most using the least amount of
> energy?" If cosmetology earns one an adequate living, and it
> requires less energy and effort, then why not?
Most of my students are trying to learn Calculus or
Differential Equations from me. They chose Engineering
not because they know what it is (they don't) but
because they think they can earn more money doing it.
I always manage to work the statement into a lecture:
Sure, you make twice as much as an engineer, but you
have to work 3 times the hours.
Joshua Cranmer
> On Feb 2, 8:19 pm, Joshua Cranmer<Pidgeo...@verizon.invalid> wrote:
>> Oh, so it's bad just because it's French? If you want to boycott French
>> ideas, please reverse all of your chemistry knowledge back to
>> discussions about "phlogiston" (possibly even earlier).
>
> No I don't, certainly not in pure science. This is only a straw man.
Maybe. But it is underlying evidence of an extreme Amerocentric tendency.
>> One of the Mars rovers crashed into Mars. Why? Because one group of
>> people were using SI units and the others Imperial units.
>
> I did mention this in my post. Had NASA never started to convert
> things like this, the problem could never have arisen.
I'm not so optimistic. If NASA were to cooperate with other space
industries, they would have had to match tools and technologies--which
mean at least some departments would have become used to working in SI
by themselves.
>> Except the fact that approximately 5.3% of the world population (U.S.,
>> Liberia, and Burma) uses the Imperial units and 94.8% use SI. Even if
>> you want to measure by GDP impact, you've still got a hefty 20-80% split.
>
> Now this is oversimplified. All countries including the US use metric
> for some purposes. Equally, there is some use of English in countries
> that are officially metric. But so what of the numbers? The US clearly
> has a heck of a lot of power to impose its will on the rest of the
> world.
Woah. You're basically saying here "the U.S. uses Imperial units, so the
rest of the world should too. Because the U.S. uses them." That is the
kind of thinking that lands people in wars. It's also the kind of
thinking that went of fashion a half-century ago when colonial empires
imploded.
>> The cost is in conversion, period.
>
> If that's so, then there's no reason to prefer metric.
Standardization. High upfront cost = lower costs later.
> Obviously you're not counting electricity, in which many prefixes
> beyond those are used regularly. Anyway, the point was that the number
> of independent words is not really any strike against traditional
> units.
I'm counting what most people would use in everyday usage. How many
people start comparing capacitor sizes? The units people are most used
to in electricity are the watt (an SI unit) and kilowatt-hour. Even in
the U.S.
> There wouldn't be any if not for (as usual) the meddling of standards
> organisations. 1024-based units are to be used for computer data (and
> there's a sound reason why) and 1000-based units for everything else.
Actually, it was marketing departments. This disk has 10440 kilobytes
(that is to say, 1,474,560 bytes), so obviously it has 1.44 MB of
storage. Standards organizations, to my knowledge, generally don't
bother with the prefixes, but rather use the numbers directly.
>> How often do you measure stuff in terms of 10^21?
>
> Not often, I suppose. But how do you specify, say, the mass of the
> Earth?
Why would people use that in everyday usage? You're arguing on esoteric
levels, which, quite frankly, most people don't care about.
I routinely refer to liquid volume in amounts up to the few gallons,
occasionally barrels (oil...). Distance really doesn't come up outside
of a thousand miles at most. Weights are generally capped with that of a
large truck, much less in normal usage.
So basically, I can boil down your argument into two main supports:
1. The US uses imperial units, and the US can impose its will on the
other countries. The imperial are more "traditional", so everyone should
go switch to imperial units rather than the more common (but more
artificial) SI units.
2. People come up with crazy things for the SI system, like these
prefixes of "yotta".
To respond to 1: that is such an... imperialist, arch-Amerocentrist view
that it would make me ashamed to even share the same nationality as you.
To respond to 2: doesn't mean we have to use them. It's not like we use
rods, chains, furlongs, hogsheads, hundredweights, grains, etc. on a
daily basis, after all. Most people will stick the a small list of four
or so prefixes to describe what is reasonable for everyday things.
Bart Goddard
int2.gatech.edu:
> Woah. You're basically saying here "the U.S. uses Imperial units, so the
> rest of the world should too.
Yet isn't that the argument the other side gives as well?
"We all use Metric, so the US should too, and by the way,
if they don't, then they're just stoopid."
Aatu Koskensilta
Should his opinion matter if he has looked at it from the perspective
you have? Why?
--
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.kos...@uta.fi)
"Wovon man nicht sprechan kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
bert
>
> - Show quoted text -
ToYa All Metric 10 USA system 0 We make pennies. cameras,lenses etc
all using metric. I don't like stones for weight. Foot for length. I
go with meters and grams TreBert
Joshua Cranmer
> Joshua Cranmer<Pidg...@verizon.invalid> wrote in news:hkbrpu$e0j$1@news-
> int2.gatech.edu:
>
>> Woah. You're basically saying here "the U.S. uses Imperial units, so the
>> rest of the world should too.
>
> Yet isn't that the argument the other side gives as well?
> "We all use Metric, so the US should too, and by the way,
> if they don't, then they're just stoopid."
If one agrees that the systems of units should be standardized, there
are two plausible choices: everyone goes to Imperial or everyone goes to
SI. From a standpoint of pure economics, the latter makes much more sense.
I'm perfectly fine with people advocating the status quo; it's the fact
that Mr. Usher is advocating switching the rest of the world that causes
me to take issue.
Marshall
>
> Which reminds me: It's not known as "German Engineering" for nothing.
> These top-notch masterminds use the metric system. When was the
> last time anyone extolled the virtues of American Engineering? Or,
> British Engineering?
American engineering is fucking awesome. American
engineering split the atom, went to the moon, and
invented the internet. British engineering built
transportation networks all over the world.
Marshall
Marshall
> Andrew Usher <k_over_hb...@yahoo.com> writes:
> > On Feb 2, 6:47 pm, "Heidi Graw" <hg...@telus.net> wrote:
>
> >> Btw, my own husband prefers the metric system.
>
> > And why should his opinion matter, if he hasn't looked at it from the
> > perspective I have?
>
> Should his opinion matter if he has looked at it from the perspective
> you have? Why?
It isn't particularly logically valid, but as a rule of thumb, I
would propose that the tendency to consider things from
the same perspective as Andrew Usher would be good
grounds for ignoring someone.
Marshall
Aatu Koskensilta
> American engineering is fucking awesome. American engineering split
> the atom, went to the moon, and invented the internet.
The atom was split by a New Zealander (in England).
Marshall
>
> I really shouldn't have to respond to ridiculous stuuf like this!
The rest of the world just called to say the feeling is mutual.
Marshall
Heidi Graw
>"Bart Goddard" <godd...@netscape.net> wrote in message
>news:Xns9D14516084083go...@74.209.136.90...
> Joshua Cranmer <Pidg...@verizon.invalid> wrote in
> news:hkbrpu$e0j$1@news-
> int2.gatech.edu:
>
>> Woah. You're basically saying here "the U.S. uses Imperial units, so the
>> rest of the world should too.
>
> Yet isn't that the argument the other side gives as well?
> "We all use Metric, so the US should too, and by the way,
> if they don't, then they're just stoopid."
>
> B.
Actually, I don't care what sort of measuring system the US uses.
I don't need to buy American if I want metric components for
my European imported machinery and equipment. German
engineers are also quite happy to travel to Canada to build
and manufacture stuff for us. They've also built a reputation
of being on time and on budget and they've proven that
time and time again.
The Americans can also choose not to enter into the metric
global market. You can keep your US measures for your
US manufactured goods and simply sell them to your
fellow Americans.
So, while the rest of the world marches on, Americans
are certainly free to remain behind. It's your choice
after all.
Heidi
Bart Goddard
> Actually, I don't care what sort of measuring system the US uses.
> I don't need to buy American if I want metric components for
> my European imported machinery and equipment.
I've spent many fine Summers in Canada, and one of
the first things I've noticed is that concrete blocks
are 8 x 16 inches, floor tiles are 1 sq. ft, building
studs are 2 x 4 (minus 1/2 inch each way), etc. You
may not care, but you're walking on it.
> So, while the rest of the world marches on, Americans
> are certainly free to remain behind.
Right, people who use your preferred system are "ahead"
while anyone else is "behind". This is an odd definition
of "ahead" and "behind", and is, in fact, just a
restatement of the original, unsupported thesis.
Society
"Mark Borgerson" <mborg...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.25d2526c9...@news.eternal-september.org...
>
> If the metric system is a leftist plot,
...and it may well be, given the involvement of the
National Assembly of revolutionary France in its creation...
> it seems strange to me
...much seems strange to you, novice...
> that amongst the first non-scientific organizations in the US
> to adopt and teach the metric system was the US military. [...]
And the Marines once wore _Pickelhauben_ in imitation
of the German Imperial Army. So?
By the way, Borgerson, now that you've used the US military
an attempt to make an argument from authority, any time you
snicker over the phrase "military intelligence" you must
acknowledge that you're a hypocrite (even if only silently
to yourself).
> Hmmm---if the Chinese invade the US, will they have to
> teach their soldiers miles and yards? ;-)
Probably, if they want to use U.S. highway signs without
becoming immobilized as they pause to do tedious
conversions and thereby becoming vulnerable to attack. ;-)
> IIRC, the road signs in Iraq and Afghanistan also
> show distances in km---but that may not be much
> of an issue if the place names are in Arabic script! ;-)
More uncivilized countries use the SI (CKS) scheme
than the Inch-Pound-Second system.
--
The only leftist claim
that can be believed
is "I'm Revolting!"
Bart Goddard
int2.gatech.edu:
> If one agrees that the systems of units should be standardized,
Sure, skip over the main issue. Is there some compelling
reason that we should all be the same? Should we demolish
all those interesting European cities and rebuild them
on the Nebraska-Cartesian model, with nice straight streets
meeting at right angles?
Surely language differences are a bigger barrier to trade
than measuring systems. So under the same arguments, since
English is the most spoken language in the world, shouldn't
we insist that everyone dump their "old, outdated, insanely
hard to learn languages" in preference for English?
The first words out of a...uh...decimaphile's mouth is
"Oh, the Metric system is so much easier." If so, what's
the big deal. If it's easy, then there's no problem.
Certainly it's way easier to learn metric than to learn
French.
Tronscend
excellent parody; a trifle long, though.
T
"Andrew Usher" <k_over...@yahoo.com> skrev i melding
news:242d41ed-7890-4154...@c29g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
> I. Introduction
>
> LEFTIST POLITICS is one of the great errors of our age. [ By leftism I
....
Ken S. Tucker
> jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> wrote innews:hkbq6...@news3.newsguy.com:
>
> > Bart Goddard wrote:
> >> "Heidi Graw" <hg...@telus.net> wrote in
> >>news:tC4an.64378$PH1.2203@edtnps82:
>
> >>> He prefers the metric. It's easier to learn and easier to use.
> >>> I also prefer metric for those same reasons.
>
> >> Which is also a reason for choosing Cosmetology school
> >> over Engineering.
>
> >> B.
>
> > Now try cooking. Before you respond with another snotty post,
> > think chefs.
>
> Don't tell me what to do, whippersnapper. I cook a lot
> and I brew a whopping amount of beer. And I gotta say
> that beer made with metric units just doesn't taste as
> good. Malt in pounds, water in gallons, hops in ounces...
> the way God meant it to be!
Yeah and you squash grapes with 2 feet.
How do you do that in MEtric?
Guess that's why MEtric peoples don't drink wine,
unless it's made by us, the common folks.
Ken
Bruce
@hate.spam.net:
> Andrew Usher wrote:
>
> How many 64ths of an inch are in a mile, idiot?
64*12*5280...big effin deal.
Now tell me what the speed of light is in furlongs per fortnight. No such
interesting abilities in the bland world of metric.....then you can build
me an exact 1/6 scale model of a 1957 Chevy in metric.
--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ne...@netfront.net ---
Ray Vickson
> On Feb 2, 5:45 pm, "Heidi Graw" <hg...@telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Which reminds me: It's not known as "German Engineering" for nothing.
> > These top-notch masterminds use the metric system. When was the
> > last time anyone extolled the virtues of American Engineering? Or,
> > British Engineering?
>
> American engineering is fucking awesome. American
> engineering split the atom,
No, at least, not _first_.
> went to the moon, and
> invented the internet.
No. The internet was invented and developed in Europe by the high-
energy Physics community (CERN).
R.G. Vickson
Joshua Cranmer
> No. The internet was invented and developed in Europe by the high-
> energy Physics community (CERN).
That was the World Wide Web.
The Internet was developed by researchers in the U.S. working under the
ARPA program to link up the various research universities. Why do you
think IANA was originally controlled by the U.S. Department of Defense
(and is now run by a company who does it on a contract with the U.S.
Department of Commerce).
Antares 531
wrote:
Heidi, you make some good points here, but what would you suggest as
an approach to changing all the land survey and architectural layout
schemes from the very obtuse feet/inches/rods/yards/miles, etc., that
were used to lay out the entire U.S.A.? I can't really think of a
workable solution to this problem. It is a burden that our ancestors
placed upon us and we have little choice other than to shut up and
live with it.
Gordon
Heidi Graw
>"Antares 531" <gordonl...@swbell.net> wrote in message
>news:hi1km5lsngjl0trb6...@4ax.com...
(snip)
> Heidi, you make some good points here, but what would you suggest as
> an approach to changing all the land survey and architectural layout
> schemes from the very obtuse feet/inches/rods/yards/miles, etc., that
> were used to lay out the entire U.S.A.? I can't really think of a
> workable solution to this problem. It is a burden that our ancestors
> placed upon us and we have little choice other than to shut up and
> live with it.
All present layouts can be converted into metric units. This, of course,
would lead to properties and buildings having some rather interesting
numbers which would include decimal points. But, any *new* developments
can be built using metric measures and metrically cut materials. So,
instead
of building a house by the square foot, one can build by the square metre.
Current mills don't even need much retooling, if any, because they already
cut
metric or standard depending on their customer's demands. Ie. in BC we
cut lumber for different markets. You name it, and they'll cut it according
to your measure. This kind of versatility allows them to sell their
products
globally.
Take care,
Heidi
Yousuf Khan
> On Feb 2, 5:18 pm, Yousuf Khan <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> <big snip>
>>
>> Wow, you didn't just write over 400 lines worth of anti-metric system
>> rhetoric, did you? Only nutcases would do that. Get some help, will you?
>
> You can't be serious. Every one of those lines is quite rational.
>
> Andrew Usher
You do realize that most of the cranks in these newsgroups start out
like that, don't you?
Yousuf Khan
Andrew Usher
> >> Wow, you didn't just write over 400 lines worth of anti-metric system
> >> rhetoric, did you? Only nutcases would do that. Get some help, will you?
>
> > You can't be serious. Every one of those lines is quite rational.
>
> You do realize that most of the cranks in these newsgroups start out
> like that, don't you?
Go read the whole thing first, and quit your slander.
Andrew Usher
Andrew Usher
> Current mills don't even need much retooling, if any, because they already
> cut
> metric or standard depending on their customer's demands. Ie. in BC we
> cut lumber for different markets. You name it, and they'll cut it according
> to your measure.
In that case, there's no benefit from going metric either.
Andrew Usher
Andrew Usher
> The Internet was developed by researchers in the U.S. working under the
> ARPA program to link up the various research universities. Why do you
> think IANA was originally controlled by the U.S. Department of Defense
> (and is now run by a company who does it on a contract with the U.S.
> Department of Commerce).
Yes. And what does it have to do with units?
The Internet, by its nature, doesn't care what units are used.
Going to the moon was done very largely with English units.
So how is this supposed to be an argument for metric?
Andrew Usher
Andrew Usher
> Hi,
>
> excellent parody; a trifle long, though.
DO you know the meaning of the word 'parody'?
Andrew Usher
Andrew Usher
> > So, while the rest of the world marches on, Americans
> > are certainly free to remain behind.
>
> Right, people who use your preferred system are "ahead"
> while anyone else is "behind". This is an odd definition
> of "ahead" and "behind", and is, in fact, just a
> restatement of the original, unsupported thesis.
One of the things I was trying to get it in my essay was how the pro-
metric people distort language in order to promote their argument.
Usually, when some movement does this, they have a weak argument at
the best - at worst they are deliberately lying.
I wish everyone responding would read at least Sections I-III and VI
of my post (the non-scientific parts), as I should not have to repeat
my arguments then.
Anyway, it's good to see that at least one person understands me.
Andrew Usher
Andrew Usher
> > I really shouldn't have to respond to ridiculous stuuf like this!
>
> The rest of the world just called to say the feeling is mutual.
So bullshit is OK, as long as it's on your side? Well that's all I
need to know.
Andrew Usher
Andrew Usher
> If one agrees that the systems of units should be standardized, there
> are two plausible choices: everyone goes to Imperial or everyone goes to
> SI. From a standpoint of pure economics, the latter makes much more sense.
>
> I'm perfectly fine with people advocating the status quo; it's the fact
> that Mr. Usher is advocating switching the rest of the world that causes
> me to take issue.
I'm not advocating that, except possibly where international
standardisation is an issue.
Andrew Usher
Marshall
So you admit that what you write is bullshit. Noted.
Marshall
Marshall
> Marshall <marshall.spi...@gmail.com> writes:
> > American engineering is fucking awesome. American engineering split
> > the atom, went to the moon, and invented the internet.
>
> The atom was split by a New Zealander (in England).
And mad props to Lord Rutherford for it! Of course the
USA was the first country to make it go BOOM, plus
we still have that whole "moon" and "internet" thing
going.
Also your correction, while a fine and justified one,
leaves completely intact my point, which was a
defense from an entirely unjust slur against
American and British engineering.
Marshall
Andrew Usher
> > > The rest of the world just called to say the feeling is mutual.
>
> > So bullshit is OK, as long as it's on your side? Well that's all I
> > need to know.
>
> So you admit that what you write is bullshit. Noted.
Nothing more can be said (as with http://groups.google.com/group/soc.men/msg/7bbff8f86cdbf89e
).
Andrew Usher
Heidi Graw
>"Andrew Usher" <k_over...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:285479b4-f90d-445b-824a->
> In that case, there's no benefit from going metric either.
>
> Andrew Usher
...and it also means that going metric doesn't necessarily mean
it sucks. Given today's computerization of virtually everything,
if the programming is done right, one just needs to dial in
and the machine will cut to whatever measure it has been
programmed for. If you want an ark using the cubits measure,
dial in, and be done with it.
Anyway, I don't really care what measure is used. All I want
is something that works and what will weather a storm, etc.
As for cooking, I use a pinch of this and a pinch of that.
A handful of this or that, add a dollop and a splash...
voila! A Heidi Graw special that can never be repeated
in exactly the same way. LOL...
Heidi
Bart Goddard
> Heidi, you make some good points here, but what would you suggest as
> an approach to changing all the land survey and architectural layout
> schemes from the very obtuse feet/inches/rods/yards/miles, etc., that
> were used to lay out the entire U.S.A.?
I used to work for a surveyor, and I once mentioned to him
that our job would be hell if we had to switch to metric.
He just shook his head and said, "Naw, they've already
changed it several times. We used to do it in rods
and chains, then we had to do it in miles, feet and inches.
Then we had to switch to decimal feet. It's no big deal."
And indeed, even though the U.S. was laid out in miles,
the measurements were so inaccurate that there are no
sections which are very close to a mile square. The
dimentions are given in decimal feet: 5326.34 ft, etc.
Converting that to metric makes the number itself no
uglier.
But the motivation "We'll finally all be the same!"
is not that appealling to me. It's no more appealling
than the proposal that the entire world switch to
English or Esperanto. Kafka just isn't Kafka in
English.
Marshall
> On Feb 3, 7:57 am, Marshall <marshall.spi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Feb 2, 5:45 pm, "Heidi Graw" <hg...@telus.net> wrote:
>
> > > Which reminds me: It's not known as "German Engineering" for nothing.
> > > These top-notch masterminds use the metric system. When was the
> > > last time anyone extolled the virtues of American Engineering? Or,
> > > British Engineering?
>
> > American engineering is fucking awesome. American
> > engineering split the atom,
>
> No, at least, not _first_.
Fair enough.
> > went to the moon, and
> > invented the internet.
>
> No. The internet was invented and developed in Europe by the high-
> energy Physics community (CERN).
You are making the common but nonetheless annoying mistake
of thinking that the extent of the internet is a badly-designed
text markup standard coupled with a misbegotten file-transfer
protocol. This is particularly ironic considering that you are
posting on a NNTP newsgroup, even if you do so though an
application running on the above johnny-come-lately application
protocol. As someone who once had an office directly across
the hall from Van Jacobson, and later an office just a few door
from Vint Cerf, I'm frustrated at how little recognition there is
for their technically challenging (American) engineering efforts,
while a hack like Tim Berners-Lee is named named
"Greatest Briton of 2004" for a couple of technically unimpressive
but impeccably timed RFCs that stormed into popular
consciousness the way the hula hoop hit 1958.
And anyway, my post was a defense of American and
British engineering. Your corrections, both the correct and
the incorrect one, move credit from an American to a
citizen of the British Empire, so my point remains in
full strength.
Marshall
Marshall
So you're going to shut up now? Excellent.
Marshall
Heidi Graw
>"Ken S. Tucker" <dyna...@vianet.on.ca> wrote in message
>news:69011e79-866e-43f3...@19g2000yql.googlegroups.com...
(snip
>Ken wrote:
>Went in to order some 5/8" during the MEtric
> conversion and the guy asks if I want 16mm ply, ok that's the
> same, then a few months later I went back and placed an order
> for 16mm, and guys asks, do ya mean 5/8" ?
> Canucks are really screwed up.
LOL...nah...we're bi-measurable. We can swing both ways
or more. LOL... I spent my childhood raised the metric
way. Then when we immigrated to Canada I had to
learn the British standard. Later, when my children
entered school, they learned a bastardization of
metrics. All I could do was shake my head in disbelief.
Ah well...
>
>> >... and 2"x4" studs, and much more.
>>
>> ...like those 2"x10"?
>
> Code on our floor calls for 2"x8" stud, I like a bit of bounce.
I'm on concrete ground. Hard on the feet, legs and back unless
I wear my fluffy pink slippers and stand on a cushioned mat
at my various work stations.
>>Heidi wrote:
>> I use metric measures and metric recipes. Works just fine.
>Ken wrote:
> But a gazillion cook books use, teaspoons, etc. stuff right
> off the table.
...not in Canada. But, I rarely use cookbooks. And even if I do,
I never follow the exact recipe. I usually end up making all
kinds of adjustments to make my cooking uniquely Heidi Graw. ;-)
>>Heidi wrote:
>> Hey, I like driving 120 km/hr down the freeway. It gives me
>> the impression I'm going much faster than I'm actually driving. ;-)
> Ken wrote|:
> "120 klicks" you must be a hot-rodder.
My Daddy taught me to drive. His advice? "Just step on it." LOL...
>Are you that person
> yapping into a cell while breezing past me in a sports car?
Nah...I don't own a cell. I refuse to be at anyone's beck
and call. Half the time I don't even answer the telephone.
If it's important enough, they'll call back. I also don't have
caller ID. This way, everyone has an equal chance at
being ignored. I answer at *my convenience.*
(snip)
>>Heidi wrote:
>> No need. I wouldn't be hiring you anyway. My husband
>> built the house I designed. Custom? Very...and rather
>> quite unique.
>Ken wrote:
> OK!, wife and I would like to see some pix's.
I'll describe it. 3,000 square foot level entry
U-shaped bungalow. Vaulted ceilings, 6 sky-lights,
5 glass sliding doors. 2x8 construction, interior
walls insulated to dampen sound, thus reducing
any echoes. Walk in and you can actually
feel the difference. It feels solid and secure. The
house hugs the ground and rolls with any
earthquakes without breaking apart.
Cedar shake roof lined with zinc stripping along
the caps to keep moss from growing on it.
Wide overhanging eaves to keep rain away
from the windows and outside walls.
Specially engineered trussing to hold the load.
In-floor hot water heating, gas fired monstrosity
of engineered gadgetry that I find baffling.
> I'm trying to get a design together, have a look,
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/46333912@N06/426003595
Awesome, but I would hate to be the one cleaning and
maintaining it. Our retirement home will be a small
bungalow with an open floor plan and a large screened
in porch. Hubby will build that one, too.
>
> The Architectural consultants inform me that we have a lack
> of washrooms, so I'm redesigning the plumbing.
Look luck with it.
Heidi
Bart Goddard
@edtnps82:
>> The Architectural consultants inform me that we have a lack
>> of washrooms, so I'm redesigning the plumbing.
>
> Look luck with it.
>
Ed. Note: "Washroom" is Metric for "Bathroom".
Heidi Graw
"Bart Goddard" <godd...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:Xns9D14E13912687go...@74.209.136.100...
> "Heidi Graw" <hg...@telus.net> wrote in news:blran.64560$PH1.28067
> @edtnps82:
>
>>> The Architectural consultants inform me that we have a lack
>>> of washrooms, so I'm redesigning the plumbing.
>>
>> Look luck with it.
>>
>
> Ed. Note: "Washroom" is Metric for "Bathroom".
I also noticed that wee little cyber bugs were munching
on my own post. I'm pretty sure I signed off with
Good luck. Hmmm...
Heidi
Andrew Usher
> I used to work for a surveyor, and I once mentioned to him
> that our job would be hell if we had to switch to metric.
> He just shook his head and said, "Naw, they've already
> changed it several times. We used to do it in rods
> and chains, then we had to do it in miles, feet and inches.
> Then we had to switch to decimal feet. It's no big deal."
When I have had contact with surveying, they used decimal feet -
that's what makes the most sense to me, in that field. Again, decimal
feet and decimal inches never coexist, showing that the units do serve
their different purposes.
> And indeed, even though the U.S. was laid out in miles,
> the measurements were so inaccurate that there are no
> sections which are very close to a mile square. The
> dimentions are given in decimal feet: 5326.34 ft, etc.
They can't be exact, due to the curvature of the Earth. I seem to
remember that the surveys were pretty good, though of course they may
differ by location.
Andrew Usher
Andrew Usher
> And anyway, my post was a defense of American and
> British engineering.
Which is of course based on non-metric units.
Andrew Usher
Andrew Usher
No, your bullying won't work on Usenet. Unfortunately I can't stop you
being an asshole.
Andrew Usher
Marshall
True enough! Even taking the benefits of the switch to
metric as a given, those benefits are diffuse and delayed,
with no immediate strong beneficiary to act as an
advocate. On the other hand, the switching cost is
obvious, immediate, and psychologically painful.
So it's not an easy sell in the best of conditions.
Not entirely dissimilar to qwerty vs. dvorak.
Marshall
Marshall
I'll cop to asshole. But since we are on equal footing with regards
to ability to post, "bully" seems off the mark; I have only mockery
as my weapon to use against your aggressively sophomoric musings.
A bully ought to at least be able to deliver a wedgie.
Marshall
Andrew Usher
> > No, your bullying won't work on Usenet. Unfortunately I can't stop you
> > being an asshole.
>
> I'll cop to asshole. But since we are on equal footing with regards
> to ability to post, "bully" seems off the mark; I have only mockery
> as my weapon to use against your aggressively sophomoric musings.
> A bully ought to at least be able to deliver a wedgie.
No, 'bully' refers to behavior, not necessarily power. And that
subject line is another slander, and there's been nothing like
hypocrisy in this thread.
Andrew Usher
Paul Ciszek
In article <Xns9D13CBECDB6FFgo...@74.209.136.81>,
Bart Goddard <godd...@netscape.net> wrote:
>Frogwatch <dbo...@mindspring.com> wrote in news:b743d9a3-3aeb-478e-a827-
>942438...@u41g2000yqe.googlegroups.com:
>
>> This evening, I did a calculation of the amount of charge necessary to
>> levitate a dust particle on thge moon. Using SI units, I could do all
>> of it in my head because there is then no conversion of pounds of
>> force to anything else or Volts/foot to some other units. The old
>> english units are simply stupid and unnatural confusing
>
>It seems natural to want to divide units into halves, thirds and
>fourths. It's not often that a person needs to levitate a
>dust particle to the moon. But note that it takes more
>mental effort to divide a meter into thirds than it does
>a foot.
What is the density of water in pounds per cubic foot? (Or should it be
cubic inch--and really, since density is mass divided by volume, it should
be slugs instead of pounds...) I could answer that question only by doing
a conversion from the metric value of 1 gram per cubic centimeter.
--
Please reply to: | "Evolution is a theory that accounts
pciszek at panix dot com | for variety, not superiority."
Autoreply has been disabled | -- Joan Pontius
Aatu Koskensilta
> No. The internet was invented and developed in Europe by the high-
> energy Physics community (CERN).
You're thinking of the web. The Internet is incontrovertibly of American
origin.
--
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.kos...@uta.fi)
"Wovon man nicht sprechan kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Paul Ciszek
In article <Xns9D14467643F6Bgo...@74.209.136.95>,
Bart Goddard <godd...@netscape.net> wrote:
>
>Most of my students are trying to learn Calculus or
>Differential Equations from me. They chose Engineering
>not because they know what it is (they don't) but
>because they think they can earn more money doing it.
>
>I always manage to work the statement into a lecture:
>Sure, you make twice as much as an engineer, but you
>have to work 3 times the hours.
I chose Physics because it seemed that there would be less stuff
to remember--you can just derive everything from first principals. ;-)
Paul Ciszek
In article <Xns9D144609322B7go...@74.209.136.95>,
Bart Goddard <godd...@netscape.net> wrote:
>
>Don't tell me what to do, whippersnapper. I cook a lot
>and I brew a whopping amount of beer. And I gotta say
>that beer made with metric units just doesn't taste as
>good. Malt in pounds, water in gallons, hops in ounces...
>the way God meant it to be!
Philistine! What happened to hogsheads and gils? Pour me a dram
of the good stuff, while you're at it...
--
Please reply to: | "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is
pciszek at panix dot com | indistinguishable from malice."
Autoreply is disabled |
Paul Ciszek
In article <slrnhmi48b....@eris.io.com>,
The Chief Instigator <pat...@io.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 17:44:47 -0800 (PST), Andrew Usher
><k_over...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On Feb 2, 6:47?pm, "Heidi Graw" <hg...@telus.net> wrote:
>>
>>>?Btw, my own husband prefers
>>> the metric system.
>>
>> And why should his opinion matter, if he hasn't looked at it from the
>> perspective I have?
>>
>> Andrew Usher
>
>I bothered to learn both systems before I was out of elementary school
>(i.e., early 1960s), and I'd rather have "1.84 m" on my driver's license.
>Aside from that, we'll be a little cooler than usual for early February
>around here, around 14 C. (That's 57 F for the old-timers.)
In one Poul Anderson story, I did a triple-take when he wrote "It was a
hot day, reaching 25 degrees..." Oh, he's writing in metric--hey, wait
a minute! In the same story, he pulled a similar trick with time units.
A "girl" was said to be nine "years" old, and when she and the hero began
getting serious, I had to go back and figure out what the orbital period
of the planet was.
Paul Ciszek
In article <2d8ea280-58fb-41da...@n33g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
Ken S. Tucker <dyna...@vianet.on.ca> wrote:
>
>I build houses, and very much respect an old 1940's decision
>to base housing construction on 4" x 4" square, leading to
>such things like 4'x8' plywood and 2"x4" studs,
Which are nowhere near 2" by 4", last I checked.
Paul Ciszek
In article <UI3an.64365$PH1.41676@edtnps82>,
Heidi Graw <hg...@telus.net> wrote:
>
>...and mechanics in Canada use two sets of tools, one for metric
>and one for non-metric. Car parts are now made all over the world
>and are combined into one vehicle. This means certain parts require
>metric tools and others not. It's a massively confusing thing to work
>on a globally manufactured vehicle. Btw, my own husband prefers
>the metric system.
I thought the only auto manufacturers still using imperial units were
American, and most of them (as in, 2/3) went bankrupt recently...
Paul Ciszek
In article <hkbrpu$e0j$1...@news-int2.gatech.edu>,
Joshua Cranmer <Pidg...@verizon.invalid> wrote:
>On 02/02/2010 11:53 PM, Andrew Usher wrote:
>
>>> How often do you measure stuff in terms of 10^21?
>>
>> Not often, I suppose. But how do you specify, say, the mass of the
>> Earth?
>
>Why would people use that in everyday usage?
I happen to be reading this thread in sci.geo.geology, FWIW.
Aatu Koskensilta
> Also your correction, while a fine and justified one, leaves
> completely intact my point, which was a defense from an entirely
> unjust slur against American and British engineering.
Well, it wasn't my intention to cast doubt on the awesome awesomeness of
American and British engineering. The bee's knees and cat's whiskers,
they are.
Paul Ciszek
In article <Xns9D149007B59A1go...@74.209.136.91>,
Bart Goddard <godd...@netscape.net> wrote:
>
>> So, while the rest of the world marches on, Americans
>> are certainly free to remain behind.
>
>Right, people who use your preferred system are "ahead"
>while anyone else is "behind". This is an odd definition
>of "ahead" and "behind", and is, in fact, just a
>restatement of the original, unsupported thesis.
No, a nation of people who insist that the world is only 6,000 years
old, and refuse to teach their teenage children anything about birth
control or even the most basic facts about human reproduction are
behind.
Paul Ciszek
In article <438ecb1e-34a8-42bb...@v25g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>,
Frogwatch <dbo...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>I even had one professor who worked in a system where all independent
>constants (c, q, permativitty of free space, etc) were all equal to
>1.
I had an E&M textbook like that once...everything was fine until one of
the homework problems ended with having to find the dimensions of a
solenoid needed to satisfy some condition. I just couldn't turn the
ESU's or whatever back into meters and amps.
Paul Ciszek
In article <7e4ca67f-208b-48e5...@s12g2000yqj.googlegroups.com>,
Andrew Usher <k_over...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>that are officially metric. But so what of the numbers? The US clearly
>has a heck of a lot of power to impose its will on the rest of the
>world.
But not as much as it thinks it has.
Sometimes I think it would do the US a world of good if the rest of
the world would stage an "intervention" and stop loaning us money
or selling us oil until we admitted our addiction to both.
Mike Dworetsky
> On Feb 3, 8:01 am, Aatu Koskensilta <aatu.koskensi...@uta.fi> wrote:
>> Marshall <marshall.spi...@gmail.com> writes:
>>> American engineering is fucking awesome. American engineering split
>>
>> The atom was split by a New Zealander (in England).
>
> And mad props to Lord Rutherford for it! Of course the
> USA was the first country to make it go BOOM, plus
> we still have that whole "moon" and "internet" thing
> going.
Using refugee European physicists who all worked in metric units. Most
American physics (certainly nuclear physics) was also done in metric, even
then, and all of it is done in metric now everywhere, as is nearly all
science. Some American engineering is for obscure reasons done in Imperial,
hence the Mars probe disaster.
American engineers invented Darpanet, a communications network for defense
purposes that leaked out as Arpanet to civilian applications such as email
and ftp; a British scientist at CERN came up with the hypertext protocols
that led directly to the internet, a way to use the interconnected network
for passing, storing and creating information content quickly and easily.
Unless you are thinking of Al Gore?
> Also your correction, while a fine and justified one,
> leaves completely intact my point, which was a
> defense from an entirely unjust slur against
> American and British engineering.
Nothing wrong with the engineering (which doesn't explain why General Motors
was bankrupt and had to be bailed out by the Government), but continuing to
extol the virtues of the Imperial system will further depress American
exports. The British all but abandoned use of Imperial measurement in
engineering decades ago, with the occasional battle over whether to allow
grocers to sell things by the pound. You will find all supermarkets in
Britain selling packaging in metric (sometimes with a "translation" to
pounds or pints, etc). Some traditional items are sold in traditional
amounts (a pound of peanut butter) but labelled as 454 gm, or two pints of
milk as 1.136 litres.
The only place you still normally see Imperial in Britain is on road signs
(miles, mph) or when repairing old machinery and you need a Whitworth screw
thread, or something similar.
--
Mike Dworetsky
(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)
Mike Dworetsky
> On Feb 3, 5:13 pm, Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeo...@verizon.invalid> wrote:
>
>> The Internet was developed by researchers in the U.S. working under
>> the ARPA program to link up the various research universities. Why
>> do you think IANA was originally controlled by the U.S. Department
>> of Defense (and is now run by a company who does it on a contract
>> with the U.S. Department of Commerce).
>
> Yes. And what does it have to do with units?
>
> The Internet, by its nature, doesn't care what units are used.
> Going to the moon was done very largely with English units.
>
> So how is this supposed to be an argument for metric?
>
> Andrew Usher
I don't know, but all the other space countries and consortia such as ESA
are using metric, and they are highly successful at launching commercial and
scientific satellites. Even India is getting in on the space industry. The
difference is that none of them are having to prove themselves better than
the Russians.
I don't see any signs lately that the US is going back to the moon,
regardless of units, so at best your comment is an irrelevance. If it ever
does, the astronauts may have to bring passports with valid Chinese visas.
Aatu Koskensilta
> Marshall wrote:
>
>> And mad props to Lord Rutherford for it! Of course the USA was the
>> first country to make it go BOOM, plus we still have that whole
>> "moon" and "internet" thing going.
>
> Using refugee European physicists who all worked in metric units.
> Most American physics (certainly nuclear physics) was also done in
> metric, even then, and all of it is done in metric now everywhere, as
> is nearly all science. Some American engineering is for obscure
> reasons done in Imperial, hence the Mars probe disaster.
I doubt Marshall was trying to argue against the metric system, or for
the Imperial system. He was, I take it, simply valiantly defending the
good name of American and British engineering.
> American engineers invented Darpanet, a communications network for
> defense purposes that leaked out as Arpanet to civilian applications
> such as email and ftp; a British scientist at CERN came up with the
> hypertext protocols that led directly to the internet, a way to use
> the interconnected network for passing, storing and creating
> information content quickly and easily.
Well, no.
Mike Dworetsky
[snip]
>> Common units work extremely well, but if you want your house
>> built in MeTric I'll add 25% to the cost, and you've got it.
>
> No need. I wouldn't be hiring you anyway. My husband
> built the house I designed. Custom? Very...and rather
> quite unique.
>
> Take care,
> Heidi <...whose house is a mishmash of German metric and British
> standard.
About 35 years ago I moved to a new (to me) older house in London and needed
to replace some damaged floorboards. When all the houses in my area were
built they were done in Imperial measurement with boards, as I recall, 5-5/8
inches wide (finished size), or 143 mm.
But when it came to buying some new replacement boards, I couldn't find any
because timber had been decreed to be in metric cuts a few years earlier.
They literally would not fit. So I had to have the merchant trim about 5 mm
off the edges of all the 150-mm boards I bought so I could fit them in.
(Floorboards have a small gap between them in most houses; normally you
would lay your interior flooring on top of them.)
My point is that it should have been perfectly possible to measure in
metric, but retain the same historic physical size as a stock option,
because the vast majority of housing stock used the old size, however you
measure it. None of this made any sense to me but some government official
had decreed it because he liked round numbers, or because 150mm was some
sort of standard continental timber size.
Cwatters
> Joshua Cranmer <Pidg...@verizon.invalid> wrote in
> news:hkbrpu$e0j$1@news-
> int2.gatech.edu:
>
>> Woah. You're basically saying here "the U.S. uses Imperial units, so the
>> rest of the world should too.
>
> Yet isn't that the argument the other side gives as well?
> "We all use Metric, so the US should too, and by the way,
> if they don't, then they're just stoopid."
>
> B.
I was a schoolboy when the UK went metric so I had to learn both. Metric/SI
units are a lot easier to work with. There are fewer different constants you
have to remember.
I just wish we'd gone the whole way. We buy gasoline in Liters but most
people still work out fuel consumption in miles to the gallon. We write "4
Pints of milk" on our shopping list but it's sold in 2L bottles at the
supermarket. I'll bet many people haven't noticed and now have a warped
sense of how big a pint is/was.
Bart Goddard
news:hke1bi$n19$6...@reader2.panix.com:
>>It seems natural to want to divide units into halves, thirds and
>>fourths. It's not often that a person needs to levitate a
>>dust particle to the moon. But note that it takes more
>>mental effort to divide a meter into thirds than it does
>>a foot.
>
> What is the density of water in pounds per cubic foot?
As usual, the decimaphile offers us a calculation that
1. is already known and 2. nobody ever does. Against
that uselessness, I offer back the useful and often
performed calculation of dividing land into halves,
quarters, halves of quarters, etc.
When the rubber hits the road, God didn't accomadate
us by making anything in the universe come out in an
even number of meters or liters. So every REAL calculation
in metric is just as nasty as it is in the English
system. (I guess I am assuming that you don't sit
around all day re-calculating the density of water
over and over again, just because it's so delightfully
easy.)
B.
Mike Dworetsky
> "Mike Dworetsky" <plati...@pants.btinternet.com> writes:
>
>> Marshall wrote:
>>
>>> And mad props to Lord Rutherford for it! Of course the USA was the
>>> first country to make it go BOOM, plus we still have that whole
>>> "moon" and "internet" thing going.
>>
>> Using refugee European physicists who all worked in metric units.
>> Most American physics (certainly nuclear physics) was also done in
>> metric, even then, and all of it is done in metric now everywhere, as
>> is nearly all science. Some American engineering is for obscure
>> reasons done in Imperial, hence the Mars probe disaster.
>
> I doubt Marshall was trying to argue against the metric system, or for
> the Imperial system. He was, I take it, simply valiantly defending the
> good name of American and British engineering.
>
>> American engineers invented Darpanet, a communications network for
>> defense purposes that leaked out as Arpanet to civilian applications
>> such as email and ftp; a British scientist at CERN came up with the
>> hypertext protocols that led directly to the internet, a way to use
>> the interconnected network for passing, storing and creating
>> information content quickly and easily.
>
> Well, no.
I was using the term internet a bit loosely. Would have helped if you had
elaborated.
Well, technically, what we now call the internet is a system of
interconnected computer systems sharing certain protocols such as IP and TCP
and was around and being used by academics in the 1970s and 1980s, but it
was difficult to send stuff and sometimes it took days for an email to
propagate to the recipient if in another country. There was Arpanet,
NSFnet, Janet, IBMnet (or something like that, I can't recall its name).
So in that sense yes the Internet existed before Berners-Lee et al came up
with better ways to create documents that you read on a terminal screen
(with links). What we used to do was create ftp sites and people could send
or retrieve stuff to and from such sites, or send each other attachments as
text documents. It was clunky and slow. Back then your typical terminal
couldn't do images, and the first browsers pre-Netscape were things like
Mosaic using http and ftp that could embed links in the text. It was a
terrific improvement, at least if you were doing science. By then documents
could be formatted in post-script using TeX and that made it easier too. MS
Word didn't come along until later.
Bart Goddard
@reader2.panix.com:
>
> In article <Xns9D149007B59A1go...@74.209.136.91>,
> Bart Goddard <godd...@netscape.net> wrote:
>>
>>> So, while the rest of the world marches on, Americans
>>> are certainly free to remain behind.
>>
>>Right, people who use your preferred system are "ahead"
>>while anyone else is "behind". This is an odd definition
>>of "ahead" and "behind", and is, in fact, just a
>>restatement of the original, unsupported thesis.
>
> No, a nation of people who insist that the world is only 6,000 years
> old, and refuse to teach their teenage children anything about birth
> control or even the most basic facts about human reproduction are
> behind.
Maybe. But the point above is that one's measuring system
is NOT the reason one is "behind".
(And, really, our children seem to know all about reproduction,
and are quite skilled at it. It seems odd that you think
your kids are "ahead" in this when you have to teach them
how to do what ours seems to know inately.)
J. Clarke
Yeah, like the Chinese are going to the Moon anytime soon.
In any case, China is a signatory of the Outer Space Treaty.