The metric system sucks
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From: Heidi Graw on 2 Feb 2010 20:45 >"Frogwatch" <dbohara(a)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
From: Heidi Graw on 2 Feb 2010 20:49 "Andrew Usher" <k_over_hbarc(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message news:59061f76-2ea5-4dc4-8e76-4065498271ec(a)z41g2000yqz.googlegroups.com... > On Feb 2, 6:47 pm, "Heidi Graw" <hg...(a)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 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
From: Bart Goddard on 2 Feb 2010 21:02 Frogwatch <dbohara(a)mindspring.com> wrote in news:b743d9a3-3aeb-478e-a827- 94243899e421(a)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.
From: Bart Goddard on 2 Feb 2010 21:07 "Heidi Graw" <hgraw(a)telus.net> wrote in news:tC4an.64378$PH1.2203(a)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. -- Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
From: Joshua Cranmer on 2 Feb 2010 21:19
On 02/02/2010 05:54 PM, Andrew Usher wrote: > 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 |