The metric system sucks
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From: Bart Goddard on 5 Feb 2010 19:57 "Bob Myers" <nospamplease(a)address.invalid> wrote in news:hki8u3$ugb$1 @usenet01.boi.hp.com: > Bart Goddard wrote: > >> If there's a compelling reason for the US to switch to >> metric, I have yet to hear it. > > So what's wrong with: > > (1) It's inefficient (and has a higher risk of error) to > have to deal with two systems, It's not wrong, it's just not true. Switching the US to metric will increase error, because so many people will be uncoordinated with it. How many children will you kill today, just so you can have better efficiency 50 years from now? > (2) The rest of the world is already using metric, in > most places pretty much exclusively. Asked and answered. The "you should be like us" argument is only one degree removed from racism. Apply the same reasoning to language and you'll see what I mean. B. -- Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
From: Andrew Usher on 5 Feb 2010 20:54 On Feb 4, 8:49 pm, Matt <30d...(a)net.net> wrote: > Who came up with early units of measure, like the cubit? It wasn't > some scientist in a lab. The cubit was quite anthropocentric and was > arguably superior to either the foot or the meter for everyday use by > humans. It can't have been that useful, as it became obsolete. Is there even a cubit in English units? I suppose it would just be half a yard, following the Romans. Andrew Usher
From: Andrew Usher on 5 Feb 2010 20:58 On Feb 5, 5:15 pm, "Bob Myers" <nospample...(a)address.invalid> wrote: > (1) It's inefficient (and has a higher risk of error) to > have to deal with two systems, which we effectively > are doing now despite being a supposedly "English > system" country. As I and Bart have said repeatedly, the same could be said of languages, in some respects more so. Yet the same leftists who want so badly for us to go metric are pushing linguistic diversity on us. That's because it's all politics. > (2) The rest of the world is already using metric, in > most places pretty much exclusively. And that's their business, I suppose. > The U.S. has ALREADY "gone metric" in many, > many cases. We buy soft drinks in 2-liter bottles, > and wine in 750 mL bottles. The latter is only because of government compulsion, in one isolated law passed in the 1970s. The former, though, had no good explanation, except perhaps that the industry wants to make it harder to compare prices of different sizes - hardly anyone knows e.g. how many 2-L bottles make a 12-pack. Both should be reversed, for consistency. Andrew Usher
From: Andrew Usher on 5 Feb 2010 21:08 On Feb 5, 2:34 pm, nos...(a)nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote: > >> 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. > > >And did you then realise just how silly SI is for EM calculations? > > Um, no. All of my earlier courses delt with electricity and magnetism > in SI units and everything made sense. SI units make sense? I myself never really understood EM until I saw the formulae presented in proper units (see Section IIX of my essay). > Furthermore, you buy components > with values measured in microfarads or millihenries, not dimensionless > ESU values or whatever it was that textbook used. Yeah, but you don't calculate in them, do you? They're only used by convention (Section VII), which actually discredits metric. > I don't even know the > names of any English/Imperial units for voltage, electrical charge, > magnetic field strength, capacitance, or inductance. There aren't any separate ones. But one can make ad hoc units like Volts per inch, electrons per sq. inch, etc., as often would prove convenient. Andrew Usher
From: Andrew Usher on 5 Feb 2010 21:10
On Feb 5, 10:18 am, Mark Borgerson <mborger...(a)comcast.net> wrote: > > Not the full circumference, but the length of the 90-degree arc from pole to > > equator. > > Thanks. I missed that factor of four. Nominal 40,000 km circumference > divided by 4 = 10,000km = 1x10^7 m. The actual polar circumference of the Earth is said to be 40,008 km. So the surveys were fairly close, but the accuracy was clearly not good enough for a definition (indeed, even the pendulum would not be good enough). Andrew Usher |