The metric system sucks
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From: Bart Goddard on 3 Feb 2010 07:53 jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv(a)aol> wrote in news:hkbq66327kt(a)news3.newsguy.com: > Bart Goddard wrote: >> "Heidi Graw" <hgraw(a)telus.net> wrote in >> news:tC4an.64378$PH1.2203(a)edtnps82: >> >> >>> He prefers the metric. It's easier to learn and easier to use. >>> I also prefer metric for those same reasons. >> >> Which is also a reason for choosing Cosmetology school >> over Engineering. >> >> B. >> > Now try cooking. Before you respond with another snotty post, > think chefs. Don't tell me what to do, whippersnapper. I cook a lot and I brew a whopping amount of beer. And I gotta say that beer made with metric units just doesn't taste as good. Malt in pounds, water in gallons, hops in ounces... the way God meant it to be! B. -- Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
From: Bart Goddard on 3 Feb 2010 07:55 "Heidi Graw" <hgraw(a)telus.net> wrote in news:Ut7an.64398$PH1.36602 @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. B. -- Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
From: Joshua Cranmer on 3 Feb 2010 07:56 On 02/02/2010 11:53 PM, Andrew Usher wrote: > On Feb 2, 8:19 pm, Joshua Cranmer<Pidgeo...(a)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. -- Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth
From: Greg Neill on 3 Feb 2010 08:57 Matt wrote: > The metric base units are hosed. > > A meter is too long. If it weren't, the base imperial unit would be > the yard. But few people find it convenient to express distance in > yards, so we use feet. Strange, I see road signs that express velocities in miles per hour, not feet per second, and distances between towns in miles, not feet. And I find that common objects' measurements are given in inches. Lots of engineering tolerances are given in 'mils'. Do you think perhaps that the choice of unit might depend upon the discipline and/or relative scale and/or circumstance? > > A degree celcius is too big. A temperature of 100 degrees F is a > change in order of magnitude. It sounds hot. ....because you're used to the Fahrenheit scale... and 100 degrees C is certainly hot, it's the temperature at which water boils. > A temperature of 38 > degrees C has no change in numeric character from 25 degrees C. Erm, and that's important technically why? Oh, it's the touchy- feely guide to science. > And > zero degrees F sounds cold. Who wants to be outside when there is "no" > temperature? (Don't get your panties in a wad that this isn't close to > absolute zero. The non-techie doesn't care about that.) Zero degrees > C is only light coat weather to some. Zero C is where water freezes. I can understand that. 100 C is where water boils. I can understand that, too. Comfortable (shirt sleeves) is between 18 C and say 28C. Easy peasy. > > A newton is too small. Even the SI proponents don't use it. Really? Too small? It's less than a quarter the size of the pound force. > > A kilogram is too heavy. A weight of 100 pounds is a change in order > of magnitude. A change of 100 kg is also a change in order of magnitide. What's you're point? > It sounds heavy. A weight of 45 kilograms has no change > in numeric character from 30 kilograms. A change from 35 pounds to 45 pounds has a similar 'flaw'. > > The value of 'g' in metric units, 9.8 m/s^2. isn't more convenient > than 32.2 ft/s^2. Except that it's close to 10 m/s^2 for rough calculations. Your argument is a non-starter. And g = 32.174 ft/s^2 is not aesthetically any better than 9.8. > > That the metric units are supposedly based in something more objective > is irrelevant. People use units of measurement. People are quite > subjective. It doesn't matter to the non-techie that the distance from > the equator to the pole (which is not measurable with a ruler) can > (almost) be expressed in a roundish number with lots of zeros. Which, of course, is why the meter is no longer defined as a fraction of the pole-equator distance, and why the inch is now defined in terms of the metric units.
From: Bart Goddard on 3 Feb 2010 08:59
Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18(a)verizon.invalid> wrote in news:hkbrpu$e0j$1(a)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. -- Cheerfully resisting change since 1959. |