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Why do people think we give a flying fluck what the rest of the world does?! I don't give a damn. The rest of the world is still mooching off of us and our generous charity and aid!
Location: Northern Ireland and temporarily England
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Quote:
Originally Posted by allenk893
Why do people think we give a flying fluck what the rest of the world does?! I don't give a damn. The rest of the world is still mooching off of us and our generous charity and aid!
Having everything divisible by 10 =/= logical. The other measurements are actually based on measures of the body and the natural world. That is, you can measure without a ruler in many cases. The month is first because when someone asks the date at they haven't been observing holidays lately, they want to know at the very least "Oh it's March ummm... let me check my calender... 15th" (BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH), they don't care about it being the 15th if they haven't kept track of the month. In order of importance, the month is most crucial (since knowing the date is no good if you are late or early by a month), then the date, then the year (since you are unlikely to need the year except when writing checks).
Don't kid yourself, the metric system has nothing to do with logic, and everything to do with French Revolution meddling. They also wanted to change the name of the months, but that one couldn't be justified long term. Yes the numbers are arbitrary. Life is arbitrary. Get used to it.
The imperial system is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6 making it better for surveying and actual measurement. The imperial temperature system is far more accurate and allows more range of temperature. Because you know, it does actually matter to an airline whether the plane's wing's are partially frozen, completely frozen, etc.
So, let's talk about the imperial versus metric, with regard to temperature.
You go into a hot theatre in Europe, that they're like "Man, it's 35C in here! Really hot!" Hold up, that temperature is just past 1/3 of the water boiling point in C. So why is it about 95F in the maximum is 212 in F? That means you are leaving out a few fine gradations of temperature there. -20C is actually really -4F. Essentially, you're projecting it way worse than it should be to make a fixed point.
My one and only beef with Fahrenheit is that his scale is that it starts at 32, making the maximum temperature higher than it should be. It's because it's based on salt water.
Ideally, -20C "twenty below" would be -36F (meaning you should not be outside). 0F would be typical water freeze temperature. 180F would be typical water boil temperature. The typical conversion of Celsius to Fahrenheit would then be a nice even easy to calculate 9:5 ratio, meaning that "really hot 35C" actually is a hot day of 63 (water temperature for pools always bugged me because the area felt really hot, but the water was supposedly 80, but felt cold to the touch until 95), while if the temperature is 100F you should be in some sort of shelter (132F old). In terms of conversion, in terms of temperature to human feel, in terms of general utility this seems like a better system. Please please please some scientists start using it, so we can drop this salt water nonsense.
Total BS, especially the month part and the 6 reasons.
I haven't seen it. Sizes are displayed in both inches and cm. People also use inches for the size of TVs when they talk. It's the same for car tires as well.
... The other measurements are actually based on measures of the body and the natural world. ...
The argument that "imperial measurements are based on dimensions relevant to the human body" is not persuasive. When we have no means of reckoning other than our fingers and toes, yes indeed we'd have measurement-systems based on our bodies. But then, why aren't we still using cubits? The cubit is the distance from the middle fingertip (how appropriate!) to the elbow... developed independently by several ancient civilizations. But somehow it's been rendered obsolete. Why?
As for Fahrenheit being superior to Celcius because one degree of Fahrenheit is a smaller change in temperature (and is therefore more "precise")... are decimals of degrees somehow unusable or forbidden? What about 22.5 deg C, for example?
If I were designing a measurement-system from scratch, I'd base it off of Planck's constant and properties of the hydrogen atom... because, you know, now we can measure that sort of stuff, and these are fundamentals of the universe, rather than the size of some ancient guy's body-parts.
Interesting how people that favored going metric were called "communists". Sound familiar, hmmm?
No, it doesn't sound familiar. I lived through the Metric Scare of the 1970's and I don't recall "communist" as a particular term of disparagement. Maybe "hippie", "sandal-wearer", "French", but not "communist".
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