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The metric system sucks



 
 
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  #11  
Old February 3rd 10, 02:42 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Andrew Usher
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Posts: 586
Default The metric system sucks

On Feb 2, 7:06 pm, Uncle Al 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, 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
  #12  
Old February 3rd 10, 02:42 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Andrew Usher
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Posts: 586
Default The metric system sucks

On Feb 2, 7:06 pm, Uncle Al 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, 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
  #13  
Old February 3rd 10, 02:44 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Andrew Usher
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 586
Default The metric system sucks

On Feb 2, 6:47*pm, "Heidi Graw" 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
  #14  
Old February 3rd 10, 02:45 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Heidi Graw
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Posts: 13
Default The metric system sucks



"Frogwatch" 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




  #15  
Old February 3rd 10, 02:49 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Heidi Graw
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Posts: 13
Default The metric system sucks



"Andrew Usher" wrote in message
...
On Feb 2, 6:47 pm, "Heidi Graw" 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



  #17  
Old February 3rd 10, 03:03 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Uncle Al
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Posts: 697
Default The metric system sucks

Andrew Usher wrote:

On Feb 2, 7:06 pm, Uncle Al 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,

[snip cap]

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)?

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz4.htm
  #18  
Old February 3rd 10, 03:06 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Bart Goddard
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 28
Default The metric system sucks

Uncle Al wrote in news:4B68CC20.DC152D86
@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.

B.
  #19  
Old February 3rd 10, 03:07 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Bart Goddard
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 28
Default The metric system sucks

"Heidi Graw" 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.
  #20  
Old February 3rd 10, 03:19 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Joshua Cranmer
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Posts: 5
Default The metric system sucks

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
 




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