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Let's stop counting centuries

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Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#361

Post by lye »

jonathan_landy wrote: post #317
swyx wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oooor we can slowly migrate towards sensibility as we did celsius and centimeters

Re temp, I’m glad we use F for daily life in the USA. The most common application I have for temp is to understand the weather and I like the 0-100 range for F as that’s the typical range for weather near me. For scientific work I obviously prefer kelvin. Celsius is nearly useless.

What the hell are you talking about. If it's 0°C outside (or below that), I know that it's high time to put winter tires on because the water in the puddles will freeze and driving on summer tires becomes risky. I had to look it up, but apparently that's +32 °F. Good luck remembering that.

+10°C is "it's somewhat cold, put a jacket on". +20°C is comfortable in light clothing. +30°C is pretty hot. +40°C is really hot, put as little clothing as society permits and stay out of direct sun.

Same with negatives, but in reverse.

Boiling water is +100°C, melting ice is very close to 0°C. I used that multiple times to adjust digital thermometers without having to look up anything.

It's the most comfortable system I can imagine. I tried living with Fahrenheit for a month just for fun, and it was absolutely not intuitive.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#362

Post by autoexec »

prerok wrote: post #335
beachy wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Celsius is nearly useless. That's like ... your opinion man. Personally I like knowing that water boils at exactly 100 degrees.

At sea level, yes :) I do agree, though I live in Europe and C is the norm. I could never wrap my head around F. That said, I think 0 is more important in daily life, below or above freezing. How much is that in F again?

We just need a new scale just for weather where 100 is 100F and 0 is 32F/0C then everyone can be happy. We'd have a lot more days with subzero temperatures though

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#363

Post by dinkumthinkum »

BurningFrog wrote: post #174

Immigrating from a country that uses "1700s", it probably took a decade before I had internalized to subtract 1 to get the real number. I will resent it till I die.

Resent is a little strong isn’t it? I feel like today we have such a victim culture that we are oppressed by the most trivial of matters.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#364

Post by lye »

creeble wrote: post #360
jonathan_landy wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re temp, I’m glad we use F for daily life in the USA. The most common application I have for temp is to understand the weather and I like the 0-100 range for F as that’s the typical range for weather near me. For scientific work I obviously prefer kelvin. Celsius is nearly useless.

I agree. For ambient temp, F is twice as accurate in the same number of digits. It also reflects human experience better; 100F is damn hot, and 0F is damn cold. Celsius is for chemists.

There's very little difference between e.g. +25°C and +26°C, not sure why you would need event more accuracy in day to day life. There are decimals if you require that for some reason.

Celsius works significantly better in cold climates for reasons mentioned in another comment.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#365

Post by flakes »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #319

Another example of confusing numeric systems emerges from 12-hour clocks. For many people, asking them to specify which one is 12AM and which one is 12PM is likely to cause confusion. This confusion is immediately cleared up if you just adopt a 24-hour clock. This is a hill I'm willing to die on.

A few months ago, my girlfriend and I missed a comedy show because we showed up on the wrong day. The ticket said Saturday 12:15am, which apparently meant Sunday 12:15am, as part of the Saturday lineup. Still feel stupid about that one.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#366

Post by zdragnar »

lye wrote: post #361
jonathan_landy wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re temp, I’m glad we use F for daily life in the USA. The most common application I have for temp is to understand the weather and I like the 0-100 range for F as that’s the typical range for weather near me. For scientific work I obviously prefer kelvin. Celsius is nearly useless.

What the hell are you talking about. If it's 0°C outside (or below that), I know that it's high time to put winter tires on because the water in the puddles will freeze and driving on summer tires becomes risky. I had to look it up, but apparently that's +32 °F. Good luck remembering that. +10°C is "it's somewhat cold, put a jacket on". +20°C is comfortable in light clothing. +30°C is pretty hot. +40°C is really hot,…

You'll want winter tires on well before the air temperature hits freezing for water. Forecasts aren't that predictable, and bridges (no earth heat sink underneath) will ice over before roads do.

40 F is a good time for getting winter tires on.

As someone who lives in a humid, wet area that goes from -40 at night in winter to 100+ F in summer, I also vastly prefer Fahrenheit.

The difference between 60, 70, 80 and 90 is pretty profound with humidity, and the same is true in winter. I don't think I've ever set a thermometer to freezing or boiling, ever. All of my kitchen appliances have numbers representing their power draw.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#367

Post by 1over137 »

phkahler wrote: post #320
tempodox wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logic is in short supply and off-by-one errors are everywhere. Most people don't care. I think it's more doable to learn to just live with that than to reprogram mankind.

Nobody's asking to reprogram anyone. Just stop using one of two conventions. The reason to do it is simple and obvious. I'm really baffled at the responses here advocating strongly for the current way. But I guess that's just a "people thing"

Asking me to stop using my preferred convention is tantamount to 'reprogramming' me.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#368

Post by inglor_cz »

jonathan_landy wrote: post #317
swyx wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oooor we can slowly migrate towards sensibility as we did celsius and centimeters

Re temp, I’m glad we use F for daily life in the USA. The most common application I have for temp is to understand the weather and I like the 0-100 range for F as that’s the typical range for weather near me. For scientific work I obviously prefer kelvin. Celsius is nearly useless.

"Celsius is nearly useless."

http://i.imgur.com/3ZidINK.png?1

For anyone not living in the US or Jamaica or Belize, it is Fahrenheit that is completely useless. Which is something like 7,7 billion people.

0 = water freezing temp is hugely useful heuristics for anyone living in moderate climate.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#369

Post by tetris11 »

ash wrote: post #254
tetris11 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This leaves ambiguous how to refer to decades like 1800-1809. For these you should ~~specify the wildcard digits as “the 180*s” manually~~ write out the range. Please do not write “the 181st decade”. I think it wouldn't be wrong to say "the 1800s decade" or "the primus 2000s" or "the alpha 1900s"

I don't find it persuasive. First of all, people are not going to start writing and saying wildcards. Second, there is an established convention to say "2000s" and mean 2000-2009.

no, that part was crossed out as a joke (hence my attempt to add '~' before and after the crossed out section)
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