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The Glass Famine

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Re: The Glass Famine

#61

Post by forlorn_mammoth »

petesergeant wrote: post #37

It's annoying that Trump squandered a political opportunity to help America reindustrialize key areas. He had political support to use protectionism and general Trumpiness that could have enacted some useful onshoring reforms, and instead ended up setting illegal tariffs on the Heard Island and McDonald islands.

Didn't we also create a very large internal jobs program to 'enforce immigration law'?

instead of creating a very large internal jobs program to build/repair fundamental infrastructure?

Such a waste. The ROI from 'better roads' is massive.

Re: The Glass Famine

#62

Post by wahern »

Telemakhos wrote: post #16
abirch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that the economy or markets are everything; however, if you don't have dissidents you don't as much friction. If China wants to move your mother's grave for a factory, there's not a lot you can do. Whereas in democracies you can try to draw it out with legal action, etc.

The phenomenon of "nail houses" testifies against the notion that the Chinese government will expropriate whatever land it wants, although nail houses aren't graves. Graves are less of a concern, because the dead by law must be buried in public cemeteries: isolated rural burials are uncommon.

While the photos of nail houses tell a story of state-tolerated individual defiance, the reality is actually the opposite: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/6194/1/Driven_to_...

Nail houses always lose. They have their services and access cut-off by private developers without any recourse to the courts. The nail houses exist only for the duration of arbitration proceedings over compensation for the property. FMV value is usually determined by prices before the area was considered for development, which in poor areas is a pittance. But in arbitration the villagers are merely postponing the inevitable.

Also, IIRC, nail houses are rare as outside cities private ownership of property was not common, at least into the early 2000s. (Not sure how common it is now.) And they only became a thing circa 2004 when China amended their constitution to require legal process for expropriation, but that process provides much fewer protections than it does in, e.g., the US.

Re: The Glass Famine

#63

Post by ncruces »

MDCore wrote: post #48
mrguyorama wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO metric is missing a critical measurement that is roughly the size of "a foot". Most measurements in one measuring system have very similar equivalents in other measuring systems or useful approximations, like a pound being 1/2 a kilo, a liter being about a quart, or a meter being about a yard. Even various ancient chinese measurements can be similar like this. Except the metric system seems to have eschewn the co…

I went to school with a 30cm ruler in the 80s. As a result I have an instinctual sense for that length.

It's the length of an A4 sheet of paper (also, by extension, the size of many school books, backpacks and … rulers).

Re: The Glass Famine

#64

Post by flir »

mrguyorama wrote: post #32
williamdclt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

still isn't for most purposes, and most people are still more comfortable with yards than meters for day-to-day stuff (friends are often looking at me blankly when I give a distance in meters)

IMO metric is missing a critical measurement that is roughly the size of "a foot". Most measurements in one measuring system have very similar equivalents in other measuring systems or useful approximations, like a pound being 1/2 a kilo, a liter being about a quart, or a meter being about a yard. Even various ancient chinese measurements can be similar like this. Except the metric system seems to have eschewn the co…

Imperial measurements are often based on the human body: an inch is the width of a thumb, a yard is the distance between your nose and your outstretched finger, a fathom is outstretched finger to outstretched finger, a mile is a thousand paces, hands are still used to measure horses...

This is great for estimation, but these separate measurements had to be massaged to get them all on the same base (there were three different definitions of the fathom in use well into the 1700s) so the result is somewhat arbitrary (4 inches to a hand, 3 hands to a foot, 6 feet to a fathom, 880 fathoms to a mile). Metric's clearly the more consistent, simpler system for anything beyond estimates.

The closest to what you're looking for is probably the decimetre (dm) at 100mm (roughly one hand). But in everyday speech, "30 centimetres" sounds less clunky than "3 decimetres", and in technical speech everything human-scale is done in mm.

Re: The Glass Famine

#65

Post by oblio »

CDRdude wrote: post #39
BoxOfRain wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a student one of my mates was going on about the superiority of the metric system and how he wished the UK would adopt it fully rather than the heterogenous mix we actually have. The football was on in the background, and shortly after a goal was scored he exclaimed 'that must have been from thirty yards!' Personally I quite like the fact we use both, it underlines that our human systems of measurement are…

I find it mildly amusing that fully metric countries are seemingly stuck with some standardized measurements based on imperial units. Like how a soccer/football goal is 8 feet x 24 feet / 7.32 m x 2.44 m. Or how a standard shipping conatiner is 40 feet x 8 feet x 8 feet 6 inches/ 12.192 m x 2.438 m x 2.591 m. Or standard gague railways being 4 feet 8.5 inches / 1.435 m.

That's due to outsized British and American influence, but even that is waning. Nobody will change legacy sizes such as football goals, but every sport invented outside of those countries will use metric sizes. As the US wanes in influence, this will happen more and more.

Re: The Glass Famine

#66

Post by oblio »

mrguyorama wrote: post #60
MDCore wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to school with a 30cm ruler in the 80s. As a result I have an instinctual sense for that length.

Why shouldn't a measurement that is so natural and familiar to most people that most human societies developed an analogous version and even places without it still end up using it, be a first class citizen of that measurement system? That's what confuses me. It's a dumb confusion admittedly. It's basically an argument to "Beauty" or aesthetics or similar.

Why do you need feet to measure anything? I've never in my life measured anything using feet. Paces, that's a different story, but those are closer to 1m, anyway.
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