Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 363 posts

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#41

Post by sbmassey »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #24
geuis wrote: post #10

This whole article just feels like fluff. The very first "fact" about the origins of the qwerty keyboard are completely wrong. The Wikipedia page doesn't have a single mention of telegraph and has a complete history of its development. A history can be found in this 1996 article among others http://reason.com/archives/1996/06/01/typing-errors/ .

Are the people who link to this libertarian propaganda every time qwerty or Dvorak gets mentioned underhanded libertarians hoping to spread their brand of economic religion or people who have been utterly taken in by the former to the point that they think this is an unbiased debunking?

Libertarianism is at least as rational and self consistent as any other ideology, so Reason seems as good a place to read articles as the Guardian or whatever. Are you sure that you aren't in the thrall of some other economic religion, and therefore overly eager to harrumph at the unbelievers?

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#42

Post by [deleted] »

raldi wrote: post #20
kybernetyk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I have the same intuitive feeling with Celsius. I guess it depend on which temperature system you grew up with.

As I suggested on a parallel reply, could you say a bit more about why you feel it makes sense, perhaps with a chart like the one I wrote up?

[deleted]

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#43

Post by kps »

upofadown wrote: post #17

Since our civilization seems to have moved to binary for actual computations I wonder if we will someday go back to thinking in terms of halves, quarters, eighths, etc. of some standard unit. Then people would mock the metric system for being implicitly based on the biological accident of ten fingers...

Indeed —​ you can't even represent 0.1 in IEEE floating point, so who in their right mind would try to build a measuring system on tenths?

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#44

Post by andmarios »

kps wrote: post #39
andmarios wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Body temperature isn't constant. Even excluding abnormal cases (eg fever), normal body temperature not only is within a range, but even this range depends on the body part you use for your readings. Instead with Celsius at 0°C water freezes, at 100°C water boils. Thus Celsius makes more sense because the main range (0-100) covers both very cold and very hot temperatures from a human perspective. Furthemore it has a s…

Consider, in 1725, reliably dividing a measured distance into 100 segments. Repeated bisection is practical.

I thought the purpose of the OP was to justify using Fahrenheit in 2014, not in 1725. :)

But even in 1725 I think that people who could build a thermometer would probably be able to grade it properly.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#45

Post by RVuRnvbM2e »

jbuzbee wrote: post #37
vborovikov wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0°C - water turns into ice 100°C - water boils and turns into steam -30°C and below - very cold weather +30°C and above - very hot weather

But the freeze/boil numbers are arbitrary as well only being true at sea-level. Where I live in Colorado, we're 1 mile (cough, 1.6 km) above sea level meaning those formulas are meaningless.

They aren't meaningless. Water boils at 95 C at your altitude - effectively the same temperature for all "common" usages. E.g. you'd still better not stick your hand into boiling water.

A 99% of humans inhabit seems pretty practical to me. The freezing point is effectively identical.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#46

Post by dghughes »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #12
Sharlin wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to a non-American like myself the Fahrenheit scale feels weird and arbitrary (and yes, I understand the "human scale" argument, just don't buy it") while the Celsius scale makes sense.

Or is it just more familiar? We all like what we're accustomed to. Is there some reason Celsius 'makes sense'? Why does it make sense that 22 is comfortable but 40 is miserably hot? It doesn't make any more sense than 72 and 100.

The familiar part has changed for Canadians.

I grew up during the transition period I was too young to know Fahrenheit, I had just entered school when the switch was occurring.

My parents are pretty well used to Celsius now but still may occasionally use Fahrenheit such as some electronic device that allows F or C they choose F.

It's still a but messed up though since Canada borders the US. The old joke being weather reports that show the border with the US say Detroit shown as 90 and Windsor as 32 "See Marge as soon as you cross the border into Canada it goes dow to 32!"

But still you get people of all ages saying things like "300km/h wow that's nearly 200 mph" or "You weigh 70kg what's that like 150 pounds?". It's more due to history and the influence of the US on our culture, I bet more french speaking areas like Quebec, northern NB don't do that but who knows maybe they do.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#48

Post by raldi »

yen223 wrote: post #34
raldi wrote: post #4

The article uses "Anyway, we have calculators now" as an argument for decimalization, but I see it as an argument against it. The less people do math on paper (or in their head), the less need we have to tie our system of measurement to the number of fingers the human hand happens to have; calculators divide by 12 as easily as 10.

The nice thing about the metric system is that the base is consistent - it's always some multiple of 10. With the imperial system, it gets tricky remembering whether you have to multiply by 12 or 16 or 5280 or whatnot.

That objection is growing obsolete, too: Nobody these days divides by 5280; they go to Google and type "1/4 mile in feet"

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#49

Post by dghughes »

Someone (a jogger/runner?) on reddit a few days ago made an interesting observation, maybe this was known. The Fibonacci sequence can be used as a rough guide to convert km to miles and vice versa.

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34

The first four don't work very well but:

3km is about 2 miles

5km is about 3 miles

8km is about 5 miles

13km is about 8 miles

21km is about 13 miles

34km is about 21 miles

and so on

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#50

Post by dghughes »

Someone (a jogger/runner?) on reddit a few days ago made an interesting observation, maybe this was known. The Fibonacci sequence can be used as a rough guide to convert km to miles and vice versa.

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34

The first four don't work very well but: 3km is about 2 miles 5km is about 3 miles 8km is about 5 miles 13km is about 8 miles 21km is about 13 miles 34km is about 21 miles and so on

Post reply on HN