71–80 of 363 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I love the metric system for no better reasons that it's the one I always used as a french, it just seems as natural for me as my ten fingers, I never really thought about it. Yet, I can understand why some would not change their “English customary measures”, they must feel it the same way, thinking it's as natural as their feet. For instance, our screens size (TV, computer, phones) are expressed in inches for whatev…
I have some difficulties with the issues described in the piece. "A yard is the distance from your sternum to the tip of your outstretched hand." According to folk belief, it's the distance from the tip of Henry I's nose to the end of his thumb. According to an early definition, "It is ordained that 3 grains of barley dry and round do make an inch, 12 inches make 1 foot, 3 feet make 1 yard." Who here has an idea of t…
UK: we work in Imperial but things are officially priced in metric, except for beer. Petrol is in pence/litre. So you get price per lb and per kg. Lengths are in millimetres on builders plans (to avoid mistakes with decimal points) but road signs are in miles. Makes teaching basic maths to adults a bit more fun... http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/maths_market-metric-proportion... You would be surprised how many people h…
My Fiat doesn't have mph on the speedo as it was replaced (like most things ln the car it broke). I've been doing conversions for years from miles to km, gallons to litres etc. It's annoying but kmh is easy.
I want to drive 200 miles. How much will it cost at 44.9mpg and 135.9ppl?
200 / 44.9 x 4.456 x 1.359 - yep random unit conversion in the middle.
Beer is metric as well until they sell it to you.
Whilst I understand all the problems I can only assume its an issue with education as doing decimal math is no more difficult than any other. Sometimes its easier especially when comparing or scaling magnitudes.
> Well, to be fair, those anti-metric folks had at least one point in their favor: Customary measures make a lot more sense to us. The author is full of it. Whichever system you grew up with will seem natural to you. This misconception comes up time and time again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7821501 The article seems like fluff; the author isn't even making novel mistakes. He even says that the metric syste…
> The author is full of it. Whichever system you grew up with will seem natural to you This is true to at least my case: grew up under the metric system and after 15 years living in the US, still have to mentally convert dimensions to metric in order to make sense of them: - If you point at something and ask me how far it is, the first number that comes to my mind is in meters, then I say that number and add "yards"…
Similarly, "softwares" isn't a word either, but I hear it a lot. There's only software.
I say this because it's a common mistake among people who speak well, otherwise.
As an European, a stance like that is near to instant execution.
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?
Pointing to Reason is not a valid reason for dismissing an argument that is well known from other sources that are, as a matter of fact, not libertarian.
It would be more interesting if you stopped smearing sources and actually provided -- or at least pointed to -- some rational articles that try to refute the factual case.
I have some difficulties with the issues described in the piece. "A yard is the distance from your sternum to the tip of your outstretched hand." According to folk belief, it's the distance from the tip of Henry I's nose to the end of his thumb. According to an early definition, "It is ordained that 3 grains of barley dry and round do make an inch, 12 inches make 1 foot, 3 feet make 1 yard." Who here has an idea of t…
Isn't this akin to the reddit meme of showing everything next to a banana "for scale" comparing body parts? I.e. non-deterministic and from a scientific perspective, total horse shit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll bite (and I grew up in one of the colder parts of Canada, so I'd call 0F a cold but not unreasonable winter day). -30: Avoid going outside, if you do don't leave any exposed skin -20: A cold winter day: toque, scarf, mittens, winter coat and boots are must have -10: An average winter day: same load-out as above, but you'll be more comfortable 0: A mild winter day: snow possible, you may leave your winter jacket…
LOL. I'm in Western Australia: 15: Winter. Probably rain and wind. 20: Cool Autumn / Spring, you might need a jumper outside. 25: Vaguely warmish, t-shirt weather. 30: Getting warm, wear shorts and t-shirt. 35: Beach weather, avoid going outside for too long if you're in office attire and don't want sweat patches. 40+: Hot beach weather, stay out of the sun (or in the water) in the middle of the day.
I recently built a shelf and hanger rack in a weirdly-shaped closet. I used Sketchup to design it, and naturally made everything in inches.
Inches are "semi-metric" too, thanks to mils: thousandths of an inch. Mils are very nice units for fine work, like circuit boards. Millimeters are way too crude, and micrometers are outside of macroscopic human experience.
When doing PCB work, I use mils, which create a virtual metric system within the space of an inch. E.g. the pins of old-school DIPs are 100 mils apart, or 0.1" Through holes are in mils: 25 mils, 40 mils. Same for track widths: 8 mils, 10 mils, ... very nice numbers to work with at that scale: one, two or three digits, no decimals.