Page Type:
Activities:
Josh Lewis - Jul 30, 2013 2:11 am - Hasn't voted
Re: Unfair? MaybeAs someone who works with feet and such all the time I full heartily agree we should go metric. The measurements in the US are indeed nonsense. Sometimes we go from 13 oz to 1.34 lbs. As you may know this is a pain to convert over when calculating what is a better deal when buying food.
mrchad9 - Jul 30, 2013 12:56 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: Unfair? MaybeHow is 13 oz equal to 1.34 pounds?
Josh Lewis - Jul 30, 2013 9:52 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: Unfair? MaybeI was not specific enough with how I worded that part. Let's say you go to the store to buy a small drink (13 oz). You debate whether to get the small or medium one based on getting the best deal possible. The medium size one is 1.34 pounds. Now you are suddenly left with an ugly conversion if you want to figure out if the small or medium drink is the best deal. Fortunately some tags say something like 2 pounds per dollar, but this isn't always the case. But if it was metric it would be easy peasy. It uses no second systems and no difficult numbers. How can anyone justify 5,280 feet in a mile?
mrchad9 - Jul 30, 2013 9:55 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: Unfair? MaybeGet a smartphone Josh. There are apps that will work it out for you!
Josh Lewis - Jul 30, 2013 10:31 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: Unfair? MaybeTo this day I've never owned a working cell phone. But when the time comes, a smart phone sounds like the right choice. Part of my point is that you shouldn't have to use a calculator or another resource to figure it out. If it was done in kilograms it would be much easier to work out. Why hold onto a old tradition that isn't as logical?
Corax - Nov 19, 2006 9:55 pm - Voted 4/10
LaughingOne thing's for sure; the article got a lot of attention and created a debate. A good thing in itself.
To measure things in feet could've been an excellent idea, IF all feet, on all living persons were of the same size.
:-)
Bob Sihler - Nov 19, 2006 10:54 pm - Hasn't voted
Credit DueYou deserve credit for being a really good sport about all this and not getting into a nasty battle with people. It could easily have degenerated into that, and I salute you for your restraint.
Marcus Hofmann - Nov 20, 2006 7:22 am - Voted 6/10
Re: Credit DueSecond that. I've read it again this morning, and I agree that maybe voting so low was a little unfair when comparing this article to other pages on SP. There are submissions of much lower quality that have received higher votes. I also acknowledge that voting 1/10 is extremely discouraging, which is the least thing we want. And although my original criticism remains, I have changed my vote to reflect this.
Mark Doiron - Nov 20, 2006 11:57 am - Voted 10/10
Funny ArticleI found the article funny and a nice diversion. A quick glance at the signature image was sufficient to clue me in that what followed was tongue-in-cheek. --mark d.
Bob Sihler - Nov 20, 2006 12:21 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: Funny ArticleAn excellent point, Mark, and something I noticed right away, too. I wish you or I or someone else had pointed that out much earlier!
brenta - Nov 20, 2006 2:07 pm - Hasn't voted
Poor DefenseIt's a pity that "In Defense of Feet" is such a jumble of bungled arguments and inaccuracies. It's even more regrettable that it comes from the pen of an articulate, intelligent, and educated man like Gerry Roach. Gerry should have sold his "inviolable handbook of chemistry and physics" to an antiquarian and used the proceeds to buy a newer edition. But even if "In Defense of Feet" had been written in the 1950s, the argument about the circularity of the definition of the meter is bogus.
RyanS - Nov 20, 2006 9:42 pm - Voted 10/10
Re: Poor DefenseI always took Gerry's "essay" to be tongue-in-cheek. He seems conscious of the meter's superiority. In a way it's almost a eulogy for feet, and I don't think he meant it to be a serious argument against the meter and against the inevitability of the foot's replacement.
brenta - Nov 21, 2006 4:35 pm - Hasn't voted
Re: Poor DefenseRyan, you may be right, but I read "In Defense of Feet" again, and it felt a lot more passionate than tongue-in-cheek.
Edit: I forgot to add that the link you posted is broken. I went to Gerry's site and read also "In Defense of Diversity," where he claims his other little treatise was a piece of humor. So, I stand officially corrected, but unconvinced.
RyanS - Nov 22, 2006 1:43 am - Voted 10/10
Re: Poor DefenseFair enough, and it's been good to hear a different viewpoint! I had never considered that take on it until I read your post. I hadn't read that 'Diversity' article before (didn't even notice it when I re-read the feet article yesterday!).
I fixed the link. Somehow I dropped the 'http://www.' and SP did some interesting things with it at that point.
Brad Marshall - Nov 20, 2006 5:49 pm - Voted 10/10
Nice DebateI give the author credit for introducing an article that has created such a great debate. For me growing up in Canada and being educated at the time our society switched from the Imperial to the Metric system I'm all screwed up. I didn't really learn the Imperial system (feet, gallons, pints, acres, etc.) and I don't have a good visual grasp on the metric system. I just thank whoever for conversion tables. Personally, I don't think there is any right or wrong here just a cultural difference that is nice to see. Just imagine if there was only one of anything in the world, wouldn't that be boring. Now, let's talk about the one true religion...
William Marler - Nov 20, 2006 6:16 pm - Voted 10/10
Well writtenOpinions aside this is a well written article and deserves a high star ranking. I found it very funny myself. I can understand it from both sides of the fence. We here in Canada went metric years ago then went back a bit as the population was not catching on. I still tend to work in inches and think of mountains in terms of feet. But I have been working on embedding the "feeling" of metres in my head. It is all what you were brought up on. How about "bushels" and "pecks". Thanks for posting it was a fun read. Cheers William
MoapaPk - Nov 21, 2006 3:23 pm - Voted 10/10
kilometres or milesI first saw this article in 1971:
http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2005/11/explaining-thanksgiving-to-french.html
Ejnar Fjerdingstad - Nov 21, 2006 5:20 pm - Voted 1/10
In defense of my voteWell, well. I see its time to recant and regret. I shall not join in this, however. The metric system was one of the best things to come out of the French revolution. Without it the present development of science could hardly be imagined. It would be preferable for all countries to accept the meter and the SI-system, as most states have already done. It follows that criticisms should be very well founded and not be based, say, on the trivial fact that we all (well, nearly all) have two feet, that however are extremely variable in size, even just within men, if one wants to be sexist. My brother uses size 47 mountains boots, I only 43.5, your fourthousanders would thus vary with 8 percent if we were to use our own feet to judge them by, if we included my wife it would be even more. Thus I think that if the article is taken seriously it is just not very pertinent, and if is supposed to be funny, it was not very convincing in that direction either. (Go ahead, make me laugh, as they say.) My vote therefore stands.
Dmitry Pruss - Nov 22, 2006 10:47 pm - Voted 4/10
Re: In defense of my shoe sizeIf you vote is intended to be purely symbolic, let it stand.
But if, instead, you feel an urge to reduce the score of the article, then, for a purely technical reasons, you may need to vote a bit higher.
It sounds strange but Josh's and Ryle's vote-counting algorithm excludes outliers. Something like not counting anything above 90th and below 10th percentiles of the distribution of the votes. The way the things are now, any vote below 4 is not counted, period.
Hey Ejnar - and my boots are like size 10 in this country, here we go with another, even more important, discrepancy in the national standarts LOL. Anyone out there wants to write an article how we must measure the shoes the European way ;) ?
MoapaPk - Nov 23, 2006 2:42 am - Voted 10/10
Re: In defense of my vote"Without it the present development of science could hardly be imagined."
I would guess that Isaac Newton used the English system. Most scientists solve problems algebraically and symbolically long before numbers get plugged into formulae.
I always convert to metric units when I am trying to calculate something difficult in my head, or on paper, or on a spreadsheet -- but I tend to use cm, grams, cm^2/s, not m and kg. When possible, I use dimensionless units, like Re, Pe, Da, Pr, Sc, Ra and so on.
But I always convert meters to feet when I look at maps. Strange, since I have been metric for most calculations for 40 years.
I have friends who speak flawless English -- but admit that they still count, in their heads, in French or German or Farsi or whatever. I think this sort of thing gets quasi-locked-in when our cerebella reach the peak of development.
Comments
Post a Comment