On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:26:46 GMT, (Phred)
wrote:

In article ,
"John Gilmer" wrote:
[ And managed to lose previous attributions... Tsk, tsk. ;-)

There is NOTHING magin about the metric system except for the fact that
units differ by powers of TEN.

Apart from the minor fact that almost everyone (19 out of 20 people
on this planet) uses it, you mean?

Gosh!

Well, sport, 49 out of 50 people (on this planet) don't qualify for Mensa.

****! I'm one in fifty! (My opinion of course. :-)
[...]
Not to forget convenient approximations such as

- length of an adult's step (~1 m)

Well, a mile is 1,000 paces of your standard Roman Legionair type!

Frankly, I suspect you're both wanking here. I know there are some
macho types who *assume* their pace is one metre, but most barely make
it to one yard -- and as for those Romans with a pace of over 5 feet,
well they were either bloody big *******s, or they were running.
[The standard army pace in Oz is 30 inches, the rate is 120 paces per
minute, which gives you a marching speed of 100 yards/minute or about
3.4 mph. But then (50 years ago anyway) the routine was to march 50
minutes and rest for 10, so distance covered was a bit over 2.8
miles/hour.

They only count on the left foot.

Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/

Frankly, I suspect you're both wanking here. I know there are some
macho types who *assume* their pace is one metre, but most barely make
it to one yard -- and as for those Romans with a pace of over 5 feet,
well they were either bloody big *******s, or they were running.

Clearly your Latin teacher didn't do a very good job!

A Roman pace was the distance between two fallings of the same foot.

The next time you literally "take a hike" start counting the landings of
your right foot. The 1000 paces measure is pretty good!

Now, some decades down the track, the thing I still find most annoying
about claims for the "rationality" of the SI is the bloody kilogram!
If the kilogram is a basic unit, then the gram should be a
millikilogram.

Yep!

That's another example of the basic failing of the metric system: the
"rational" units just ain't the right size!

In a "rational" system, the unit of mass would be the mass of one cubic
meter of water. So the "rational" unit of mass should be 1,000 kilograms
or 1,000,000 grams!

SO: the metric system is "irrational" by a factor of ONE MILLION!

Markus Kuhn wrote:
"Bob Harrington" writes:
Can you name even a single country that adopted its customary
units from the US?

Can you name a single country that reached the spectacular levels of
power, productivity, and wealth as the US - which did it without the
metric system?

Economic success is driven by a large number of factors, of which
the choice of units of measurements is clearly quite negligible
compared to other factors, for example social security policies
or whether your currency is overrated because of its reference
role in the energy market.

Putting aside the fact that Japan and Germany have not been doing
particularly well economically during the past decade, both countries
have clearly been most formidable industrial powers and by all means a
match for the US in terms of economic growth for most of the 20th
century. There are numerous examples of smaller economies (India and
Ireland come to mind as shining examples), where the move to the
metric system coincided with substantial and sustained economic and
industrial development.

If you look at a more short-term view, let me also remind you that
the US is at present the only country that finds it necessary to
reintroduce trade tarifs to protect its uncompetitive non-metric steel
industry, a step that was recently declared illegal by the WTO.
Poverty levels in the US are unmatched in the EU. The inch-based human
spaceflight programme, originally conceived entirely as a
media-effective national prestige stunt, is in shambles.

The metric-based JPL space probes, as well as the metric US Department
of Defence, on the other hand seem to be doing rather fine these
days, as is the mostly metric semiconductor industry. With a bit more
work, it would not be difficult to make the case that the most
successful enterprises
the US undertakes TODAY are already done metric. Running some an
inch-pound business is today a good indicator that you are a member
of the tail end of the US economy!

Or have been around and successful far longer than the metric/standard
debate has been raging...

Personally, I wouldn't mind if we did go metric - I'm comfortable with
each system, and prefer some of the features of the metric system - but
I seriously doubt your claims that the metric system alone can make or
break most endeavors alone. If your customers want metric widgets, you
build metric widgets; but if your customers have happily survived using
non-metric widgets for decades, why force them to incur the costs of
replacing their widgetry for mere political expediency?

The nations you mentioned that began their industrial revolutions (or
were forced by their own actions to have to rebuild from scratch) in the
last century had the luxury of being able to choose the most useful
system early on; the USA has been enormously successful with the
standard system for over two hundred years. Many parts of the US
economy have and are making the shift to, or added capability for, the
metric system as the need arises; but forcing the entire economy to
change for reasons no more substantial than social reengineering is
wasteful and an abuse of governmental power.

Bob ^,,^

SO: the metric system is "irrational" by a factor of ONE MILLION!

Along those lines:

The RATIONAL unit of power is the HORSEpower! The metric units are the
Watt and the Centipede.

In article ,
"John Gilmer" wrote:

Frankly, I suspect you're both wanking here. I know there are some
macho types who *assume* their pace is one metre, but most barely make
it to one yard -- and as for those Romans with a pace of over 5 feet,
well they were either bloody big *******s, or they were running.

Clearly your Latin teacher didn't do a very good job!

A Roman pace was the distance between two fallings of the same foot.

A fine example of the benefits of a classical education. ;-)

The next time you literally "take a hike" start counting the landings of
your right foot. The 1000 paces measure is pretty good!

Yeah. Clearly fits with what I said about our pace being ca. 30
inches.


Cheers, Phred.

--
LID

John Gilmer wrote:
SO: the metric system is "irrational" by a factor of ONE MILLION!

Along those lines:

The RATIONAL unit of power is the HORSEpower! The metric units are
the Watt and the Centipede.

Moo...?

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 14:30:27 GMT, (Phred)
wrote:

In article ,
"John Gilmer" wrote:

Frankly, I suspect you're both wanking here. I know there are some
macho types who *assume* their pace is one metre, but most barely make
it to one yard -- and as for those Romans with a pace of over 5 feet,
well they were either bloody big *******s, or they were running.

Clearly your Latin teacher didn't do a very good job!

A Roman pace was the distance between two fallings of the same foot.

A fine example of the benefits of a classical education. ;-)

The next time you literally "take a hike" start counting the landings of
your right foot. The 1000 paces measure is pretty good!

Yeah. Clearly fits with what I said about our pace being ca. 30
inches.

It did, until Queen Lizzie I tinkered with the mile.

Of course, if she hadn't, it would have made it more difficult for
today's physics students to calculate speeds in furlongs per
fortnight.

Gene Nygaard
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...ard/t_jeff.htm
But if it be thought that, either now, or at any future time, the
citizens of the United States may be induced to undertake a thorough
reformation of their whole system of measures, weights and coins,
reducing every branch to the same decimal ratio already established
in their coins, and thus bringing the calculation of the principal
affairs of life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply
and divide plain numbers, greater changes will be necessary.
U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, 1790

It did, until Queen Lizzie I tinkered with the mile.

Of course, if she hadn't, it would have made it more difficult for
today's physics students to calculate speeds in furlongs per
fortnight.

And why would they do that?

Snail racing?

EMWTK

"John Gilmer" a écrit dans le message news:
...



Can you name even a single country that adopted its customary
units from the US?

You raise an interesting point.

The two nearest neighbors of the US use the metric system.

Let us consider the Mexico/US border.

On one side you have the richest society in the world. On the other side
you have a metric system and third world living standards!

Or, (for you racists) take the US/Canader border: By the standards of
the
US, Canada doesn't have a significant military establishment. Yet it
manages to have a lower relative national wealth. It has MUCH more OIL
and
gas than the US, etc. etc.

SO: just WHAT IS THE PROBLEM with Canader and Mexico?

The Answer: The METRIC SYSTEM!


What a stupid way of thinking. These comparaisons have nothing to do with
unit systems. Canada switched from the English system to the International
system about 30 years ago. Relative wealth compared to US did not change
significantly