Re: [Utah-astronomy] OT, metrics -- was Re: Patrick scores again!
It's an issue with my stepsons when they refuse to do something just to be contrary. They get in trouble when they do that. People here did it not because they had good reason, but because of peer pressure from people who didn't know what they were talking about. As for there being "no benefit", try doing some things so simple as cooking, and then make adjustments and start switching from oz. to cups, up to gallons, back down to pints and over to quarts. As for 3 Mile Island, there are plenty of examples of archaic holdovers in location naming that have survived many measurement unit changes. -------- Original message -------- From: Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> Date: To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] OT, metrics -- was Re: Patrick scores again! Michael, you seem to think there's something wrong with "the stubborn American factor" -- should we be yielding on things where we don't need to? Should we rename Three Mile Island to Four and Eight-Hundred-Twenty-Eight Thousandths Kilometer Island? I'd be pretty stubborn about that, especially since most Americans would have a lot of hassle and ABSOLUTELY NO ADVANTAGE in switching. You have to have a compelling reason to force such widespread social changes. -- Joe ________________________________ From: Michael Wells <eyeonyouproductions@gmail.com> To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Sent: Saturday, December 8, 2012 5:02 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] OT, metrics -- was Re: Patrick scores again! Pure and simple, metrics is a scientific system of measurement, it's not some kind of dirty trick. There is no reason to use SAE except for the stubborn American factor. -------- Original message -------- From: Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> Date: To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] OT, metrics -- was Re: Patrick scores again! Yes, of course Patrick is right, I was joking about not knowing what the metric system is; I can even convert metric figures into our own system, usually. But it's time for metric-centrics to realize that they lost that battle long ago. And they lost with good reason, in that it's not native to our country and nobody should try to foist a foreign system onto us. If the rest of the world does it differently, so what? I haven't seen any big loss to our economy because of it. If it's easier to figure out volume using metric, again, so what? I'll happily use fluid ounces instead of mm. My point is, this is a little like the rotten attempts at Indian schools -- which children from reservations were forced to attend -- to make students speak English, which included punishing them for using their own languages. The argument undoubtedly was made that the children couldn't succeed in America if they didn't understand English. It was still a cruel practice and has been pretty much universally contemned. Well, there's not even that argument to be made for metric: we do very well, thank you, without using it.Thanks for letting me blow off steam -- Joe PS: That is a great picture of Pahvant Butte and a fine write-up. I've hiked inside it, and I remember the remains of some huge windmill are there. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options". _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options". _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options".
Michael, you can't say people not wanting to change miles to kilometers, feet to meters, inches to centimeters, etc., is equivalent to your stepsons refusing to do something just to be contrary. And are you saying we should get in trouble when we stick to our native measurements? Peer pressure from people who don't know what they're takig about -- I don't understand that comment. Please give me a specific example. So here's a challenge: show how the life of an ordinary person -- not a doctor working in nuclear medicine -- would improve if he were forced to switch to a metric system. Would the difficulty be worth any advantage to him? I can easily see the trouble of trying to learn new units, but I certainly don't see any advantage for an ordinary person forced to change. Who's being contrary -- the people who prefer the system they grew up with, or the people who are trying to force difficult, non-beneficial changes on them? Thanks, Joe ________________________________ From: Michael Wells <eyeonyouproductions@gmail.com> To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Sent: Saturday, December 8, 2012 6:11 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] OT, metrics -- was Re: Patrick scores again! It's an issue with my stepsons when they refuse to do something just to be contrary. They get in trouble when they do that. People here did it not because they had good reason, but because of peer pressure from people who didn't know what they were talking about. As for there being "no benefit", try doing some things so simple as cooking, and then make adjustments and start switching from oz. to cups, up to gallons, back down to pints and over to quarts. As for 3 Mile Island, there are plenty of examples of archaic holdovers in location naming that have survived many measurement unit changes. -------- Original message -------- From: Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> Date: To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] OT, metrics -- was Re: Patrick scores again! Michael, you seem to think there's something wrong with "the stubborn American factor" -- should we be yielding on things where we don't need to? Should we rename Three Mile Island to Four and Eight-Hundred-Twenty-Eight Thousandths Kilometer Island? I'd be pretty stubborn about that, especially since most Americans would have a lot of hassle and ABSOLUTELY NO ADVANTAGE in switching. You have to have a compelling reason to force such widespread social changes. -- Joe ________________________________ From: Michael Wells <eyeonyouproductions@gmail.com> To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Sent: Saturday, December 8, 2012 5:02 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] OT, metrics -- was Re: Patrick scores again! Pure and simple, metrics is a scientific system of measurement, it's not some kind of dirty trick. There is no reason to use SAE except for the stubborn American factor. -------- Original message -------- From: Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> Date: To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] OT, metrics -- was Re: Patrick scores again! Yes, of course Patrick is right, I was joking about not knowing what the metric system is; I can even convert metric figures into our own system, usually. But it's time for metric-centrics to realize that they lost that battle long ago. And they lost with good reason, in that it's not native to our country and nobody should try to foist a foreign system onto us. If the rest of the world does it differently, so what? I haven't seen any big loss to our economy because of it. If it's easier to figure out volume using metric, again, so what? I'll happily use fluid ounces instead of mm. My point is, this is a little like the rotten attempts at Indian schools -- which children from reservations were forced to attend -- to make students speak English, which included punishing them for using their own languages. The argument undoubtedly was made that the children couldn't succeed in America if they didn't understand English. It was still a cruel practice and has been pretty much universally contemned. Well, there's not even that argument to be made for metric: we do very well, thank you, without using it.Thanks for letting me blow off steam -- Joe PS: That is a great picture of Pahvant Butte and a fine write-up. I've hiked inside it, and I remember the remains of some huge windmill are there. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options". _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options". _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options". _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. 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Yes I can, because there was a plan in place to do it gradually, not like there was a switch that they were going to throw overnight. People were just being stubborn. I heard as a child adults all over the place talking exactly like you are now. They weren't going to change not because it was hard, or that we already had a system in place, but because they were not going to let anyone "tell" them what to do. This wasn't a foreign government or the UN forcing us, this was our government trying to drag us closer to the 21st century, and we held our threatened to hold our breath until we turned blue. The SAE system is obsolete, exactly like the 8-Track, the cassette tape, the wax cylinder, the Victrola, the floppy disk and the VHS tape(Won't say video tape because it is still a valid storage format). As for an example of how it is beneficial, I will once again go back to cooking as an example, because it's an easy one. It shows up all of the time, and everyone encounters it. Recipes constantly call for 1/2 cup of one ingredient, 2 ounces of another, a pint of something else, maybe a gallon of another. You end up all over the place, trying to figure out what is what. Also, when a recipe calls for 2 cups of something, 90% of the people don't know that that is a pint, 2 pints in a quart, and 4 quarts in a gallon. If they've only got measuring cups, that gallon gets pretty tedious and requires a trip to the internet, and a bunch of math. Put it in the metric system, and you have a liter as your standard for liquid measure. 1 deciliter is a tenth of that, a centiliter one hundredth of it. 10 liters is a decaliter, and 1000 liters is a kiloliter. Here's the wonderful SAE system for length: The base unit is the inch 12 inches in a foot(Anything smaller has to be fractions of an inch) 3 feet in a yard 5,280 feet in a mile How many inches in a mile, without using a calculator, writing it down, or doing the math in your head? Now the metric system, a nice beautiful base-10 system with all of the same prefixes whether you are measuring volume, distance or weight. The base unit is the meter. 1/100th of that is a centimeter 1,000 meters in a kilometer So, same rules, how many centimeters in a kilometer? 100,000, it's that easy. SAE for volume: Base unit is an ounce(Anything smaller is fractions of an ounce) 4 ounces is a cup 4 cups in a pint 2 pints in a quart 4 quarts in a gallon Same rules, how many ounces in a gallon? Metric: Base unit is the liter 1/100th of that is the centiliter 1000 liters is a kiloliter How many centiliters in a kiloliter? 100,000 To sum this up, there is no rhyme nor reason to the SAE system. The metric system is base 10, uses the same prefix, no matter the medium being measured, and can go infinitesimally small or extremely large, and all anyone has to know is where the particular latin prefix falls on the scale. Yes, it's people being stubborn, and it should have happend years ago. It's ludicrous to still use the SAE system when it actually makes no sense whatsoever. Teaching would be streamlined, and work would be improved. Hell, even when I worked graphic design, we had to print up conversion charts between fractions and decimal equivalents, because 1/64th gets pretty hard to figure out in your head. Doing t all decimally would eliminate that. On Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 11:37 PM, Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> wrote:
Michael, you can't say people not wanting to change miles to kilometers, feet to meters, inches to centimeters, etc., is equivalent to your stepsons refusing to do something just to be contrary. And are you saying we should get in trouble when we stick to our native measurements? Peer pressure from people who don't know what they're takig about -- I don't understand that comment. Please give me a specific example. So here's a challenge: show how the life of an ordinary person -- not a doctor working in nuclear medicine -- would improve if he were forced to switch to a metric system. Would the difficulty be worth any advantage to him? I can easily see the trouble of trying to learn new units, but I certainly don't see any advantage for an ordinary person forced to change. Who's being contrary -- the people who prefer the system they grew up with, or the people who are trying to force difficult, non-beneficial changes on them? Thanks, Joe
________________________________ From: Michael Wells <eyeonyouproductions@gmail.com> To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Sent: Saturday, December 8, 2012 6:11 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] OT, metrics -- was Re: Patrick scores again!
It's an issue with my stepsons when they refuse to do something just to be contrary. They get in trouble when they do that.
People here did it not because they had good reason, but because of peer pressure from people who didn't know what they were talking about.
As for there being "no benefit", try doing some things so simple as cooking, and then make adjustments and start switching from oz. to cups, up to gallons, back down to pints and over to quarts.
As for 3 Mile Island, there are plenty of examples of archaic holdovers in location naming that have survived many measurement unit changes.
-------- Original message -------- From: Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> Date: To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] OT, metrics -- was Re: Patrick scores again!
Michael, you seem to think there's something wrong with "the stubborn American factor" -- should we be yielding on things where we don't need to? Should we rename Three Mile Island to Four and Eight-Hundred-Twenty-Eight Thousandths Kilometer Island? I'd be pretty stubborn about that, especially since most Americans would have a lot of hassle and ABSOLUTELY NO ADVANTAGE in switching. You have to have a compelling reason to force such widespread social changes. -- Joe
________________________________ From: Michael Wells <eyeonyouproductions@gmail.com> To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Sent: Saturday, December 8, 2012 5:02 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] OT, metrics -- was Re: Patrick scores again!
Pure and simple, metrics is a scientific system of measurement, it's not some kind of dirty trick. There is no reason to use SAE except for the stubborn American factor.
-------- Original message -------- From: Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> Date: To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] OT, metrics -- was Re: Patrick scores again!
Yes, of course Patrick is right, I was joking about not knowing what the metric system is; I can even convert metric figures into our own system, usually. But it's time for metric-centrics to realize that they lost that battle long ago. And they lost with good reason, in that it's not native to our country and nobody should try to foist a foreign system onto us. If the rest of the world does it differently, so what? I haven't seen any big loss to our economy because of it. If it's easier to figure out volume using metric, again, so what? I'll happily use fluid ounces instead of mm. My point is, this is a little like the rotten attempts at Indian schools -- which children from reservations were forced to attend -- to make students speak English, which included punishing them for using their own languages. The argument undoubtedly was made that the children couldn't succeed in America if they didn't understand English. It was still a cruel practice and has been pretty much universally contemned. Well, there's not even that argument to be made for metric: we do very well, thank you, without using it.Thanks for letting me blow off steam -- Joe PS: That is a great picture of Pahvant Butte and a fine write-up. I've hiked inside it, and I remember the remains of some huge windmill are there. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com
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I wouldn't mind going metric, but then I've been through 7 years of post-secondary chemistry classes, and that's all we work with. But I need to know the "normal" units also in my work at a chemical company, because stuff is packaged and sold in containers measured in gallons. Of course, we buy stuff from overseas in 25 kg bags, which we record as 55.115 pounds our inventory system. A couple problems I've noticed with the SAE system is also with cooking - when a recipe calls for ounces of something and you're not sure if it's weight or volume. I've also noticed unit confusion with nutritional information on food labels. Sometime the serving size on the label is stated in different units then what the package is sold as, so it's not clear how many servings are in a package.
participants (3)
-
Joe Bauman -
Michael Wells -
Scott Catron