I don’t hate anyone.
Except perhaps the dude that decide to have unskipable segments on the DVD standard format, and perhaps the dude to use these segments to send anti-pirate ads to people that bought DVD’s legally.
These two guys need to die in a fire or in another horrible and painful way.
The greek are kinda cool people, but they need to sort their economy.
Brexit voters: “Fuck the metric system!”
As an American who would dearly love to see us adopt the metric system in my lifetime, what the hell Britain? Metric is objectively the superior system why do this?
You can advertise in pounds, the customer can order in pounds, but the till system has to be in metric (which is fine, the entire process from farm to butcher is in metric anyway - and will remain that way).
Despite this, it’s a news story that people want their receipts to state lbs and oz.
Only the Telegraph.
You mean it’s not widespread over here in the UK this story. I am sure it’s front page at the BBC, ITV and Sky and I cannot seem to escape it.
Or it’s just another story in one of our daily rags, good job we are not judging the USA on the odd story here or there eh, might think you are looking to vote a nut job in to The White House…
Yeah, I really don’t understand the backwards nature of using feet, teaspoons and cups to measure stuff.
Just get rid of that crap and while you’re at, cancel daylight savings time as well!
Change we (I) can believe in!
That really depends on the application.
For scientific measurement or dealing with any truly large values, metric is almost always easier to use because your values tend to be large and so resolving everything into base-10 makes everything flow better. You’ll get no argument from me about miles verses kilometers.
But for kitchen and workshop applications, the Imperial system works surprisingly well. It’s generally nice to be able to work in units that can be divided in half, thirds, fourths, or sixths and still result in whole numbers.
If I’ve got a piece of wood a yard long, and I want to divide it into thirds, each piece is a foot. If I want to divide it into fourths, each piece is 9 inches long.
To be clear, it’s not monumentally harder to divide up a meter into three sections of 33.333 cm or eight lengths of 12.5 cm, it’s just not as easy to do the calculations in your head.
There’s also the human scale to consider. Centimeters are relatively easy to envision (I use the length of my pinky’s nail) and not that dissimilar to an inch, but milliliters are too small for humans to work with which means you have to jump up to liters and work down… there’s no good/convenient substitute for a cup or pint. I’d like 250 ml of coffee please!
And as silly as having the freezing point of water at an arbitrary 32 degrees might be, the Fahrenheit scale is pretty good for describing the range of human-habitable temperatures: 100 degrees is dangerously hot; 0 degrees is dangerously cold. Everything between those extremes is generally tolerable and everything outside is some level of “get the hell into shelter”.
By contrast, Celsius is excellent for describing the melting point of tin, but pretty crappy for judging whether you need a jacket today. Last night was a comfortable 25, but this afternoon is going to be 31 and I’ll be stewing in my shorts.
Hey, that’s very convenient. Thanks.
Temperature is the only one I will concede a preference for Imperial. Yes it is more granular, and that’s nice. But the settings are arbitrary. Water freezes at 32? 100 is just ‘damn hot’, not some special marker? Meh.
Plus 25c is still uncomfortable to me, especially if its humid.
Not to say your other examples are fine, but I don’t think the subdividing particularly convincing personally. I say this as someone who engineers products to 1/64" tolerance, and does have to use/ convert metric frequently. 1mm is pretty close to 1/32"
Fahrenheit is too discrete. The change in temperature of 1, or 2, or 4F is imperceptible to me.
I’m not sure how celsius is crappy for judging whether you need a jacket.
All you’re doing is showing that you’re familiar with one, not very familiar with the other - and trying to translate that familiarity into some sort of logical reason for your preference.
I grew up with Imperial, we transitioned to Metric.
Um, no. I’m a goddamn professional, and any recipe I see with things like tablespoons and lbs can fuck right off- the first thing I do if I’m planning on using that recipe again is convert the whole thing over. Give me grams, ml, etc, every time- far easier to divide and multiply the size of the recipe for changing needs.
My experience has been completely different from yours. I grew up in the Netherlands, but I went to a US Department of Defense Dependent School, so my education was through the US System (although better because of had DoD money!) Anyway, when I went state side for college, getting used to Fahrenheit took forever. Celsius is easy.
Below 0, it’s cold, it might snow. 10-15, wear a coat. 15-25 - Awesome. 30 or so, way too hot.
Fahrenheit has too much range, so it’s harder to parse. Is 68 degrees cool? What about 75. When do snow happen? Somewhere below 32. There are actually too many points, and so it becomes hard to use (in fact, in statistics, it’s found that having more then 7 options on a scale decreases accuracy. Humans just aren’t that specific).
Cooking in metric is also just easier and makes sense. Table Spoons, Tea Spoons, Cups and Pints. Who the hell needs pints? It’s just 2 cups. All the ingredients are in 2 simple metrics, milliliters or Liters. (We have dL, but why bother).
Cooking is easier. 250 mL. Need to double it, 500 mL. Super easy.
Alternatively though,- 1 pint, doubles to 1 quart, or halved to 1 cup. Perhaps you just use 2 pints or half a pint instead, but your measuring cups will probably not show the information that way, so instead of doubling a number, you end up using different types of units doing a bunch of mental back flips to get the right number. Metric is easier, because it goes up by 10s or 100s, just like money, just like counting.
But that’s because of my upbringing. Everything was in metrics. No Yard sticks, just a meter stick. Kilometers instead of miles (Cross country course in High School was always 5 km, or 3.1 Miles but km made more sense). Recipes were in mL or L, and sold as such. 2 litter bottles of coke. You got coffee in a small cup because that’s what the served it in at cafes (and it was enough, since we practically drink water here in the US).
I argue, @Tin_Wisdom, not that Metrics is strictly better though (okay I do argue that, but I concede that I might not be 100% correct) but that a person’s upbringing and what the directions call for has a way bigger influence on what is easier to use. Everyone brings a lot of bias when it comes to the system they use because they know that system.
It took me a few years to get used the Empirical System when I got to the US, and I’m no slouch when it comes to math. I still prefer to have information given to me in Metric when possible, but if everyone in the US is talking Miles and Feet, you just go with it, because doing otherwise would just be confusing.
I have no interest in being the official Qt3 apologist for the Imperial system, so I’m not really going to try and argue for it on its merits except maybe to refine my reasoning (as below). I just get annoyed by the modern notion that the Imperial system is a collection of motley old units and measurements that has no value to anyone – that’s an arrogant attitude to take towards a system that was refined over many centuries.
The Roman system started out digital as well (no surprise there) with a foot (pedes) going up to a pace (5 feet), a perch ( originally 100 feet) and a mile (originally 5000 feet). Over the centuries the Europeans winnowed the system down into values that were more easily used by peasants without formal training in mathematics.
And just as background, you have my permission to view me as a backwards, nativist American desperately clinging to an antiquated system if it makes you feel better, but much of my elementary schooling was in Europe, so I actually learned metric before coming home and learning Imperial in the upper grades. I’m also a professional engineer who uses metric at work.
[quote=“CraigM, post:992, topic:78214”]
Temperature is the only one I will concede a preference for Imperial. Yes it is more granular, and that’s nice. [/quote]
I don’t think it’s the granularity as much as the human-focused scale with 0 being “die of exposure to cold” and 100 being “die of exposure to heat”. If it was a 1 to 10 scale with the same end-points it would be just as useful.
Again, “human scale” is the key phrase. If I’m dealing with anything under a centimeter, or anything over a kilometer I prefer to use metric as well.
I don’t think it’s backward to prefer imperial, or forward to use metric. It’s just preference. One being superior for ability to divide and measure doesn’t make it forward.
I measure longer distance in miles rather than kilometers, but under a mile in meters. I have no idea what half a mile is in yards or feet.
What’s 1/18th of 3 and a 1/2 yards in inches? I haven’t the foggiest. 1/18th of 3.5m? I can guess that it’s somewhere around 19.5cm in my head (360/18 = 20cm, the 10cm I added to 3.5m is roughly 0.5).
Ireland has only 30 days per year where temperature goes above 20c, and only 10 days where it goes below 0c. We don’t need 36 units of temperature between the normal minimum and the maximum.
800 meters.
And I do the same. As a runner I think of miles in increments of meters. 1/4 mile is 400 meters, for example. Over a mile it is in, well, miles. Between 30 meters and a mile, meters. Less than 30 meters, feet/ inches.
I’m never quite sure what my height is in meters, and I use stone and pounds as the measurement for the weight of people, despite using kilogrammes for pets, objects, cars etc. I’ve never used a tonne in my life
That made me smile. Here in Virginia, it was 105F (40.5C) a few weeks ago and last winter it got down to -5F (-20.5C). We bitterly cling to every last digit.
I use the metric system at work every day, and that is great.
But, temperature for the weather is so much better in Fahrenheit. the granularity is good. The difference between 78 and 84 degrees is a LOT when you are outside.
Also, being able to say it is below zero is much cooler in Faherenheit, as that is the official designation of “it is cold as shit outside”
Chicago shifts it down about 10 degrees. We have hit over 100, but usually only once every two or three summers, average about 1 day per year. We’ll also regularly hit the negative teens. Coldest I recall was about -22F (-30C).