Topic: Misspelling of 'color'

[Ralesk]

There are 10 kinds of people:
Those who understand binary,
And those who don't.

[Jace]

(delta-1^oK = delta-1^oC but 0^oK is about 273^oC)

Unless my memory totally fails me, 0^oK is about -273^oC

[Olego]

The one thing I like about standardisation is the fact that you could say something and have it mean exactly what you want it to mean.  That is why the whole concept of computer science is so exact: most things are exact, or exactly defined.  But of course it interferes with culture.  I wish Esperanto were more wide-spread.  Seriously, it's a great idea.  It is because English sucks major arse as a language to learn, that there should be something easier, that could still convey information as efficiently...

But at least I know that I can write a program in Scheme and have it run exactly the same way on all computers, and that is good to know.  

0K is -273.15*C.  Fahrenheit had the right idea to make a thermometer, but he should've made his scale a little less random.  (0* is the freezing temperature of 1/2 water and 1/2 salt; 100* is "supposedly" the normal human temperature, 'cept he must've had a fever the day he drew the 100* mark. )

~Olego~

[Philidor11]

... Fahrenheit had the right idea to make a thermometer, but he should've made his scale a little less random.  (0* is the freezing temperature of 1/2 water and 1/2 salt; 100* is "supposedly" the normal human temperature, 'cept he must've had a fever the day he drew the 100* mark. )

~Olego~

Fahrenheit was okay, it's the people who tried to help who botched things up.  Danny made 0 degrees the water/salt mix as you say, and he wanted 30 degrees to be the freezing point of water and 90 degrees to be the normal human temperature.  That would presumably make the boiling point of water 210 degrees.  These numbers are all divisible by 6, you notice, so the Babylonians would be pleased, and all would be right with the world.
It's the people who come along and finagle to try to fix things who mess up systems.
And then someone else came along and set only 100 degrees between freezing and boiling water.  That's not divisible by 6 and has nowhere near the comfortable spread of temperatures allowed by 180 degrees.  The Celsius scale seems crabbed and uncomfortable.  It'll never last.

[Ralesk]

Not quite sure about your attitude, Philly

But I'd like to remind you that the Rest Of The World uses mainly °C and SI, and it has been around for a while.  Not quite as much as good old imperial system or the rest of the by now extinct national systems, but yes.  And since we all use base 10, it's extremely easy to use.  As I said, it's all about attitude and willingness.  I have earlier said that I was born and still live in a SI-based country, and to be honest, it's not at all hard to think in any other measures.  Not to mention, it is lot easier to calculate with SI.  Sure, inches, feet, pints (decent, UK pints), and pounds might be more human-sized than centimetres (sorry for my British), metres, kilograms and litres, but using the latter isn't a miracle.
It's obvious you won't be asking for 0.91something kilograms of potatoes on the market, but 1 kilo, just as I wouldn't be going around asking for some stupid 2 lb 3.27 oz potatoes but go for a simple 2 lb.  Exactness isn't quite part of everyday life and is thus unneeded.  When you have to use a different everyday unit, you get to round to their whole numbers and you're still fine.  It's nothing that'd cause serious worries.

It is not the best idea to fall on the other side of the horse, though, so obvious that 10 months is not the best idea.  My personal choice would be the perpetual calendar invented by Isaac Asimov.  Four seasons, let's totally ignore the moon, four seasons with 91 days each (13 "weeks" with 7 days each) = our life isn't going to be forked up, since we're really very used to having 7 days in a week, and 364 isn't all that off from the truth.  We'd have one or two extra days, one would be simply always there, the other when we have the skip years.  So, now it'd have the exact feeling of the current sun calendars.  What's the point?  Since the yearday and the skip day isn't part of a week it isn't Monday, Tuesday, ... or Sunday.  Therefore, if we say start the year on Sunday (random pick but definitely best for new year parties), it'd be sunday next year too, so you could pretty much reuse a calendar
Mind it, it works.  Sounds scary, but it does.

[DanaPaul]

Exactness isn't quite part of everyday life and is thus unneeded.  When you have to use a different everyday unit, you get to round to their whole numbers and you're still fine.  It's nothing that'd cause serious worries.

Good point.  The reason why conversion to a new mathematical base unit is (sometimes) expensive and (often) overlooked is because you are in fact re-specifying whole units. For example, to re-draw specifications for a manufacturing product using metric based units representing exactly its inches equilavent isn't a conversion at all.  Recalculation and redesign using whole metric units allows human interferance at an understandable level, and retooling industry with metric gauges and instruments combines efficiency with acceptance.  

With that said, our computers may have dual mathematical unit based systems, but the human interface (data input) must have a working knowledge as well.  

The two principles which underlie all the evolutionary processes are the "persistence of force" and the "conservation of energy."

[Ralesk]

I'm still wondering why it worked in the UK

[Philidor11]

The huge expense of conversion to another measuring scheme is not, I think, the main problem.
If I were describing another person to you, I could say that he is 6 feet tall and weighs 180 pounds.  In your mind, you start by constructing a basic outline of the individual, with details to follow.  You take numbers and convert them into an image.
If I were describing a place, I could start by saying it's 10 miles South on Route 177.  From that description, you can do travel times and the sort of landscape you'll see getting there.
In short, the associations supply a lot more information than the numbers themselves.
If you didn't know the metric system well, and if I gave you this information in meters, etc., there would be no associations.  The numbers would be meaningless, and you would feel only impatience to obtain the information you need.  You'd feel quite legitimately that your question had not been answered.
Like languages, systems of measurement are arbitrary constructs designed for communication.  They aren't given up or substantially changed easily.

By the way, the concept of intercalary days as in the Asimov calendar mentioned above was eventually found more inconvenient than the alternative.  Needed the overthrow of a whole civilization, but some changes in measuring systems are possible.

[DanaPaul]

The huge expense of conversion to another measuring scheme is not, I think, the main problem.

Speed Limit roadway signs in this part of the US do not display metric equivlalents.  Perhaps a caution to driving on the right side of the road has entered into this decision?

If I were describing another person to you, I could say that he is 6 feet tall and weighs 180 pounds.  In your mind, you start by constructing a basic outline of the individual, with details to follow.  You take numbers and convert them into an image.

Industry has converted.  Obstacles have been removed in that process.  Including any individuals who refuse to accept change.  An organization cannot withhold progress based on the stubborness of single individuals. Consumerism, on the other hand, has not completed this conversion.  For if it had the spedometer on your new automobile would be useless.

If you didn't know the metric system well,.. You'd feel quite legitimately that your question had not been answered.

Even our judicial system discounts ignorance as a legal defense.

I suspect that national and complete conversion to the metric system is very low on most priority lists.

[Ralesk]

If I were describing another person to you, I could say that he is 6 feet tall and weighs 180 pounds.  In your mind, you start by constructing a basic outline of the individual, with details to follow.  You take numbers and convert them into an image.
If I were describing a place, I could start by saying it's 10 miles South on Route 177.  From that description, you can do travel times and the sort of landscape you'll see getting there.
In short, the associations supply a lot more information than the numbers themselves.
If you didn't know the metric system well, and if I gave you this information in meters, etc., there would be no associations.  The numbers would be meaningless, and you would feel only impatience to obtain the information you need.  You'd feel quite legitimately that your question had not been answered.

Philidor, you keep sounding like as if it was not possible to use another measurement system by default.
Tell you what, I haven't used imperial system every day before I got in contact with all the people overseas.  And it didn't take me too much to make 6 inches or five feet ten inches tell me what they should tell.
You are way too conservative, and I keep telling you that SI metrics are not just numbers, they are measures and can be easily gotten used to, with just as little practice as the other way around.  Hell, I don't know what 14, 2, 4, 8 have to do with your precious Babylonian number 6.  And these arbitrary ratio numbers are in my opinion dead hard to remember.  It isn't hard to get used to how much a pound of weight feels like, but it's a lot harder to think about how many times different is the next unit.  Nonetheless, in everyday life it isn't quite about multiplying and division, that's what science is about --- and for that purpose, Earth based science, SI is terribly well-designed.

Anyway, to return to the old question, it did work in the whatevermany million citizen UK, and they've converted.  It all takes willpower and a word or two (id est less ignorance) from above.

[Philidor11]

...
You are way too conservative, and I keep telling you that SI metrics are not just numbers, they are measures and can be easily gotten used to, with just as little practice as the other way around.  
...
Anyway, to return to the old question, it did work in the whatevermany million citizen UK, and they've converted.  It all takes willpower and a word or two (id est less ignorance) from above.

Yes, to a person who uses the metric system, the numbers have significance in forming images, just as much as the US system.  I wasn't meaning to disagree; we were talking past each other.

In the grocery store on Sunday, a woman asked her son to pick out a 2 quart bottle of soda.  The bottle was labeled 2 liter, but close enough.

Napoleon couldn't order the French to use the metric system; he had to rescind his attempt.  It wasn't successfully mandated until the 1830's, almost 50 years after the Revolution, and then only as part of French cultural assertiveness.  
Nowadays, changing systems is not assertive, rather the opposite.  The government statements used words like 'conform' and 'obtain access to markets', as I recall, showing that use of the system was a precondition for joining someone else's game.
Britain may have had to accept metrics, but they also insisted on keeping the 'u' in colo'u'r.

In the US today, cultural assertiveness doesn't use weights and measures, and not even the US government wanted to force a change on people reluctant to accept foreign influences.  Like the woman in the grocery store, acceptance of metrics is tolerance by overlooking its existence.  (Science is a different sociology, where value is placed on difference from the general population.)

Interesting example of how people respond to changes in their world.

[Tsorovan]

I don't get your point, if there is one.

[Philidor11]

I don't get your point, if there is one.

Okay, in a single sentence:

People resist imposition of a foreign system of weights and measures because the new terminology is meaningless to them and because the sacrifice of the nation's prior system is humiliating.

The huge expense isn't encouraging, either.  People confronting a new system will ignore it as much as they can, and will not be persuaded to see any value in the change.

Seems kind of confrontational summarized that way, sorry.  Pretty obvious, though, in both contemporary and past times.

[Tsorovan]

Well OK, that made sense, It's a given.

[Brightguy]

S.I. units are metric as it is a nice system to use and program for (base 10 is alright, but base 2, 8 or 16 is much nicer to make computers work with). There are 6 S.I. base units: metres (distance), kilograms (mass), seconds (time), moles (amount of substance), Kelvins/Centrigeade (delta-1^oK = delta-1^oC but 0^oK is about 273^oC) (temperature) and lux (light). I'm not sure about the last one but it's either that or lumens.

I agree, the metric system is actually very easy to work with.  Probably the reason why some people don't want to change is because it seems daunting.  But really, it's a simpler system.  (Almost everyone can multiply / divide by powers of ten.)  Maybe not simpler if you've already learned things a different way, I suppose.  And Boggy, I believe you missed amperes (electric current) as the last base unit.  Also, I thought light intensity was measured in candelas.

There are 10 kinds of people:
Those who understand binary,
And those who don't.

:laugh: That's truly a great one.