what I have learned today.

[Cudzoziemiec]

These people think “irony” is an adjective.

Lovely! 
"I've got an interview today, so my shirt's all irony."
 

[robgul]

I never understood the anti-metric thing. It's a few minutes to learn that there's about two pounds in a kilo and the better part of two pints in a litre. Job done, you've learned a set of simple and easy-to-use units, rather than cubic bloody hogsheads per furlong.

It's almost like they're the province of the really fucking stupid.

In principle yes - BUT actually visualising, say 15cm, is harder for us older folk that grew up with feet and inches . . .I'm getting better at it now - just need to work on my understanding of the new decimal currency 

That said with metric - I worked in the printing industry in the 60s and 70s and it was a fairly early adopter of metric measurements and the A sizes for work, as well as the "grammes per square metre" method of describing paper weight (that's "gsm" or more correctly "gm2") - before that there were arcane paper sizes that signified the weight in lbs (pounds) for 500 sheets (e.g. Large Post 21 lbs; Demy 17 lbs ... and the classic size - reserved for drawing paper/plans of Double Elephant ... that's 27 x 40 inches)


BTW - it's 10 chains to the furlong (a chain being 22 yards and the length of a cricket pitch)     Hogsheads were a measure of beer, among other things.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Double Elephant is such a good name it's ridiculous that it hasn't been revived for some arty thing. Unless, of course, it has.

[Diver300]

That the auto industry regularly specify spark plugs with metric threads, imperial reach (how long the thread is) and a socket size that can be either metric or imperial

I suppose it matches wheel diameters in inches and tyre widths in mm.

[Tim Hall]

I never understood the anti-metric thing. It's a few minutes to learn that there's about two pounds in a kilo and the better part of two pints in a litre. Job done, you've learned a set of simple and easy-to-use units, rather than cubic bloody hogsheads per furlong.

It's almost like they're the province of the really fucking stupid.

In principle yes - BUT actually visualising, say 15cm, is harder for us older folk that grew up with feet and inches . . .I'm getting better at it now - just need to work on my understanding of the new decimal currency 

That said with metric - I worked in the printing industry in the 60s and 70s and it was a fairly early adopter of metric measurements and the A sizes for work, as well as the "grammes per square metre" method of describing paper weight (that's "gsm" or more correctly "gm2") - before that there were arcane paper sizes that signified the weight in lbs (pounds) for 500 sheets (e.g. Large Post 21 lbs; Demy 17 lbs ... and the classic size - reserved for drawing paper/plans of Double Elephant ... that's 27 x 40 inches)


BTW - it's 10 chains to the furlong (a chain being 22 yards and the length of a cricket pitch)     Hogsheads were a measure of beer, among other things.

More more correctly gm^-2 or g/m² surely?

[quixoticgeek]

I never understood the anti-metric thing. It's a few minutes to learn that there's about two pounds in a kilo and the better part of two pints in a litre. Job done, you've learned a set of simple and easy-to-use units, rather than cubic bloody hogsheads per furlong.

It's almost like they're the province of the really fucking stupid.

Because of my parents I grew up using imperial at home, and metric at school, and then to the exasperation of the woodwork workshop technician, the two together*.

I still find it easier to say "it's 200 yards" for when giving rough distances such as in directions "How far's the pub?" "couple hundred yards!". When a Dutch friend asked wtf a yard is, I just said it's a small meter.

I went full metric when I worked at ESA, Mars polar orbiter taught me the importance.

My main bugbear tho is that the metric terms are more of a mouthful. "1 mile" vs "1 keel oh meet er", tho some pronounce it "clometer". "Ten k" is a bit easier to say. But 6 inches is still easier to say than 150 mil...

I tend to use the engineering subset of SI units, km, m, mm, µm, I find it offers a certain level of error checking to what you've written down. If you are cutting wood for a shelf and it's marked as 1m x 200{m x 10|m, and the bit in front of the m has been smudged out, or it's a noisy phone line, you can infer a certain to a certain amount what was intended. 1m x 20m seems a bit big for a shelf, 1m x 200cm could work, but then that's still a weird shape for a shelf... 1m x 200mm that seems about right for a shelf, so next up thickness. 10µm seems... complicated in wood... so maybe 10mm, bingo 1m x 200mm x 10mm, that looks like sensible size for a shelf. Built in error checking...

J

*For a project I sent in a cutting list that included one part that was 3" x 10cm x 12mm...

[Diver300]

One of the annoyances of having two systems is that things like tape measures are made worse because they are a compromise. A tape measure with both units will naturally read in one unit when reading from the left and the other when reading from the right. Electronic scales have a button to put them in the other units, that is just as easy to press as the on/off or tare button.

Also see rants passim about digital displays that indicate in one unit but the calculation behind them is rounded to another unit.

[quixoticgeek]

One of the annoyances of having two systems is that things like tape measures are made worse because they are a compromise. A tape measure with both units will naturally read in one unit when reading from the left and the other when reading from the right. Electronic scales have a button to put them in the other units, that is just as easy to press as the on/off or tare button.

Erm, don't all tape measures read from the same end? Even all my rules, which are dual system tend to read from one end only...

Also see rants passim about digital displays that indicate in one unit but the calculation behind them is rounded to another unit.

Not a major issue, as long as it's done properly, without allowing floating point to make it all random. Many programmers see a problem, and think they can solve it with floating point maths. Now they have 2.00000000001 problems...

J

[Cudzoziemiec]

I still find it easier to say "it's 200 yards" for when giving rough distances such as in directions "How far's the pub?" "couple hundred yards!". When a Dutch friend asked wtf a yard is, I just said

...it's like a garden without any grass. 

[ian]

My wife's phone started spaffling about '300 yards to the next junction' the other week till I hit it with the metric stick. Neither of us have any idea how long a yard is.

This follows on from a sci-fi book I read a few months back where the author kept using imperial measures. I really don't think feet (I imagine they're as long as actual feet, though that seems a variable standardization, we all know some people have bigger feet than other people) are going to be current in the 25th century.

[quixoticgeek]

My wife's phone started spaffling about '300 yards to the next junction' the other week till I hit it with the metric stick. Neither of us have any idea how long a yard is.

When it comes to giving directions, 1 yard == 1 meter. They are close enough, esp given none of us are using precision measuring devices when driving a car or bike...

This follows on from a sci-fi book I read a few months back where the author kept using imperial measures. I really don't think feet (I imagine they're as long as actual feet, though that seems a variable standardization, we all know some people have bigger feet than other people) are going to be current in the 25th century.

It always jars for me when watching a US space launch, and the way NASA TV or space X talk in imperial. Have they learnt nothing from Mars Polar Orbiter?

J

[Diver300]

One of the annoyances of having two systems is that things like tape measures are made worse because they are a compromise. A tape measure with both units will naturally read in one unit when reading from the left and the other when reading from the right. Electronic scales have a button to put them in the other units, that is just as easy to press as the on/off or tare button.

Erm, don't all tape measures read from the same end? Even all my rules, which are dual system tend to read from one end only...

Yes, but when reading from one side, the scale facing the user changes depending on whether the start of the tape is to the left or to the right.

That's why single unit tapes have scales that go to both sides of the tape.

[Mrs Pingu]

I know that 3 feet = a yard, but I don't know why I know.
I have a feeling I picked it up while in a curtain shop years ago.

[Diver300]

Also see rants passim about digital displays that indicate in one unit but the calculation behind them is rounded to another unit.

Not a major issue, as long as it's done properly, without allowing floating point to make it all random. Many programmers see a problem, and think they can solve it with floating point maths. Now they have 2.00000000001 problems...

It is a problem when the rounding is correct for one unit, but of course doesn't line up with the other units.

The particular example is fuel consumption meters changing by 0.1 l/100 km each time. When displayed in mpg, that is sometimes less than 0.1 mpg, but at typical figures, it's more like 1 mpg, resulting the in mpg figure going from 42.3 to 43.2 in one step, for instance.

[Cudzoziemiec]

The imperial measures that I don't have a feeling for are Fahrenheit and ounces, both weight and fluid. I know a pound is about half a kilo and a pint is as much as a pub glass of beer(!) but how many ounces are they? And it doesn't help that it seems to vary across the Atlantic, not to mention between pints and lbs.

[quixoticgeek]

The imperial measures that I don't have a feeling for are Fahrenheit and ounces, both weight and fluid. I know a pound is about half a kilo and a pint is as much as a pub glass of beer(!) but how many ounces are they? And it doesn't help that it seems to vary across the Atlantic, not to mention between pints and lbs.

Fahrenheit makes no sense to me. Ounces for mass I am fine with, ounces for fluids make no sense to me.

An American friend gave me an interesting justification for why Fahrenheit is a useful system. Think of it as percentage of comfortable that you can deal with. So when it's 70°F, that's basically 70% of what a human can handle. etc... I can't say it made all that much sense to me, but they seemed to think it's logical...

J

[ian]

Despite living for umpteen years in the US, I never really got my head around the Fahrenheit. It's even hard to spell. I got the hang of 70℉ being pleasant and 100℉ being hot and anything above 100℉ potentially fatal. I could even stretch to 32℉ being freezing. But what the hell is 40℉ and how cold is 20℉? It gets worse the further you get away, I was listening to a podcast earlier about a chap who went swimming in a vat on molten salt at about 1400℉. I have no idea how hot that is, other than as pastimes go, to be avoided.

I did learn fluid ounces from beer (8 is a teeny glass, 16 something close to a proper beer, and 32 a passport to the toilet). US gallons, I have no idea, I just filled the tank to the top.

[Jurek]

I no longer drive.
I pay someone to do that for me.
Usually he (and it almost invariably is a he) follows instructions issued to him from a voice in the dashboard or from within a mobile phone.
Yards, I can understand.
Metres, I can understand.
But I have no fucking concept what 'After one thousand feet, turn left - means'.
And yes, I can generally do dual-nationality on most measurements (temperature excepted).

[Tim Hall]

On a sat nav in one car I drove, it could,in common with all of them I guess, be toggled between metric and imperial units. Oddly though it could display height in yards, which just felt wrong. Feet for both length and height, yards for length only.

[ian]

I don't think I've ever encountered yards in the wild, not even in the US, where they must surely exist, but probably as a slightly different length yard to a British one, just for laughs.

I can do inches, of course, that's the international measure of penises. Though some inches, we know, are bigger than other inches. You'd think to be honest they'd have standardized penis length measurement on centimetres, what with it being bigger numbers and all.

My computer handily tells me seven inches is 0.19 yards or a whopping 18 cm (and possibly a slight exaggeration). That said, anyone who slings around such a vital statistic using yards must be a force to be reckoned with. That's self-confidence.

[canny colin]

I find when doing building quotes . I have to include a tangible measurement . IE . 

Dear
        Deputy head to construct new footpath  900 mm wide x 12 m long   ( approximately  3 ft x 40 ft )    ect

  PS It is the same width as the path to the music block and the length of a 53 seater coach .

The penny would drop with the last bit . I normal include imperial measurements a  lot more costumers understand  6 ft ,& say 10 ft  than 1.82m & 3m .   

[Mr Larrington]

That there is a transporter bridge in that France, that they have now.

[Jurek]

On a sat nav in one car I drove, it could,in common with all of them I guess, be toggled between metric and imperial units. Oddly though it could display height in yards, which just felt wrong. Feet for both length and height, yards for length only.

Not quite right, shirley.
Feet are what aeroplanes fly at.
Yards are what you use to recon the distance to the horizon.
(Or the next left turn).
No?

[ian]

I generally think that I'd replaced the metric and imperial systems with something based around the size, weight, and volume of a blue whale.

Yards, I would imagine be necessary, to express that certain anatomical length for the male of species (for the record, Google tells me it's 3 yards, though there's some disagreement based around the lack of volunteers willing to don a scuba gear and a tape measure to make the measurement while the whales are in flagrante delicto). Honestly, it's like these marine biologists don't know what PhD students are for.

If I recall from Moby Dick, a popular use of the outer skin of a penis was for an apron. Not the sort of pinny you'd buy your gran.

Still, I can add that dinner-time conversational bank the fact that a happy male whale splashes out 1,500 litres (330 gallons, imperialistas). You'd need an apron, boots, and a sturdy umbrella if you were in the vicinity of that.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I don't think I've ever encountered yards in the wild,

That's quite a frightening thing to say when you've been cycling and driving in the UK for decades. Though I suppose it's normal.