what I have learned today.

[Canardly]

That's just not cricket.

[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.

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

I'll bow to your superior figure . . .  in the second of your fomats

You're right - but typewriters back then didn't have an option for superior, or inferior, figures.

[ian]

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.

I've never driven in the UK though, only the US. That may or may not be less frightening, I think they use yards, but I can't be sure. Road signs r fur shootin'

I did, when googling the matter, discover this source of prime gammon. Metric martyrs. I will happily adopt the term if there's genuine killing to be done.

[Mr Larrington]

USAnians generally use feet for any distance under a mile.  They don’t have fortnights either, and find the word hysterically funny.

[ian]

Yards sound like the sort of unit they'd use in Boston and nowhere else. It's a brewery in Philly.

[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.

I've never driven in the UK though, only the US. That may or may not be less frightening, I think they use yards, but I can't be sure. Road signs r fur shootin'

Okay, I don't know what they have in the US (although I have cycled in LA, but it was a long time ago) but yards are on all sorts of UK road signs. Admittedly being told that a hazard is 100m off isn't terribly urgent at cyclist speed. And yeah, even in Somerset road signs get shot at.

I did, when googling the matter, discover this source of prime gammon. Metric martyrs. I will happily adopt the term if there's genuine killing to be done.

It's all there. Compulsory... Illegal... Conspiracy... Disruptive... Disaster... Without consumers knowing... EC directive... Not a UK government decision...
There must be a loonjob conspiracy template with all these terms on and the loonjob conspiratists just fill in the guff of their choice, whether it's lizard people, 5G or metric martyrdom.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I have learned that there is a social media "thing" called nextdoor.  I have also learned that it is not worth my time and effort to join it due to the inane drivel and petty bickering that pervades it's pages.

Thank you YACF for saving me from this.   Are there any more of these social media dumpsters lurking that I should be aware of and carefully avoid please?    🙂

LinkedIn: Spamming system for recruitment types.

LinkedIn: Like Facebook but all your friends work in recruitment and you don't care if they die (knicked off of the wireless)

Pipt: Ever more desperate ways to look inventive with fonts.

(I've no idea what it is but I've seen an advert on the back of a bus, wherein it is written Pipt)

[ian]

I've honestly never noticed yards on British road signs, but I'm not terribly observant. I'm mostly on the lookout for warning about giant hedgehogs. My favourite roadsigns at the moment (and everyone should have a few) are the 'adverse camber' one by Titsey (I always pretend to fall out of the car and my wife laughs so hard that her amusement is imperceptible to normal humans) and the 'hidden dip' near Edenbridge. A dip so hidden we've never yet found it. That's a disappointing one, you're expecting a roller coaster and you get precisely nothing.

[Mrs Pingu]

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?

Ugh, that's just brought back memories...

As a young Ms NotPingu, just fallen out of school and into a job in a lab, I was making up solutions in units of mg/l.
4 months later and I enrolled in my ONC Chemistry where they lectured in mg dm^-3

Young Ms NotPingu said 'what the everlasting feck is a cubic decimeter'. Pretty sure I didn't see it in my HNC or the degree conversion and defo not in the real lab.

[L CC]

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

Where?

[Tim Hall]

paper weight (that's "gsm" or more correctly "gm2")

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

I'll bow to your superior figure . . .  in the second of your fomats

You're right - but typewriters back then didn't have an option for superior, or inferior, figures.

No, it's not the superscript that's the issue, it's the lack of division. To my mathematical brain ignoring the lack of superscript, gm2 means grammes multiplied by square metres, which is not the same as grammes per square metre.

(I think Double Elephant should be a sort of beer...)

[LittleWheelsandBig]

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

Where?

https://the-french-atlantic-coast.com/2016/04/07/rocheforts-transporter-bridge-the-last-of-its-kind-in-france/

[ian]

Moles aren't the furry kind.

I found a difficult adjustment.

To this day though, I still call it the avocado constant. And I'm pleased to see that if you google it, it says do you mean Avogadro.

[L CC]

Thanks LW&B. A trip to Rochefort seems in order, ideally for its fete.

[Jurek]

paper weight (that's "gsm" or more correctly "gm2")

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

I'll bow to your superior figure . . .  in the second of your fomats

You're right - but typewriters back then didn't have an option for superior, or inferior, figures.

No, it's not the superscript that's the issue, it's the lack of division. To my mathematical brain ignoring the lack of superscript, gm2 means grammes multiplied by square metres, which is not the same as grammes per square metre.

(I think Double Elephant should be a sort of beer...)

Double Elephant Indian Pale Ale can be had from hand pumps at a number of hostelries in the west country.

[Kim]

USAnians generally use feet for any distance under a mile.  They don’t have fortnights either, and find the word hysterically funny.

I was double-digits years and about seven rounds of grommets old when I learned that they weren't actually 'forknights'.  (I assume it's from 'fourteen', which is much less stabby.)

[Mr Larrington]

Thanks LW&B. A trip to Rochefort seems in order, ideally for its fete.

They went past it on today’s stage.  Not sure if it made the highlights prog.

[Tim Hall]

USAnians generally use feet for any distance under a mile.  They don’t have fortnights either, and find the word hysterically funny.

I was double-digits years and about seven rounds of grommets old when I learned that they weren't actually 'forknights'.  (I assume it's from 'fourteen', which is much less stabby.)

Don't Les Serapu[/shed]the French call a forknight "quinze jours"? A bonus day just to make sure, presumably.

[Efrogwr]

USAnians generally use feet for any distance under a mile.  They don’t have fortnights either, and find the word hysterically funny.

I was double-digits years and about seven rounds of grommets old when I learned that they weren't actually 'forknights'.  (I assume it's from 'fourteen', which is much less stabby.)

Don't Les Serapu[/shed]the French call a forknight "quinze jours"? A bonus day just to make sure, presumably.

Yes.  There are fourteen nights  between fifteen days....However, sennight is an archaic English word for week. I assume that it's a contraction of seven nights, which would imply that, if we follow the French, a week would have eight days.

[quixoticgeek]

Thanks LW&B. A trip to Rochefort seems in order, ideally for its fete.

They went past it on today’s stage.  Not sure if it made the highlights prog.

Rochefort is in Belgium I thought...

J

[TheLurker]

I never understood the anti-metric thing. ...

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 suspect that's true for a lot of boomers, certainly is for me.  I been happily mixing measurement systems for 50 odd years now.  I generally pick the measuring system that gives me the smallest number of units to work with or is most convenient and easy to visualise for the task at hand.  F'rinstance a model aeroplane will always have a span measured in inches ('cos small _whole_ number) and a weight measured to the nearest gramme ('cos easier than fractional ounces) and the components for it will likewise be measured in a mixture of imperial and metric units.  As for yards and metres?  A metre is just a yard with a superiority complex.

P.S.
It's also extremely good fun to wind the youngsters up by using terms *they* find incomprehensible.  Makes a very pleasant change to turn the tables on them. 

[ElyDave]

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...

would definitely be important at ESA. "was it 3m or 3ft we needed?"

In my industry people still work in archaic units and mixed units, but most of what I need to produce for them is in metric tonnes of GHG, so my first question is always about UOM and my fist step is always to convert to metric before I do anything else.  The factors are pretty much ingrained in my head these days such as 1 scm (standard cubic meter) = 35.3 scf, but then there is the question which "standard" are we talking about? The US one in imperial units, or the real one in SI units? People look at me as if I'm crazy when I point out the difference.

[L CC]

Thanks LW&B. A trip to Rochefort seems in order, ideally for its fete.

They went past it on today’s stage.  Not sure if it made the highlights prog.

Rochefort is in Belgium I thought...

J

Not that Rochefort. This Rochefort.

[Cudzoziemiec]

'forknights'. 

Forknights and spoondays. Spending far too long in Brexiteer's pub barns, probably as a result of orkdaxing.

[quixoticgeek]

I suspect that's true for a lot of boomers, certainly is for me.  I been happily mixing measurement systems for 50 odd years now.  I generally pick the measuring system that gives me the smallest number of units to work with or is most convenient and easy to visualise for the task at hand.  F'rinstance a model aeroplane will always have a span measured in inches ('cos small _whole_ number) and a weight measured to the nearest gramme ('cos easier than fractional ounces) and the components for it will likewise be measured in a mixture of imperial and metric units.  As for yards and metres?  A metre is just a yard with a superiority complex.

Except I'm not a boomer. I'm the very tail end of Gen X... And *NOT* a millennial!!!

P.S.
It's also extremely good fun to wind the youngsters up by using terms *they* find incomprehensible.  Makes a very pleasant change to turn the tables on them. 

I can do that much the same with continentals...

When they express confusion at the imperial system, I go into a rant. It works something like this:

"There's 3 barleycorns in an inch, 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 22 yards in a chain, 10 chains in a furlong 8 furlongs in a mile, 3 miles in a league, it's really not fucking difficult!!!"

Said at speed, tends to come as a shock...

J