America has it Wrong # 73

[Lafayette]

METRIC - THE BETTER SYSTEM

There is no easy and simple way to convert certain covert parts between Imperial and metric and vice-versa.

From here: Metric is simply a better system

Excerpt:

The metric system is a consistent and coherent system of units. In other words, it fits together very well and calculations are easy because it is decimal. This is a big advantage for use in the home, education, industry and science.

Need more be said? Then say it ... !

 

[Lafayette]

We tried metric - it was beyond a dismal failure, especially for my dad's board member friends at Coca-Cola.

Oh wow! How "telling" that must have been.

Uncle Sam is on a back-track in many areas and since "change" becomes so difficult to those who are used to "making a suitable profit by leaving things as they are".

Which means - as history has shown us amply - that we are usually the latest to change whatever and that typically means more costly as well!

The only real advantage Uncle Sam had was that its Total Population was "homogenous" (in terms of language). Europe is not at all like that. But that has no influence whatsoever on mathematical systems. Like weight or speed or whatever. They are all of course "convertible". A number maintains a value regardless of the language.

But neither is that the point. Regarding measurements this is the key factor: "Which is the one most easy to use?" And that happens to be the Metric System ...

 

[Ug make hammer]

The best part - any idea how difficult it is for Russia and China spy factories to create a metric equivalent of a US part that has to be within 1/10000 of an inch?

You're right, that is the best part

 

[Mircea]

I'll get some popcorn and you can explain it to me.

Are you making a joke or are you serious?

Are you for real?

Do you think scientists created the metric system?

Um, no, unless you truly believe that Napoleon Bonaparte was a scientist. So, do you? You know, believe Napoleon was a scientist?

The metric system was borne of the megalomaniac Napoleon's extreme hatred of all things-British.

The prime meridian was established at Greenwich, England.

Napoleon's Anglophobic hatred of all things-British was so extreme, he ordered a new prime meridian designated at Paris.

French scientists weren't smart enough to understand that Earth is a spheroid and not a true sphere. Because Earth is a spheroid, the lengths of the meridians is not uniform.

No matter, the French divided the length of the meridian through Paris into a 100, 1,000 and 10,000 equal parts and that's the origin of the meter, kilometer etc.

In the 1960s, with the advent of satellites, it was realized Earth was a spheroid and meridians were not uniform in distance, so the standard for the meter became so many wavelengths of the orange-red radiation from Krypton.

I kid you not.

In the 1970s it was discovered that Krypton was unstable and that the orange-red radiation varied, sometimes more orange and sometimes more red, so the standard was changed to the distance light travels through a vacuum in so many nano-seconds.

So, there's nothing scientific about a measuring system created by a megalomaniac's racist bigotry against a particular ethnic group.

The English system is actually more scientific than the metric system.

If I were to pick a prime meridian, I'd pick the Great Pyramid at Gizeh. It's oriented to the cardinal points and the margin of error is less than 0.3° and that's only because the tectonic plate has shifted and not due to builder error. Something else is that it exactly quarters Earth's land masses, meaning 25% of Earth's land mass is in Quadrant I, 25% in Quadrant IV, and so on.

I know pundidiots claim that an inch or a yard was the length of a king's thumb or forearm but that's just an urban myth not supported by any evidence.

Flinders Petrie and 1,000s of other archeologists, engineers and scientists took measurements inside the Great Pyramid and came up with something called the "pyramid-inch."

The ratio of inches to pyramid-inches is 1:1.0012

12 inches in a foot was not the length of a king's foot as detractors claim.

It is derived from the sexigesimal system, or Base 60. You know, 360° and 60' and 60" of arc and the 24-hour day, and 60 minutes in hour and 60 seconds in a minute and so on.

That's way more scientific than the metric system.

You say Base 10 is superior or easier. Why would you want it to be easy?

If Base 10 is so superior, then why did people use Base 60 in the first place?

What, Sumerians had a thumb and 5 fingers on each hand? No.

In fact, the evidence indicates Base 60 was in use for 24,000 years before Base 10 became vogue.

You ought to consider that problems in math and science and other "mysteries" might be solved if people viewed things through the lens of Base 60 instead of Base 10, and if Base 60 makes people smarter than Base 10, then why not?

Just something to consider.

 

[Ug make hammer]

Are you for real?

Do you think scientists created the metric system?

Does it matter? The system uses multiples of our counting base and for no other reason than that, is better. Easier to use = better.

Um, no, unless you truly believe that Napoleon Bonaparte was a scientist. So, do you? You know, believe Napoleon was a scientist?

The metric system was borne of the megalomaniac Napoleon's extreme hatred of all things-British.

The prime meridian was established at Greenwich, England.

Napoleon's Anglophobic hatred of all things-British was so extreme, he ordered a new prime meridian designated at Paris.

French scientists weren't smart enough to understand that Earth is a spheroid and not a true sphere. Because Earth is a spheroid, the lengths of the meridians is not uniform.

No matter, the French divided the length of the meridian through Paris into a 100, 1,000 and 10,000 equal parts and that's the origin of the meter, kilometer etc.

In the 1960s, with the advent of satellites, it was realized Earth was a spheroid and meridians were not uniform in distance, so the standard for the meter became so many wavelengths of the orange-red radiation from Krypton.

I kid you not.

In the 1970s it was discovered that Krypton was unstable and that the orange-red radiation varied, sometimes more orange and sometimes more red, so the standard was changed to the distance light travels through a vacuum in so many nano-seconds.

So, there's nothing scientific about a measuring system created by a megalomaniac's racist bigotry against a particular ethnic group.

The English system is actually more scientific than the metric system.

Bringing us to the problem that the English system and the US system are different.

If I were to pick a prime meridian, I'd pick the Great Pyramid at Gizeh. It's oriented to the cardinal points and the margin of error is less than 0.3° and that's only because the tectonic plate has shifted and not due to builder error. Something else is that it exactly quarters Earth's land masses, meaning 25% of Earth's land mass is in Quadrant I, 25% in Quadrant IV, and so on.

Prime meridians have very little to do with science. So what are you babbling about?

The ratio of inches to pyramid-inches is 1:1.0012

This still doesn't sound like science to me. Being very close is actually worse than being defined as identical.

12 inches in a foot was not the length of a king's foot as detractors claim.

It is derived from the sexigesimal system, or Base 60. You know, 360° and 60' and 60" of arc and the 24-hour day, and 60 minutes in hour and 60 seconds in a minute and so on.

That's way more scientific than the metric system.

You say Base 10 is superior or easier. Why would you want it to be easy?

I did not say that. I wasn't even serious when I suggested using Base B (Base 12).

Base B is better, but there's no way we will get people to change. It's better because round numbers can easily be divided by 2, 3, 4 and 6. Those times-tables would be as easy as the five-times is now.

Base 60 would mean round numbers would ALSO be divisible by 5. So 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. However there would be many more times-tables to learn, washing out any advantage.

After all though, I'm not in favor of using either. I was just trying to illustrate how using 12ths, 16ths, etc is needlessly confusing if those are not your counting base.

If Base 10 is so superior, then why did people use Base 60 in the first place?

What, Sumerians had a thumb and 5 fingers on each hand? No.

In fact, the evidence indicates Base 60 was in use for 24,000 years before Base 10 became vogue.

You ought to consider that problems in math and science and other "mysteries" might be solved if people viewed things through the lens of Base 60 instead of Base 10, and if Base 60 makes people smarter than Base 10, then why not?

Lol, yeah I'm sure there are tons (metric or otherwise) of unsolved mysteries just waiting for someone to look at a number line differently. Lol, not.

Just something to consider.

It's not even the subject, but I notice you didn't have much to say about why American Standard is better than Metric. Origins of each system don't explain why US scientists use SI (Metric) by preference: it IS more scientific in practice.

And it's not even the subject.

 

[The Mark]

No, it's not the Metric system this time, that was #12

No, it's not the driving-on-the-right business, that was resolved in #41. America is actually right.

I'm here today to harangue Americans about their DATE FORMAT.

Firstly, all dates should be the same number of characters. It's just laziness to leave leading zeros off. If Americans absolutely insist on putting the month first, then at least make January an 01 instead of a 1. I know, it's a style point, but it really does look better, and dates will never be mistaken for anything else. I walked into a 7/11 and said 9/11 by mistake, the cashier pulled a gun on me. That's not right!

Secondly, and more seriously, the only date format which sorts alphabetically into chronological order is YYYY-MM-DD and that's the format every country on Earth should use. It is somewhat in use in the US, in science and the military, but it should be required in all government documents and websites. And I mean exclusively: if people can't grasp it, they should try harder.

Thirdly, if government doesn't strongly encourage the use of YYYY-MM-DD then there's a risk of the US trying to adopt the most popular format from overseas, which is DD-MM-YYYY and since about one quarter of dates have an indistinguishable format (01/06/2021 could be two different dates) it would be a shemozzle. Not considering YYYY- at the START of a date, is probably why America has never changed from the worst possible system.

Fourthly and finally, China uses the YYYY-MM-DD system, as does Japan. If the US is serious about engaging in Asia (for markets, or to contain China, or both) then it should forget about them adopting the worst system, and save them from using the second worst, by switching to the best. Most Western European countries and the UK also use the YYYY-MM-DD system, but not exclusively. They also use the second best DD-MM-YYYY but it doesn't get them in a tangle the way it would Americans. For instance, 2021-01-06 is clearly distinguishable from 06-01-2021.

Fifthly, I'm only bugging you for fun. I know there's no way the average American will ever break their date habit, any more than they will go metric. "If it ain't broke yet, don't try and fix it" should be the national motto.

I mean, I already do use that format whenever possible.

On a completely unrelated note, why the heck do you want us all to eat Chinese dates, there are plenty of other good date types.

 

[Ug make hammer]

I mean, I already do use that format whenever possible.

On a completely unrelated note, why the heck do you want us all to eat Chinese dates, there are plenty of other good date types.

Plus, a Chinese date is way too likely to be male. Boom boom.

According to Wikipedia, China is the most populous country to mainly use the YYYY-MM-DD format. It's consistent with their other pro-efficiency and pro-business choices, like only having one timezone despite spanning 5 hours on the default map.

Maybe I'll make timezones the next "America is Wrong" thread.

 

[NoMoreDems-Reps]

Are you for real?

Do you think scientists created the metric system?

Um, no, unless you truly believe that Napoleon Bonaparte was a scientist. So, do you? You know, believe Napoleon was a scientist?

The metric system was borne of the megalomaniac Napoleon's extreme hatred of all things-British.

The prime meridian was established at Greenwich, England.

Napoleon's Anglophobic hatred of all things-British was so extreme, he ordered a new prime meridian designated at Paris.

French scientists weren't smart enough to understand that Earth is a spheroid and not a true sphere. Because Earth is a spheroid, the lengths of the meridians is not uniform.

No matter, the French divided the length of the meridian through Paris into a 100, 1,000 and 10,000 equal parts and that's the origin of the meter, kilometer etc.

In the 1960s, with the advent of satellites, it was realized Earth was a spheroid and meridians were not uniform in distance, so the standard for the meter became so many wavelengths of the orange-red radiation from Krypton.

I kid you not.

In the 1970s it was discovered that Krypton was unstable and that the orange-red radiation varied, sometimes more orange and sometimes more red, so the standard was changed to the distance light travels through a vacuum in so many nano-seconds.

So, there's nothing scientific about a measuring system created by a megalomaniac's racist bigotry against a particular ethnic group.

The English system is actually more scientific than the metric system.

If I were to pick a prime meridian, I'd pick the Great Pyramid at Gizeh. It's oriented to the cardinal points and the margin of error is less than 0.3° and that's only because the tectonic plate has shifted and not due to builder error. Something else is that it exactly quarters Earth's land masses, meaning 25% of Earth's land mass is in Quadrant I, 25% in Quadrant IV, and so on.

I know pundidiots claim that an inch or a yard was the length of a king's thumb or forearm but that's just an urban myth not supported by any evidence.

Flinders Petrie and 1,000s of other archeologists, engineers and scientists took measurements inside the Great Pyramid and came up with something called the "pyramid-inch."

The ratio of inches to pyramid-inches is 1:1.0012

12 inches in a foot was not the length of a king's foot as detractors claim.

It is derived from the sexigesimal system, or Base 60. You know, 360° and 60' and 60" of arc and the 24-hour day, and 60 minutes in hour and 60 seconds in a minute and so on.

That's way more scientific than the metric system.

You say Base 10 is superior or easier. Why would you want it to be easy?

If Base 10 is so superior, then why did people use Base 60 in the first place?

What, Sumerians had a thumb and 5 fingers on each hand? No.

In fact, the evidence indicates Base 60 was in use for 24,000 years before Base 10 became vogue.

You ought to consider that problems in math and science and other "mysteries" might be solved if people viewed things through the lens of Base 60 instead of Base 10, and if Base 60 makes people smarter than Base 10, then why not?

Just something to consider.

Wow you were serious! ...
I don't believe a measurement system can be racist or homophobic, or what ever else you claimed!
This is crazy talk, like how the Left thinks Math is racist now!

Measurement system are methods developed by humans to organize physic, math, and science .

You're trying to give Neapolitan credit for the discoveries that happens under his reign. Napoleon had
Fourier working for him and I'm sure Fourier was the one deciding what system worked well for him to get
his work done.... Also if there is a good and easy system that works and is well developed more people will
use it, even if another system is technically better. i.e. Windows vs Linux

I would assume that Base 10 is obvious for us humans because we have ten digits on our hand...

 

[Dayton3]

To the OP, I'm happily married and thus have no interest in Chinese women or any others for that matter.

 

[Hamish Howl]

Are you for real?

Do you think scientists created the metric system?

Um, no, unless you truly believe that Napoleon Bonaparte was a scientist. So, do you? You know, believe Napoleon was a scientist?

The metric system was borne of the megalomaniac Napoleon's extreme hatred of all things-British.

The prime meridian was established at Greenwich, England.

Napoleon's Anglophobic hatred of all things-British was so extreme, he ordered a new prime meridian designated at Paris.

French scientists weren't smart enough to understand that Earth is a spheroid and not a true sphere. Because Earth is a spheroid, the lengths of the meridians is not uniform.

No matter, the French divided the length of the meridian through Paris into a 100, 1,000 and 10,000 equal parts and that's the origin of the meter, kilometer etc.

In the 1960s, with the advent of satellites, it was realized Earth was a spheroid and meridians were not uniform in distance, so the standard for the meter became so many wavelengths of the orange-red radiation from Krypton.

I kid you not.

In the 1970s it was discovered that Krypton was unstable and that the orange-red radiation varied, sometimes more orange and sometimes more red, so the standard was changed to the distance light travels through a vacuum in so many nano-seconds.

So, there's nothing scientific about a measuring system created by a megalomaniac's racist bigotry against a particular ethnic group.

The English system is actually more scientific than the metric system.

If I were to pick a prime meridian, I'd pick the Great Pyramid at Gizeh. It's oriented to the cardinal points and the margin of error is less than 0.3° and that's only because the tectonic plate has shifted and not due to builder error. Something else is that it exactly quarters Earth's land masses, meaning 25% of Earth's land mass is in Quadrant I, 25% in Quadrant IV, and so on.

I know pundidiots claim that an inch or a yard was the length of a king's thumb or forearm but that's just an urban myth not supported by any evidence.

Flinders Petrie and 1,000s of other archeologists, engineers and scientists took measurements inside the Great Pyramid and came up with something called the "pyramid-inch."

The ratio of inches to pyramid-inches is 1:1.0012

12 inches in a foot was not the length of a king's foot as detractors claim.

It is derived from the sexigesimal system, or Base 60. You know, 360° and 60' and 60" of arc and the 24-hour day, and 60 minutes in hour and 60 seconds in a minute and so on.

That's way more scientific than the metric system.

You say Base 10 is superior or easier. Why would you want it to be easy?

If Base 10 is so superior, then why did people use Base 60 in the first place?

What, Sumerians had a thumb and 5 fingers on each hand? No.

In fact, the evidence indicates Base 60 was in use for 24,000 years before Base 10 became vogue.

You ought to consider that problems in math and science and other "mysteries" might be solved if people viewed things through the lens of Base 60 instead of Base 10, and if Base 60 makes people smarter than Base 10, then why not?

Just something to consider.

 

[Ug make hammer]

I would assume that Base 10 is obvious for us humans because we have ten digits on our hand...

For now!

 

[Mircea]

Wow you were serious! ...
I don't believe a measurement system can be racist or homophobic, or what ever else you claimed!

Your beliefs are irrelevant. Facts are not.

Measurement system are methods developed by humans to organize physic, math, and science .

I would not disagree, but you are missing the point.

Suppose the US created a measurement system borne out of slavery.

The number of bales of cotton a Black Slave could bale in a hour would be a unit of energy, heat, time etc etc.

What I'm hearing you say is that would be perfectly okay.

You're trying to give Neapolitan credit for the discoveries that happens under his reign.

I'm not trying to do anything.

I'm simply reporting facts.

Napoleon's Anglophobic racist bigotry toward all things-British is an irrefutable fact, since he repeatedly verbalized and wrote about his hatred for them.

It is a fact Napoleon ordered a new prime meridian be created running through Paris, rather than Greenwich, England.

It is a fact the prime meridian running through Paris is the basis for the metric system, and not the prime meridian running through Greenwich.

It is also a fact those meridians are not of equal length, because Earth is a spheroid and not a true sphere.

The Metric System was created out of racist bigotry and in error, and has been compounded since then. It is neither scientific nor worthy of use.

 

[Ug make hammer]

Your beliefs are irrelevant. Facts are not.


I would not disagree, but you are missing the point.

Suppose the US created a measurement system borne out of slavery.

The number of bales of cotton a Black Slave could bale in a hour would be a unit of energy, heat, time etc etc.

What I'm hearing you say is that would be perfectly okay.


I'm not trying to do anything.

I'm simply reporting facts.

Napoleon's Anglophobic racist bigotry toward all things-British is an irrefutable fact, since he repeatedly verbalized and wrote about his hatred for them.

It is a fact Napoleon ordered a new prime meridian be created running through Paris, rather than Greenwich, England.

It is a fact the prime meridian running through Paris is the basis for the metric system, and not the prime meridian running through Greenwich.

The "metric system" does not have just one base. The modern system (SI) uses the second and the speed of light to define the metre.

It is also a fact those meridians are not of equal length, because Earth is a spheroid and not a true sphere.

Hence why that definition was only used for 8 years (1791 to 1799). It was based on a platinum bar for a century after that. Then for 38 years as the distance between two marks on a platinum/iridium bar. The bar definition was refined twice until in 1960 a multiple of the wavelength of Krypton emissions was used. Finally in 1983 the metre was completely rebased to be dependent on the second and the speed of light:

"the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second."

If like me, you find all this trivia extremely dull, why are you talking about the Metric system in this thread?"

The Metric System was created out of racist bigotry and in error, and has been compounded since then. It is neither scientific nor worthy of use.

The metre was "created" in reference to time. In 1790 (before Napoleon) the French National Assembly decreed:

"The length of the new metre to be equal to the length of a pendulum with a half-period of one second"

... except they quickly realized that gravity is not uniform on the Earth's surface. They may not have known that sea level itself varies due to density of the plate underneath it, but they were sufficiently concerned to adopt (for 6 years) the meridian system you are imagining to be the original meter.

As to "compounding" the error, that is pure foolishness. Maybe you just don't like science?

 

[Glitch]

No, it's not the Metric system this time, that was #12

No, it's not the driving-on-the-right business, that was resolved in #41. America is actually right.

I'm here today to harangue Americans about their DATE FORMAT.

Firstly, all dates should be the same number of characters. It's just laziness to leave leading zeros off. If Americans absolutely insist on putting the month first, then at least make January an 01 instead of a 1. I know, it's a style point, but it really does look better, and dates will never be mistaken for anything else. I walked into a 7/11 and said 9/11 by mistake, the cashier pulled a gun on me. That's not right!

Secondly, and more seriously, the only date format which sorts alphabetically into chronological order is YYYY-MM-DD and that's the format every country on Earth should use. It is somewhat in use in the US, in science and the military, but it should be required in all government documents and websites. And I mean exclusively: if people can't grasp it, they should try harder.

Thirdly, if government doesn't strongly encourage the use of YYYY-MM-DD then there's a risk of the US trying to adopt the most popular format from overseas, which is DD-MM-YYYY and since about one quarter of dates have an indistinguishable format (01/06/2021 could be two different dates) it would be a shemozzle. Not considering YYYY- at the START of a date, is probably why America has never changed from the worst possible system.

Fourthly and finally, China uses the YYYY-MM-DD system, as does Japan. If the US is serious about engaging in Asia (for markets, or to contain China, or both) then it should forget about them adopting the worst system, and save them from using the second worst, by switching to the best. Most Western European countries and the UK also use the YYYY-MM-DD system, but not exclusively. They also use the second best DD-MM-YYYY but it doesn't get them in a tangle the way it would Americans. For instance, 2021-01-06 is clearly distinguishable from 06-01-2021.

Fifthly, I'm only bugging you for fun. I know there's no way the average American will ever break their date habit, any more than they will go metric. "If it ain't broke yet, don't try and fix it" should be the national motto.

How something sorts is entirely dependent on the sorting algorithm used. You can just as easily sort MM-DD-YYYY in chronological order as you can YYYY-MM-DD, or any other combination you wish you use.

Both the Chinese and Israel use a lunisolar calendar, not the Gregorian calendar.

The only time the date format was ever a serious issue was just before the year 2000. The COBOL databases used by the mainframes at that time only stored a two-digit year. To make things even more difficult they stored a blank default date as 01/01/00. Furthermore, the date January 1, 2000 wasn't the only problem. Most programs did not take into consideration that 2000 was a leap-year, while 1900 was not. So 2000 would not have included February 29, 2000 had it not been for programmers working throughout the 1990s fixing those problems.

Ignorant people may scoff at all the work that went into fixing the Y2K date issues, but it was a very serious problem that many people worked to resolve for years. I was one of them.

Americans have been using the metric system since at least the 1960s. We are able to do the conversions in our head, and don't require the government to change the millions of speed limit signs. We are also quite capable of converting Fahrenheit into Celsius, gallons into liters, and feet into meters, or visa versa. Apparently Europeans are not as bright and requires the government to spell everything out for them.