Aside from the aforementioned reference to the mysterious "MOND," there's this bit that sticks out to me
"One such thing is that Smolin seems to have a soft spot for Paul Feyerabend as a philosopher of science (despite describing himself as a proud Popperazzo in an endnote)."
Are we supposed to know the name "Feyerabend" and the term "Popperazzo" off the top of our heads? At least the much-derided "pop physics" works actually try to explain themselves rather than taking the Slashdot "RTFM n00b!" attitude.
"Right now I'm simply arguing that the metric system is superior in that it is more consistent, more elegant, more powerful, simpler, and easier to use."
The only possible technical advantage of SI is its mathematical coherence, eliminanting the need for dimensionless constants in calculations. However, this advantage is lost when you start including non-SI units that do require such constants, units such as the liter, the are, the angstrom, the bar, and the like.
Once you start throwing in a hodge-podge mix of units, whose use persists solely to fill in gaps left by the current SI prefix structure, there is little left to reccomend the system over USCS units. You insist that metric is "more elegant" and "simpler," but metric (SI or otherwise) still does not have a monopolization on decimalization or even on the prefixes. Your constant example of converting between units of the same dimension is a red herring, because that is something that never arrises in day-to-day measurement, in any unit system.
"What is the british/US/imperial analog of volts, for example?"
First, would those be electrostatic or electromagnetic volts? CGS units still persist in many technical fields, despite the existance of SI.
Secondly, again, there is no rule saying that one cannot mix unit systems, at least not in the United States.
"What about chemical concentration (molarity)?"
Use the pound mole instead of the gram mole. 1 lb-mol of C == 12 lb of C. You can measure molarity in lb-mol/ft^3 or lb-mol/gal.
"First, people can't just make up their own units and use those."
Never claimed they should.
"The centimeter, angstrom, etc. are simply derived units based on scaling by powers of ten."
The Angstrom isn't SI.
"But there's a difference between using measuring length in centimeters and measuring pressure in kg/cm^2, which is simply incorrect."
Kilograms of force are what are measured by your spring-loaded bathroom and kitchen scales. This is one of the reasons why "(mass unit) of force" has persisted in fields where knowing how much force is needed to move X mass is needed without the need to refer to g.
It's only "incorrect" in the same way the Angstrom is "incorrect:" it's not SI.
"So I absolutely believe that a society has the right to dictate what units of measurement are used by its members when it comes to trade"
Fixing the defintion of units is not the same as mandating that a particular unit must or must not be used. Congress has fixed the definition of the US gallon; Parliament has both fixed the definition of the UK gallon and proscribed its use.
"However, the very fact that the pound-mass vs. pound-force ambiguity exists is a strike against the system."
The same ambiguity exists between kilograms of mass and kilograms of force, between electrostatic volts and electromagnetic volts, and any number of metric units with the same name. The only way to avoid this ambiguity is strict adherence to SI, which nobody does.
"I'm a windsurfer and I would always quote my weight in kilos since it makes working out things like volume of water displaced much easier (1 kilo == 1 litre of fresh water)."
Not since 1889. 1 L == 1 dm^3, 1 kg == the mass of that thing over there.
Fresh water? Where are you windsurfing, Lake Michigan?
"And whilst I may know specific values (my height, weight, etc) in imperial, I have no idea how to do calculations with those values. If I'm going to calculate anything I use metric (how many ounces in a pound? pounds in a stone? I have no idea - I'd have to look them up)."
When have you ever needed to know how many grams or megragrams you weigh? When was the last time you stood on a scale that measured to the nearest gram?
"but the gallons (rarely, these days) used in England aren't the same size as the American gallons..."
The imperial gallon is no longer legal for trade anywhere in the world. Problem solved. Now if only people can be convinced to stop saying "ton" when they mean "megagram."
"The pseudo-base two system you're insisting is so elegant and wonderful is so useless in real life that modern implementations of british units have been metric-ized."
It works, it has its uses (I use gasoline by the gallon, but tend to use butter by the teaspoon). I am not arguing for its mandated use, only for its continued existence, as neither you nor any other pro-metrication person I've run across has made a convincing argument why nobody should be allowed to use these units for trade if they so choose.
"I have no idea--mm Hg are not any more metric than pounds per square inch. "
You're conflating "metric" with SI. SI is metric, but not all metric is SI.
"Also, I'm sure you probably knew this, but kg are units of mass, not force."
If you are a strict adherent to SI, then yes. But no country on the planet (with the possible exception of France itself) is a strict adherent to SI. I've already experienced the headache of working on a Japanese tractor with Japanese tires with the only pressure listed on the sidewall being "kg/cm^2."
"The newton is the SI unit of force, and 1 Pa is defined as 1 N/m^2. Pounds correspond to newtons, while slugs correspond to kilograms."
Considering the definition of the pound in the US is 453,592,370 micgrograms (which makes sense, since it was determined by comparing a pound artifact with a kilogram artifact on a beam balance), it is a unit of mass, not force. The slug is a substitution for the pound in order to create a coherent system of measure (i. e. avoids a dimensionless constant in F=ma), and is never actually used outside of first semester physics textbooks. Similar units are the poundal (eliminating the dimensionless constant from the other side of the equation) and the hyl (hyl:slug::kgf:lbf).
"A calculation that would actually be analogous would be for you to tell me how many cubic 1/2^n-ths of an inch there are in a femtogallon (where n is an integer)."
Why? There is no USCS standards body telling me to use one unit over another. You're the one arguing in favor of "preferred" units, not me.
It's the "consumers" (i. e. "the people") who granted the music companies their copyrights anyway. If they're not going to abide by the terms of the agreement, why shouldn't the people be allowed to revoke their copyright privileges?
"Being an online-posting musician myself -- what rights do I have if this should ever happen to me, and what can be done to raise awareness about such things?"
In the US, you automatically have copyright on any work you create (unless you explicitly place a work in the public domain), but if you want to make it easier to sue violators, registration of a work makes violators liable to any legal fees you may incur.
"What kind of options are those? It just sounds like a lot of needless complexity to me."
The same can be said of SI prefixes. Why use them instead of solely using scientific notation?
"Now you're mixing systems."
Not a federal crime.
"while the british/US system does it by using pre-set fractions."
No law or rules body demands the use of these "pre-set fractions." There is no "BEPM." I've never seen a gas station in the US sell in units other than decimal gallons, and I know of no gas station penalized by any state standards authority for not selling gasoline in gallonts/quarts/pints/etc.
"But the entire concept of milliteaspoons is something you just made up by using metric prefixes with british units."
So? So long as the prefixes are used to represent powers of ten (as opposed to powers of two), BIPM is happy.
"It still comes down to factor of ten conversions."
How many milimeters of mercury are in a pascal? What about in kilograms of force per square meter?
"A femtoliter is a cubic micrometer, and it only took me a few seconds to figure that out in my head just now."
"A few seconds?" I could tell you there are 768 teaspoons in a US gallon in less time. And again, why the "needless complexity" of prefixes instead of relying solely on scientific notation? Keeping all measurements of density in terms of kilograms per meter would eliminate all needless conversions to stay within the SI (newtons, pascals, etc.).
"you have at least seven units with nonsystematic names spanning less than three orders of magnitude"
2^0 gal = 2^2 qt = 2^3 pt = 2^4 cup = 2^7 fl oz = 2^8 tbsp
"What does that add?"
Options.
"And how do you measure volumes smaller than a teaspoon anyway?"
I could point to units, but what exactly is preventing you from using centiteaspoons or militeaspoons? Further, why exactly are you insisting on using only one system or another? The status quo in the US that you are attempting to argue against involves no government compulsion in either direction (there's no law saying "thou shalt not use metric").
"they're in femtoliters"
The liter is deprecated. BIPM would rather you and your doctors use cubic linear measure. Please figure out the proper prefix to use with "cubic meters."
"BTW, according to wikipedia, a gallon is 160 fluid ounces"
The link you pointed to has the word "imperial" in it. We haven't been a part of that empire since 1776, which should have tipped you off. Additionally, with Commonwealth countries mandating metrication through legislation, the US gallon is the only gallon that can be legally used someplace in the world.
"and was equal to either 277.420 in^3 in 1963, or 277.41943 in^3 in 1985."
The latter number stems from the fact that Parliament arbitrarily fixed the imperial gallon to 4.54609 L in 1985. And the former stems from the British being as misguided as the French in pegging their unit of volumic measure to a specific mass of water (10 lb in this case). There are additional problems with the imperial gallon as well, but they're not my problem.
As I stated before, the US gallon has been exactly 231 cubic inches since the Eighteenth Century (which means it's exactly 3,785,411,784,000,000 cubic micrometers).
"which in turn is different from the US dry gallon."
The bushel (and units derived from it) is used solely in agriculture (and that particular unit is hardly used even then), much like the metric (but non-SI) dyne being used only in specialized fields, or the widespread use of the ambiguous term "ton" to refer to a megagram or the non-SI units "milimeter of mercury" or "milibar" to measure pressure.
"The Celsius scale is calibrated to the freezing and boiling points of water."
Another metric myth. Centigrade is calibrated to the boiling point and freezing point (at 101.325 kPa), Celsius is a linear offset of kelvin, which is calibrated to the triple point of water. 100 degrees centigrade is 99.9839 degrees celsius.
If I said it once, I said a hundred times: True Geeks do not argue between Celcius and Farenheit, but between kelvin and Rankine. In either case, all the numbers quoted are Really Fucking Cold (TM).
"If I want 1.9 gallons, then I'm supposed to measure one gallon, three quarts, one pint, three fluid ounces, and 0.4 tablespoons?"
If you want 1.9 gallons, measure 1.9 gallons. If you want 486.4 tablespoons, measure 486.4 tablespoons. BIPM frowns upon non-decimal fractions with SI units, but there is no similar organization to frown upon decimals with US units. Gasoline is sold in decimal gallons (to the nearest miligallon).
"Please don't be so condescending as to suggest that figuring something like that out in one's head is utterly trivial."
If the series "1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256..." doesn't mean anything to you, you don't belong on Slashdot. They're powers of 2. If your job has anything to do with computers beyond using a word processor, I suggest a new field.
"I'm sorry, but that's totally bizarre and nonsensical. If I want 1.9 gallons, then I'm supposed to measure one gallon, three quarts, one pint, three fluid ounces, and 0.4 tablespoons?"/sigh
1 gal = 4 qt = 8 pt = 16 cup = 128 fl oz = 256 tbsp
"In metric counties you do not have to learn the sixteen times table in school - so we take a little longer to do such calculations in our heads."
What did you learn in your comp sci courses if not a little bit of binary and hexadecimal?
"What sort of mile are you using to measure distance,"
The nautical mile is accepted for use with SI by BIPM.
"what sort of gallon for volume and what sort of ounce?"
The first answer is "The one that's still legal to use." Every country that used the "imperial" gallon/fluid ounce has since banned its use except for very specialized industries (read "beer").
The second is "Volumic units are frowned upon in both US and SI units, for similar reasons." The US gallon has been far more consistent (i. e. less ambiguous) than the liter, but "cubic feet" is more widely used in industry.
With that out of the way, what sort of ton? Two kilopounds or one megagram?
Why are you insisting on converting to inches? Why aren't you happy with 3.2 centiyards? Normal people typically don't do such things for fun or to pass time, and the only real reason to convert any yard measurement to inches is if you're working on a particular problem where the inch is a more convenient unit of length than the yard.
"Conversions are non-trivial, to say the least, in the Imperial system."
Conversions are a red herring. The only possible reason to convert the distance betwen New York and DC from kilometers to milimeters is to introduce false precision.
"Litre is the standard spelling for SI units as is gram and second. Nuff said."
No, it's not. The One True Language of SI, the language of the signed Convention du Mètre itself, is French. There aren't fifteen different official translations like other, more modern treaties, all translations are unofficial. It's why we're talking about "SI" to begin with, instead of the English "IS." Therefore, the official names of the base units are "metre," "kilogramme," and "seconde."
It is because of different localizations like "gram" and "second" that BIPM pushes use of the unit symbols (e. g. m, kg, s) instead.
"So they are trying to deprecate the litre because it does not conveniently fit into a volume to weight conversion on an arbitrary fluid?"
They are trying to deprecate it becuase historical inconsistencies in its definition makes the term ambiguous, and because the original/current definition makes it redundant (there's little reason to give dm^3 a special name).
"Being that humans have 10 fingers, counting systems and measurement all being decimal makes a lot more sense, because of the fact many conversions involve simply moving decimal places back and forward."
SI doesn't have a monopoly on decimals, nor even on the prefixes used with SI or other metric units. Kilopound. Milinch.
"Also, my bloody spellchecker is reminding me that I'm apparently using an american dictionary - it's LITRE not LITER. Perhaps someone should change the spelling to leeter so americans get it."
We write "liter" and "meter" for the same reason we write "gram" and "second" instead of "gramme" and "seconde:" we're not French. The United States was the first English-speaking nation to adopt the metric system and the first to join the SI, predating you Oxford types by decades. Now, if you wish to ignore our anglophone precedent and instead cater to your francophilic tendancies, be my guest, but you should probably acknowledge that it is French you're writing and should also revert to "gramme" and "seconde" for consistency.
is illegal in all the countries that used it. Problem solved.
"litre (note spelling)"
The US has been using liters for longer than the UK has used litres, by about thirty years. We abandoned the UK standards for (leaking) pounds and (shrinking) yards, redefining our own units in terms of SI units, at around the same time the UK finally made metric legal for trade. Your insistance on the French spelling, rather than following the example of the first English-speaking country to adopt the system, is curious. Do you also insist on "gramme" and "seconde?"
"Because the US needs to pull its finger out and get with the program."
What, that's it?
We're getting along fine, our units of measure are, by definition, exactly as accurate as SI units. SI doesn't have a monopoly on using either decimals or prefixes, so even decimalization isn't a particularly compelling reason. There is no technical reason for a compulsory switch.
231. To quote a line from a certain video game, "Twenty-three is number one."
"Since he calculation using the metric system is really easy"
A US gallon is made up of:
4 quarts
8 pints
16 cups
128 fluid ounces
256 tablespoons
If you can't see the pattern and do that kind of math in your head, you don't belong on Slashdot.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with using decimal gallons (I fill up my car's gas tank with decimal gallons of gasoline all the time), but using binary in SI is strongly frowned upon by BIPM.
Or are you trying to focus on the conversion between volumic and cubic-linear measurements? First off, there's little point in it since converting between two such units is hardly useful in day-to-day operations, but even if it is, you're better off using using the US gallon than the liter because it has been far more consistent: 231 cubic inches since the eighteenth century. Initially, the liter was defined as a cubic decimeter, but then somebody had the idea to define it as "one kilogram of water," and despite protestations from metric fanbois, they're not the same thing. It was eventually changed back to "cubic decimeter," but now you're left with a system where "one liter" today is non-negligibly different from "one liter" a century ago.
This is why BIPM is trying to deprecate the liter outright.
Slashdot Mirror
Aside from the aforementioned reference to the mysterious "MOND," there's this bit that sticks out to me
"One such thing is that Smolin seems to have a soft spot for Paul Feyerabend as a philosopher of science (despite describing himself as a proud Popperazzo in an endnote)."
Are we supposed to know the name "Feyerabend" and the term "Popperazzo" off the top of our heads? At least the much-derided "pop physics" works actually try to explain themselves rather than taking the Slashdot "RTFM n00b!" attitude.
"Right now I'm simply arguing that the metric system is superior in that it is more consistent, more elegant, more powerful, simpler, and easier to use."
The only possible technical advantage of SI is its mathematical coherence, eliminanting the need for dimensionless constants in calculations. However, this advantage is lost when you start including non-SI units that do require such constants, units such as the liter, the are, the angstrom, the bar, and the like.
Once you start throwing in a hodge-podge mix of units, whose use persists solely to fill in gaps left by the current SI prefix structure, there is little left to reccomend the system over USCS units. You insist that metric is "more elegant" and "simpler," but metric (SI or otherwise) still does not have a monopolization on decimalization or even on the prefixes. Your constant example of converting between units of the same dimension is a red herring, because that is something that never arrises in day-to-day measurement, in any unit system.
"What is the british/US/imperial analog of volts, for example?"
First, would those be electrostatic or electromagnetic volts? CGS units still persist in many technical fields, despite the existance of SI.
Secondly, again, there is no rule saying that one cannot mix unit systems, at least not in the United States.
"What about chemical concentration (molarity)?"
Use the pound mole instead of the gram mole. 1 lb-mol of C == 12 lb of C. You can measure molarity in lb-mol/ft^3 or lb-mol/gal.
"First, people can't just make up their own units and use those."
Never claimed they should.
"The centimeter, angstrom, etc. are simply derived units based on scaling by powers of ten."
The Angstrom isn't SI.
"But there's a difference between using measuring length in centimeters and measuring pressure in kg/cm^2, which is simply incorrect."
Kilograms of force are what are measured by your spring-loaded bathroom and kitchen scales. This is one of the reasons why "(mass unit) of force" has persisted in fields where knowing how much force is needed to move X mass is needed without the need to refer to g.
It's only "incorrect" in the same way the Angstrom is "incorrect:" it's not SI.
"So I absolutely believe that a society has the right to dictate what units of measurement are used by its members when it comes to trade"
Fixing the defintion of units is not the same as mandating that a particular unit must or must not be used. Congress has fixed the definition of the US gallon; Parliament has both fixed the definition of the UK gallon and proscribed its use.
"However, the very fact that the pound-mass vs. pound-force ambiguity exists is a strike against the system."
The same ambiguity exists between kilograms of mass and kilograms of force, between electrostatic volts and electromagnetic volts, and any number of metric units with the same name. The only way to avoid this ambiguity is strict adherence to SI, which nobody does.
"And whilst I may know specific values (my height, weight, etc) in imperial, I have no idea how to do calculations with those values. If I'm going to calculate anything I use metric (how many ounces in a pound? pounds in a stone? I have no idea - I'd have to look them up)."
When have you ever needed to know how many grams or megragrams you weigh? When was the last time you stood on a scale that measured to the nearest gram?
"but the gallons (rarely, these days) used in England aren't the same size as the American gallons..."
The imperial gallon is no longer legal for trade anywhere in the world. Problem solved. Now if only people can be convinced to stop saying "ton" when they mean "megagram."
"The pseudo-base two system you're insisting is so elegant and wonderful is so useless in real life that modern implementations of british units have been metric-ized."
It works, it has its uses (I use gasoline by the gallon, but tend to use butter by the teaspoon). I am not arguing for its mandated use, only for its continued existence, as neither you nor any other pro-metrication person I've run across has made a convincing argument why nobody should be allowed to use these units for trade if they so choose.
"I have no idea--mm Hg are not any more metric than pounds per square inch. "
You're conflating "metric" with SI. SI is metric, but not all metric is SI.
"Also, I'm sure you probably knew this, but kg are units of mass, not force."
If you are a strict adherent to SI, then yes. But no country on the planet (with the possible exception of France itself) is a strict adherent to SI. I've already experienced the headache of working on a Japanese tractor with Japanese tires with the only pressure listed on the sidewall being "kg/cm^2."
"The newton is the SI unit of force, and 1 Pa is defined as 1 N/m^2. Pounds correspond to newtons, while slugs correspond to kilograms."
Considering the definition of the pound in the US is 453,592,370 micgrograms (which makes sense, since it was determined by comparing a pound artifact with a kilogram artifact on a beam balance), it is a unit of mass, not force. The slug is a substitution for the pound in order to create a coherent system of measure (i. e. avoids a dimensionless constant in F=ma), and is never actually used outside of first semester physics textbooks. Similar units are the poundal (eliminating the dimensionless constant from the other side of the equation) and the hyl (hyl:slug::kgf:lbf).
"A calculation that would actually be analogous would be for you to tell me how many cubic 1/2^n-ths of an inch there are in a femtogallon (where n is an integer)."
Why? There is no USCS standards body telling me to use one unit over another. You're the one arguing in favor of "preferred" units, not me.
"The Conservative MP for Yorkton-Melville obviously doesn't care about Canadian artists or stopping DRM."
"Conservative?" Send him another letter asking him why he hates Amer^WCanada.
That should help offset the loss you took with your PS3 plans.
When was the last time you saw 0.125 bushel referred to as "1 gallon?"
"Ummm... because two wrongs don't make a right?"
It's the "consumers" (i. e. "the people") who granted the music companies their copyrights anyway. If they're not going to abide by the terms of the agreement, why shouldn't the people be allowed to revoke their copyright privileges?
"Being an online-posting musician myself -- what rights do I have if this should ever happen to me, and what can be done to raise awareness about such things?"
In the US, you automatically have copyright on any work you create (unless you explicitly place a work in the public domain), but if you want to make it easier to sue violators, registration of a work makes violators liable to any legal fees you may incur.
"BTW, I think the bushel is still pretty widely used in agriculture. I grew up in a farm town, and I heard people using them all the time."
Then you should know how rarely 0.125 bushel is called "1 gallon."
"What kind of options are those? It just sounds like a lot of needless complexity to me."
The same can be said of SI prefixes. Why use them instead of solely using scientific notation?
"Now you're mixing systems."
Not a federal crime.
"while the british/US system does it by using pre-set fractions."
No law or rules body demands the use of these "pre-set fractions." There is no "BEPM." I've never seen a gas station in the US sell in units other than decimal gallons, and I know of no gas station penalized by any state standards authority for not selling gasoline in gallonts/quarts/pints/etc.
"But the entire concept of milliteaspoons is something you just made up by using metric prefixes with british units."
So? So long as the prefixes are used to represent powers of ten (as opposed to powers of two), BIPM is happy.
"It still comes down to factor of ten conversions."
How many milimeters of mercury are in a pascal? What about in kilograms of force per square meter?
"A femtoliter is a cubic micrometer, and it only took me a few seconds to figure that out in my head just now."
"A few seconds?" I could tell you there are 768 teaspoons in a US gallon in less time. And again, why the "needless complexity" of prefixes instead of relying solely on scientific notation? Keeping all measurements of density in terms of kilograms per meter would eliminate all needless conversions to stay within the SI (newtons, pascals, etc.).
"you have at least seven units with nonsystematic names spanning less than three orders of magnitude"
2^0 gal = 2^2 qt = 2^3 pt = 2^4 cup = 2^7 fl oz = 2^8 tbsp
"What does that add?"
Options.
"And how do you measure volumes smaller than a teaspoon anyway?"
I could point to units, but what exactly is preventing you from using centiteaspoons or militeaspoons? Further, why exactly are you insisting on using only one system or another? The status quo in the US that you are attempting to argue against involves no government compulsion in either direction (there's no law saying "thou shalt not use metric").
"they're in femtoliters"
The liter is deprecated. BIPM would rather you and your doctors use cubic linear measure. Please figure out the proper prefix to use with "cubic meters."
"BTW, according to wikipedia, a gallon is 160 fluid ounces"
The link you pointed to has the word "imperial" in it. We haven't been a part of that empire since 1776, which should have tipped you off. Additionally, with Commonwealth countries mandating metrication through legislation, the US gallon is the only gallon that can be legally used someplace in the world.
"and was equal to either 277.420 in^3 in 1963, or 277.41943 in^3 in 1985."
The latter number stems from the fact that Parliament arbitrarily fixed the imperial gallon to 4.54609 L in 1985. And the former stems from the British being as misguided as the French in pegging their unit of volumic measure to a specific mass of water (10 lb in this case). There are additional problems with the imperial gallon as well, but they're not my problem.
As I stated before, the US gallon has been exactly 231 cubic inches since the Eighteenth Century (which means it's exactly 3,785,411,784,000,000 cubic micrometers).
"which in turn is different from the US dry gallon."
The bushel (and units derived from it) is used solely in agriculture (and that particular unit is hardly used even then), much like the metric (but non-SI) dyne being used only in specialized fields, or the widespread use of the ambiguous term "ton" to refer to a megagram or the non-SI units "milimeter of mercury" or "milibar" to measure pressure.
"The Celsius scale is calibrated to the freezing and boiling points of water."
Another metric myth. Centigrade is calibrated to the boiling point and freezing point (at 101.325 kPa), Celsius is a linear offset of kelvin, which is calibrated to the triple point of water. 100 degrees centigrade is 99.9839 degrees celsius.
If I said it once, I said a hundred times: True Geeks do not argue between Celcius and Farenheit, but between kelvin and Rankine. In either case, all the numbers quoted are Really Fucking Cold (TM).
"Well, as a maths student, I would prefer to ban degrees and keep radians. Radians are actually useful to work with."
As a maths student, you of all people should understand that measuring angles with radians is irrational.
"If I want 1.9 gallons, then I'm supposed to measure one gallon, three quarts, one pint, three fluid ounces, and 0.4 tablespoons?"
If you want 1.9 gallons, measure 1.9 gallons. If you want 486.4 tablespoons, measure 486.4 tablespoons. BIPM frowns upon non-decimal fractions with SI units, but there is no similar organization to frown upon decimals with US units. Gasoline is sold in decimal gallons (to the nearest miligallon).
"Please don't be so condescending as to suggest that figuring something like that out in one's head is utterly trivial."
If the series "1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256..." doesn't mean anything to you, you don't belong on Slashdot. They're powers of 2. If your job has anything to do with computers beyond using a word processor, I suggest a new field.
"I'm sorry, but that's totally bizarre and nonsensical. If I want 1.9 gallons, then I'm supposed to measure one gallon, three quarts, one pint, three fluid ounces, and 0.4 tablespoons?" /sigh
1 gal = 4 qt = 8 pt = 16 cup = 128 fl oz = 256 tbsp
"In metric counties you do not have to learn the sixteen times table in school - so we take a little longer to do such calculations in our heads."
What did you learn in your comp sci courses if not a little bit of binary and hexadecimal?
"What sort of mile are you using to measure distance,"
The nautical mile is accepted for use with SI by BIPM.
"what sort of gallon for volume and what sort of ounce?"
The first answer is "The one that's still legal to use." Every country that used the "imperial" gallon/fluid ounce has since banned its use except for very specialized industries (read "beer").
The second is "Volumic units are frowned upon in both US and SI units, for similar reasons." The US gallon has been far more consistent (i. e. less ambiguous) than the liter, but "cubic feet" is more widely used in industry.
With that out of the way, what sort of ton? Two kilopounds or one megagram?
"What does 0.032 yards equal in inches?"
Why are you insisting on converting to inches? Why aren't you happy with 3.2 centiyards? Normal people typically don't do such things for fun or to pass time, and the only real reason to convert any yard measurement to inches is if you're working on a particular problem where the inch is a more convenient unit of length than the yard.
"Conversions are non-trivial, to say the least, in the Imperial system."
Conversions are a red herring. The only possible reason to convert the distance betwen New York and DC from kilometers to milimeters is to introduce false precision.
"Litre is the standard spelling for SI units as is gram and second. Nuff said."
No, it's not. The One True Language of SI, the language of the signed Convention du Mètre itself, is French. There aren't fifteen different official translations like other, more modern treaties, all translations are unofficial. It's why we're talking about "SI" to begin with, instead of the English "IS." Therefore, the official names of the base units are "metre," "kilogramme," and "seconde."
It is because of different localizations like "gram" and "second" that BIPM pushes use of the unit symbols (e. g. m, kg, s) instead.
"So they are trying to deprecate the litre because it does not conveniently fit into a volume to weight conversion on an arbitrary fluid?"
They are trying to deprecate it becuase historical inconsistencies in its definition makes the term ambiguous, and because the original/current definition makes it redundant (there's little reason to give dm^3 a special name).
"Being that humans have 10 fingers, counting systems and measurement all being decimal makes a lot more sense, because of the fact many conversions involve simply moving decimal places back and forward."
SI doesn't have a monopoly on decimals, nor even on the prefixes used with SI or other metric units. Kilopound. Milinch.
"Also, my bloody spellchecker is reminding me that I'm apparently using an american dictionary - it's LITRE not LITER. Perhaps someone should change the spelling to leeter so americans get it."
We write "liter" and "meter" for the same reason we write "gram" and "second" instead of "gramme" and "seconde:" we're not French. The United States was the first English-speaking nation to adopt the metric system and the first to join the SI, predating you Oxford types by decades. Now, if you wish to ignore our anglophone precedent and instead cater to your francophilic tendancies, be my guest, but you should probably acknowledge that it is French you're writing and should also revert to "gramme" and "seconde" for consistency.
"A US pint is 16 fl oz but an Imperial pint..."
is illegal in all the countries that used it. Problem solved.
"litre (note spelling)"
The US has been using liters for longer than the UK has used litres, by about thirty years. We abandoned the UK standards for (leaking) pounds and (shrinking) yards, redefining our own units in terms of SI units, at around the same time the UK finally made metric legal for trade. Your insistance on the French spelling, rather than following the example of the first English-speaking country to adopt the system, is curious. Do you also insist on "gramme" and "seconde?"
"Because the US needs to pull its finger out and get with the program."
What, that's it?
We're getting along fine, our units of measure are, by definition, exactly as accurate as SI units. SI doesn't have a monopoly on using either decimals or prefixes, so even decimalization isn't a particularly compelling reason. There is no technical reason for a compulsory switch.
"I just wish the USA wouldn't push that date format of m/d/y on the rest of the world .. now that is confusing (use y-m-d )"
Most of Europe (as well other places) use neither: d/m/y.
231. To quote a line from a certain video game, "Twenty-three is number one."
"Since he calculation using the metric system is really easy"
A US gallon is made up of:
- 4 quarts
- 8 pints
- 16 cups
- 128 fluid ounces
- 256 tablespoons
If you can't see the pattern and do that kind of math in your head, you don't belong on Slashdot.Of course, there's nothing wrong with using decimal gallons (I fill up my car's gas tank with decimal gallons of gasoline all the time), but using binary in SI is strongly frowned upon by BIPM.
Or are you trying to focus on the conversion between volumic and cubic-linear measurements? First off, there's little point in it since converting between two such units is hardly useful in day-to-day operations, but even if it is, you're better off using using the US gallon than the liter because it has been far more consistent: 231 cubic inches since the eighteenth century. Initially, the liter was defined as a cubic decimeter, but then somebody had the idea to define it as "one kilogram of water," and despite protestations from metric fanbois, they're not the same thing. It was eventually changed back to "cubic decimeter," but now you're left with a system where "one liter" today is non-negligibly different from "one liter" a century ago.
This is why BIPM is trying to deprecate the liter outright.