A selection from the incredible nonsense from the Inch Perfect site. There is much more there! http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/estatopia/inch.htm This site is an offspring of the BWMA, Han That's beside the point! by Lance Haward The wholly unauthorised attempt (unauthorised, that is, by any democratic process) to detach future generations from their cultural heritage by imposing an educational blanket of ignorance on them was surreptitiously put in train by Harold Wilson's government long before the European so-called Union pointed its bulldozer in our direction. From Shakespeare to the idiom of the football terraces, from the food we eat to the occupations of our leisure hours and the very map we move across, fathoms and cloth-yards, pints, inches and ells, ounces, miles and groats are the very stuff of our existance. In this matter, the effects of Waterloo have been overturned at a stroke. The French may lament (as we also may) the rampant triumph of 'Franglais', but finally it is we who are the victims of that Gallic irrationality which is responsible for laws more bizarre than anything concocted by the Medes and Persians. It seriously believes that the basic unit of measurement is "the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum during a timed interval of one 299,729,458th of a second." ??? They cite an anti-metric statement by Napoleon on their Footrule site and here they come again with the old canard of forced Napoleonic metrication! What a load of ^&*@#$%+@%&*!!!!!!!!!!!! Now the virus has crossed over into our bloodstream. An alternative definition has found its way into English statute law, compared to which the above is as simple as Do Re Mi. Here the metre is (hang on tight): 1,650,763.73 wave-lengths in a vacuum of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two specific but quite inexplicable levels of the Krypton 86 atom. Note that the one element common to both these definitions is the vacuum, which, as we all know, nature abhors. Whereas, if you want to define a yard, you don't even have to catch a 'bus to Trafalgar Square': all that's necessary is to lay hold of the nearest bystander of average build, stretch one arm out to one side, measure off a span of cloth or piece of string from his nose to his finger tip, and - for practical purposes - that's it. People who work in the optics industry tell me that the severely pragmatic Germans, world-leaders in the trade, while paying lip-service to metrication as required by European law, converted all their actual blotting-paper calculations back into sensible imperial. * They claim that the German optics industry is ifp. Where is their source? They have not completely studied the W&M Act! The sheer folly of metrication is certainly expressed in its megalomaniac assumption that every form of measurement under the sun qualifies for decimalisation, where the reality of both nature and universal human practice gives that proposition the lie. The figure 12 and its derivatives are imprinted upon the natural order itself. The passage of time has, arguably since 159 BC, been calculated in two phases of twelve hours each, with all subdivisions of the hour calculated in multiples of twelve. The very globe and space we inhabit have, from time immemorial been measured in multiples of six squared. Is the structure of crystals decimal? Is the structure of snowflakes decimal? I believe that all the major calendars throughout history, other than the Mayan, have instinctively opted for a system of twelve months as the most natural progression of the seasons. No less august a document than Magna Carta promises that 'there shall be one width of dyed cloth throughout the realm, namely of two ells within the selvedges." I bet that's being transgressed every day. The limitations of the French system are revealed at every turn. On the athletics track, neither is the 800 metres half the distance of the 1500, nor is the 4x4OO relay equivalent in distance to the 1500, in the way that the quarter/half/mile are inter-related, nor is there any relation between the 1500 and the 5000-metre events as between multiples of miles. All useful comparison of relative times, speeds and distances collapses. The lunatic obsession to reduce every quantity to tens is not just intellectual slovenliness: it also impinges on life and convenience in ways which, even when not positively disruptive, are always bizarre. How soon before it becomes impossible to buy a dozen red roses or we have only 'Ten Days of Christmas'? I'm now prevented from replacing the damaged lock on one of my doors without first gouging out an entirely new hole, as manufacturers no longer produce locks that match hitherto-standard sizes. Thus the alien norms that have been foisted upon us unheralded, uninvited and unvoted-for, bring about wholly unnecessary obsolescence, destruction and waste. As always, of course, big business gets rich on the carnage - a motivation blatant for decades in pronouncements by the British Standards Institution. Our daily measurements should, as our ancestors recognised, have an observable scale and proportion and relationship to external reality. 'XYZ recurring' of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole when the *Sun's in Libra and sanity in the balance represents only the apotheosis of the insubstantial. The pity is that, having long since dumped the silliness of Brumaire (the second month in the decimal calendar that lasted from 1793-1806) and depersonalised playing cards (only ace to ten with no face cards!) and other figments of the disordered, revolutionary mind, the successors of Fabre d'Eglantine haven't yet dumped the silliest of the lot as being - in a word - pointless! * Now they even claim that the founders of the metric system and the astonomers who measured the meridian used ASTROLOGY! Proportionality; Ergonomics;Cognitive Reducibility The following was posted to the alt.architecture newsgroup into a thread about metric/imperial measurement and is worth reproducing here: The problem with the metric measurement as applied to architecture is that it violates three important parts of architectural composition/design: 1. Proportionality: The traditional (American Standard or British Imperial--which are slightly different from each other, as any American who has ever worked on an old Jaguar knows) system of measurement was created by people who did not use digital calculators or need to measure machine parts to micrometer tolerances. It was created to measure out human scale objects in proportion to each other without complex calculations. For instance, most simple divisions of a foot result in whole number increments of inches (1/2=6", 1/3=4", 1/4=3", 1/6=2", etc.), while the only whole-number division proportion of a metric unit is either 1/2 or 1/5. This, in my opinion makes metric an inferior tool for proportional design. 2. Ergonomics: related to proportionality, the traditional measurement systems are specifically oriented toward the ergonomics of human physiology. They developed out of obscurity for precisely this reason. The human mind is geared toward judging its perceived environment in relation to the scale of its own body, not an arbitrary convention defined by the distance light will travel in a very short period of time (a centimeter or meter). Traditional systems of measurement are specifically oriented toward the mind's intuitive grasp of scale. 3. Cognitive Reducibility: Anyone familiar with cognitive science and/or epistemology will tell you that the human mind has a limited number of slots in its active consideration buffer. The average number of cognitive units any one person can consider at any one time ranges from 5 to 9, with 7 being very typical (ever wonder why telephone numbers usually have 7 digits? that's why). You will sometimes hear this referred to as the "Crow Epistemology" (from an observation about crows that they are incapable of distinguishing members of groups of entities greater than three). The Crow Epistemology in humans means that we have to go to great lengths to cognitively reduce the number of items we are considering at any one time when dealing with complex issues. Design measurements are one such case. It is much easier for me to remember that I am 6'-5" tall than to remember that I am 195.58 cm or 1.9558 m tall. the difference is between two cognitive units and six (including the decimal point). Similarly, the proportional and ergonomic relationships described above are likely to be more consistently applied for this same reason. Before I get flamed for putting down the hallowed Metric System, let me state that I have experience in using SI on real projects in Australia, and have found the above to be true in practice (laying out building foundations in centimeters makes about as much sense as laying them out in multiples of half-inches--i.e. 975 cm or 768/2" vs. 32 feet). The primary value of SI applies to the sciences, where the above issues are not of high importance. Architecture, however is not science. I argue that adopting metric merely because our calculators don't do standard is a silly reason, and does harm to good design. Actually, based on the above argument, I would propose that Metric would be a much better measurement system if it were modified in the following ways: 1.) Made into a base-12 system on all scales, rather than base-10 2.) Re-scaled to human ergonomics A measurement system is like any tool--you've got to use the right one for the job. The right tool for the job of architecture is not metric. American Standard may not be the right tool for that job either (certainly debatable). However, it does have some inherently superior qualities with regard to architectural design. Archtitects throughout the ages have been trying to come up with an ideal measurement system for architecture (classical orders, Corbusier, etc.). None have totally succeeded yet. My argument was that the uniform, unthinking adoption of Metric will set that progress back, not contribute to it. Now, I am not saying that Metric is a bad system of measurement. I am merely saying that it is not really well suited to doing architecture. There are ways it could be made more suitable, while retaining some of its inherent benefits, but that is another issue. Additional note: Some others have been stating that we need metric to have international standards of measurement. I argue that these people obviously have little experience dealing with countries other than their own. Nearly every nation which uses the metric system uses a slightly different version of it, just as the American version of British Imperial (known as American Standard) is not exactly the same as British Imperial. Measurement standards are great things to pay lip service to, but putting them into practice never seems to work out as perfectly as their proponents would like. Japanese metric, Australian Metric, and French Metric all have their quirks and eccentricities. Granted, these tend to be most pronounced at a small scale (auto parts, being a major one), but the point is important. Standards of measurement are tools, nothing more. Different people use different tools for different jobs. The Metric Gestapo needs to start taking this into account, as do those who resolutely refuse to consider anything other than Imperial or Standard. There is plenty of intellectual laziness being displayed in both camps, on what is really a very simple issue. I brought this whole subject up just so that people would think about it, and maybe apply themselves to dreaming up a new standard superior to both. J. Gregory Wharton Architect / Philosopher Seattle, Washington, USA mail to:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.isomedia.com/homes/ragnar/index.html Sports Report * * * During the recent Rugby World Cup, the Director of the BWMA referred to the "10 yard line", the "25 yard line", etc. in conversation with a South African supporter, who interrupted with "No, no, you mean metres - we're all metric now!" Whereupon the Director asked: "What do you call your player in the no. 9 position?" and the Springbok had to answer, "Scrum half, of course!" to which the rejoinder was "No, no, you mean scrum 0.5 - we're all metric now! And what about your nos. 11 and 14?" "Wing three-quarters, of Course" to which again the counter was "No, no, you mean wing 0.75 - we're all metric now!" What use are decimals when the human mind prefers fractions, using factors that tie in with customary measures? It is worth noting that, since that letter, the French have found it necessary to amend the official length of their metre on two more occasions (having been amended twice prior to that date) whereas the British foot remains the consistent reference point it has been since it was legally defined in 1603. * They must be totally ignorant about the present definitions of Imperial standards.
