? I must say I'm quite disappointed in this piece. Never mind that it's already old. The main problem is what I consider to be a "hidden ifp supporter" disguised as "metric enthusiast" (SIC!).
I'm appalled at the level of nonsense uttered in this article, and I feel some of this individual's arguments MUST be dealt with vigorously and definitively! The "professor" started with, and I quote (I'll be quoting literally using quotation marks from now on): 'Every seam had to be parallel, every cut had to be accurately measured and precisely executed.' Only to infer WRONGLY that the metric system would not allow him to do exactly that! :-(((( Incredible that he apparently blamed the...: 'The sawdust started to pile at my feet. Unfortunately, so did numerous badly measured and wasted offcuts.' on the metric system! @#$%$# Alas, if the guy can't cut stuff and measure accurately is it the fault of the system itself??? This is true regardless of the system in use! But I'm amazed that he would face such difficulties dealing with mm. Now, why in the freaking world he would do the following: 'I went inside and using a calculator, converted all my beloved millimetres to feet and inches. That moment was a turning point.' is *really* beyond me!!! Can it be that he was actually using **ifp thinking** when he designed his "shed" for starters??? A-H-A!!! This is the ONLY explanation I can come up with for this rather very bizarre example of his! The above is apparently substantiated by what he claimed below: 'Metric measurements are in the form of four digit numbers.' WHY, why would that be so??? It doesn't HAVE TO!!! Or am I missing something here? Now it is really beyond me what he puts below: 'So either they had to be learnt by heart, a process which was slow and unreliable given the way an operation was continuously repeated throughout the day, or they had to be repeated over and over like a mantra while each measuring and cutting operation was performed' Now, who in his sane mind would purposefully want to deal with 4-digit numbers when that CAN BE utterly unnecessary? No wonder! :-( He then went on to make one of the silliest observations of his entire mantra: 'Now that meant that there were four millimetre graduations of equal height between each centimetre graduation (these being the tallest) and each half centimetre graduation (these being the next tallest).' as if THAT was a *disadvantage*! :-( I contend that it's actually the ifp tape that suffers from a very serious flaw with its incomprehensible series of tall/short/tall/short "ticks" which is absolutely distracting and naturally confuses the mind. For the love of me I cannot fathom how such "scale design" would be more advantageous than having to deal with stupid 16 ticks. In a metric tape it's far easier to *COUNT* (for crying out loud), just like any 5-year old boy would, the number of ticks from 1 to 5 knowing *EXACTLY* where one is ALL the time. Now, compare that with looking at sixteen incomprehensible "up and down ticks" when trying to find where the heck the 9/16 mark is!!! @#$%$#6 His continued argumentation below: 'When trying to make an exact measurement with this kind of tape, the eye, which is after all the final arbiter of all human measuring techniques, no matter what the intermediate machine might be, has to make a logarithmic judgement as to where on this scale of up to four equally tall graduations the pencil must fall.' is utter nonsense! I can't believe anyone would have the courage to (sorry for saying) look so stupid! Maybe he's got an eye problem or something? Alas! @$#45%^5 He continued: 'The most difficult measurements are those ending in either a two or a three, or a seven or an eight. These two graduations just blurred into one after an hour or so... I feel it is a poor compromise to round everything off to the nearest five millimetres'. Now, I really fail to see his point here. How can identifying the 2 or 3 be such a hassle??? And why would he NEED as a result of the above to 'round it to five millimetres'??? I honestly don't get it. After goofing up so badly with the above he then claims the most absurd thing below: 'With the Imperial system I didn't have these problems. Firstly, the Imperial numbers were easier to remember. This was because each Imperial measurement is separated into two packets of easily graspable, one digit numbers, plus a packet of 15 possible fractions.' How in the world can 15 be 'easier to remember' than 4 or 9, for instance? Please, anybody can tell me??? Then, again, there is the issue of 'readability' as he put it. While it may be true that the ifp scale is... "larger", this may only be so for ipf tapes that go in 1/16, since, indeed, 1/16" > 1 mm. But so what? The fact that you have 16 ticks already kill that "advantage" on the spot! He then went to defend a 'hybrid approach' to the use of measurement systems using aviation as a "case in point". He claimed that ifp is better here: 'because of superior application suitability.' I vehemently disagree! Apart from the fact that pilots, air traffic controllers etc are used to it, so what? Wasn't the same true of ifp users in other industries? In today's age of GPS and digital instrumentation, there is no more room or advantage in using crappy feet and nautical miles. On the contrary, it's become a huge handicap since GPS's "work better" in meters. He then went on to hint at 'aesthetics' as perhaps another potential advantage, if I read him right, but, again, missing the mark completely since this is a science and technology issue. In the end one has to dispute very seriously his allegation that the metric system: 'isn't the universally superior measuring system it's often touted to be'. Anyways... I've had enough with this kind of rhetoric that makes no sense to me whatsoever... :-( Marcus ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
