The metric system must be opposed wherever possible and ultimately
destroyed, to be replaced by Planck-ifp units. This letter shows what is
really behind this effort. Junk the Metric System board,
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Apparent English bias of nature-based units (partial reply to JF Magana)
December 24 2002 at 12:56 PM
No score for this post Leonard (no login)
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An interesting complication. JF Magana has sometimes criticized
talent-mile and other proposed nature-based systems because of apparent
bias. In adopting talent-mile units, he rightly points out, French-speakers
would have to change *more* of their habits.
Talent-mile has, or is perceived to have, more compatibility with
traditional units used in several English-speaking countries notably UK and
US. This question of bias was raised earlier and never completely addressed.
To some extent it is an accurate criticism and I cannot do anything
about it. All systems in which the main constants are made power-of-ten must
consist of units which (at least to close approximation) are power-of-ten
multiples of the natural or planck units--this is a mathematical fact. And a
complete decimal system of that type must contain the mile (because the mile
is a power-of-ten multiple of nature's length unit).
As JF has pointed out (I had previously overlooked it) one of the
power-of-ten multiples of the natural mass unit is roughly HALF A POUND.
Instead, I had stressed that one billion times the natural mass
roughly equals a classical greco-roman TALENT. This (approx. 48 conventional
pound) talent is implicit in the Apothecary system still sometimes used,
because a dram, drachma, or drachme has always been 1/6000 of a talent. If
you multiply the dram apoth. by 6000 you essentially get the talent of
talent-mile units.
Indeed the talent is recognized by some people as a traditional
British unit though it perhaps may not belong to the official Imperial
system whatever that is. And in a broader sense it is in the general
European tradition being embedded in our common history and literature.
JF's comment bypassed all that business about the talent and simply
pointed out that ten million times the planck mass is roughly half a pound.
This could be good or bad depending one whether you approve or disapprove of
an English-speaking bias.
Anyway nature has these built-in units and by curious coincidence
several of them are ENGLISH-FRIENDLY, that is related by simple comfortable
ratios to quantities understandable in an English-speaking context.
There is no *intentional* bias. That is just how the natural units
are. Also except in the case of the mile (where the coincidence is amazingly
close) the bias does not seem especially strong.
If the French had only kept the (1.62 meter) medieval and nautical
unit called "brasse" it would have been perfect for the pace or 1/1000 of a
mile that we use which is 1.61888 meters. And it would be a personal
satisfaction to accomodate that unit, if it were still much in use. BTW
since the pace is an outright planckian unit like the mile, the foot as 1/5
of a pace, is quasi-planckian in the way that JF suggested the pound was.
Not exactly 1/10 pace but in a simple two-ish relation to 1/10 pace. Another
reason to impute English bias if one is so inclined.
So that future generations of humanity can have a clean efficient
system of units in harmony with nature the metric system must be opposed in
every possible way, attacked by every means, and eventually destoyed. This
will begin, one may hope, by scientists volutarily adopting planckian units
such as the talent-mile ones proposed here (or some others equally good) for
teaching and recording data.
Until that happens traditional units require every possible support
since metric, not the traditional units of any people, represents the main
threat to planckian units like the mile (and to quasi-planckian ones as
well.)
And in return traditional units and the love people have for them are
the strongest possible allies of planckian ones and afford the best chance
of beating metric.
I am certainly not anti-French or anti-Labour. It is quite possible
that French scientists could be among the leaders in adopting modern
non-metric units for teaching and research. It is possible that the EU will
ease off forcing metrication in Britain. The politics is free to change.
What cannot change is that metric units are a bad fit with natural ones and
so must eventually be phased out.
Han
Historian of Dutch Metrication, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
