He probably never bothered to learn and use a new language because English is just more comfortable and therefore any foreign language is just more cumbersome.
On Nov 7, 2004, at 07:25, Han Maenen wrote:
From the ISO 8601 list.
----- Original Message ----- From: "BAM" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "bam" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, 2004-11-05 17:37 Subject: Re: Metric system (ot) Was: RE: [ISO8601] ISO 8601 -- 1000
There are other reasons, besides lethargy or perversity, why SI has not quite caught on everywhere!
One major reason for the failure of SI to become universal is that its fundamental units are ill-chosen and have POOR ERGONOMICS for homo sapiens, whereas the basic units of the "English" system are comfortable and suitable for the biological dimensions of our species (largely because those units evolved from usage, wherein competing alternatives faded out when found to be inferior.) Regardless of the silly ratios between them (which Thomas Jefferson tried to reconcile, with his own proposals for a decimally-based English system), the approximate sizes of the English units are far superior to those of SI. Consider:
1. The gram is too doggone small! Most human usage requires double-digit or triple-digit numbers of them to be at all useful or meaningful in everyday human activity. Kilogram, might have been OK as the basic unit for humans (tho I think it is a bit too hefty), but that is not a basic unit and requires a prefix as well as a number. By contrast, note that - despite their rather inconvenient ratios "ounces" and "pounds" are very comfortable in human terms for everyday quantities (such as store purchases or food preparation), while and tons provide a reasonable unit for unusally-large masses we commonly encounter. Likewise, "feet" and "inches" (again, despite their unfortunate, arbitrary ratios) allow us to easily describe most things we see and handle daily, using small, whole numbers (with "miles" available to approximate distances to be travelled or things beyond the horizon).
2. Basing the meter on one ten-millionth of the estimated distance from pole to equator may have been very satisfying, intellectually, but the result is a fundamental unit that is awkwardly large - especially when united by the density of water to a mass unit that is ridiculously tiny.
3. The density of water, upon which SI is based, requires an unimaginably-large power of ten when expressed in fundamental units of grams per meter cubed (even when the value begins wi tha1.
4. Seconds, the fundamental time unit, is not bad at all. However, common time reconning, which is unlikely to change (and which the promoters of SI dare not propose), employs non-decimal multiples of the second, such as 60 and 24.
5. Derived units, such as those for speed, also suffer from the non-ergonomic choices of fundamental units. Consider velocity, for example. Speed limit signs are in Km/h and automobile speedometers report the number of thousands of meters that would be travelled with no acceleration for the next 3,600 seconds! (Meters per second would make far more sense, in my opinion, but that's not the issue, here.)
6. The base ten, itself, is part of the problem. Unless the Duodecimal Society succeeds in convincing the public (and the legislators) that a radix divisible by 2, 3, and 4 is preferable to one divisible by 2 and 5, or unless those in the computer industr spread the word about the benefits of octal or hex, we are probably stuck with using the number of our fingers for our place-value notation. That alone does not make the powers of ten particularly useful, comfortable, or natural - especially when large powers are required.
----
So much for my tirade regarding SI, which is not at all in opposition to having a rational, decimally-based system. It is sad that the attempt was flawed by poor (and untested) fundamental unit choices. Too bad that this failure (or, at least, partial failure) will serve to prevent universal adoption of such a system for the for the forseeable future.
Itruly wish Thomas Jefferson had been as successful in his attempt to redefine the inch as one-tenth of the typical length of a shoe (and other simlar ratios, involving the then-very-approximate English units), as he was in his spectacularly-successful innovation of decimal currency (which even the Brits adopted, a couple of centuries after our revolution).
Sorry that, after all this, I have some sort of brilliant solution to propose (other than reposting speed-limit signs in meters-per secod, which at least gives some clue about stopping distance!), but I do not expect that co-existence of the two systems (or three systems, if one includes the "MKS" vs. "cgs" dichotomy) to wither anytime soon or even within our lifetimes.
Bruce Alan Martin
P.S. Before sending this posting to the discussion group for ISO8601 (of which I am an enthusiastic proponent), I have decided to copyright it and perhaps seek publication of something similar. Feel free to excerpt freely (preferably with credif for lengthy quotes, but I'm not too fussy about that). I mention this only to avoid later accusations that of plagary, in case I use some of it elsewhere.
bam
johnmsteele wrote:
I am surprised by the nails and I can't think of a good reason. However, nautical miles are expressed allowed, although not preferred, in the SI system, and are defined as 1852 m.
The reason for retaining them is that in spherical trigonometry calculations involving the earth's surface, such as great circle routes, celestrial navigation, 1 nautical mile is very nearly equal to 1 minute of arc. That in fact was the traditional definition. Since the earth is really an oblate spheroid, stating it exactly in meters while retaining the traditional approximation works ok.
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Lyngmo Ted" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It's the same in Sweden. We're still using inches when talking
about nails and wood, and nautic miles on the sea.
Kind regards, Ted Lyngmo
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