August 23, 2007
Everyone else is out of step...
Brian Tiemann speaks up for English measurements, against metric. I tend to agree. Now that the English are pretty much extinct, and we Americans have assumed the job of being what England was, I think we should hold firmly to our traditional measurements.
.....What people love to point out about the metric system is that its measures are based on fundamental units taken from the natural world; but really, that's hardly an argument at all. What good is it that the meter is supposed to be the circular length from the pole of the Earth to the equator with the decimal point moved over a bunch of times? Some French guy thought that the dimensions of the Earth should for some reason be the basis for all length measures, and by doing a bunch of number-juggling he found that he could get it down to an almost usable length, something we'd been calling a "yard" forever, but which was formerly made up of three of a much handier unit: the foot, which describes something you can hold in your hands and divide up with your fingers, not something you have to measure with a stick that you have to keep in your closet or behind your desk. What, in the real world, does that have to do with how far it is from the North Pole to the equator on this lumpy, imperfect sphere of rock we live on, anyway? Why do we have to work with wonky units like "decimeters" if we want something that kindasorta resembles a hand-holdable length unit?
And for that matter, who cares if a cubic decimeter of water is a kilogram? Is that really any easier to remember than any other arbitrary conversion, or any easier to calculate? I remember having to refer to the table of decimal conversions in the back of my science books to figure out just how many places to move the point left, and then right, in order to arrive at the answer—and trying oh-so-hard to convince myself that the very act of trundling up and down that chain of powers of ten somehow proved how much easier the metric system was to grasp in the human brain. I wish I'd realized at the time just how far from that "ideal" the reality really was: that I could have saved plenty of time and space in my brain by jettisoning those useless "shortcut" decimal conversion factors and simply doing the appropriate multiplication or division operation. Or, better yet, using one of those newfangled calculator dealies we were all taking to carrying around. Funny how we never made decimal-place errors when we were multiplying things by 5280 instead of trying to remember whether we were supposed to move the dot up 8 or 9 places....
I dare-say in my own work I'd make fewer mistakes using the metric system. But it would not be worth it. Compromises with ugliness—especially if it's French—can be bad for the soul...
..."Then on her quarter, with the patched inner jib, that's the Hope: or maybe she's the Ocean -- they're much of a muchness, out of the same yard and off of the same draught. But any gait, all of 'em you see in this weather line, is what we call twelve-hundred-tonners; though to be sure some gauges thirteen and even fifteen hundred ton, Thames measurement. Wexford, there, with her brass fo'c'sle eight-pounder winking in the sun, she does: but we call her a twelve hundred ton ship."
"Sir, might it not be simpler to call her a fifteen hundred ton ship?"
"Simpler, maybe: but it would never do. You don't want to be upsetting the old ways. Oh dear me, no. God's my life, if the Captain was to hear you carrying on in that reckless Jacobin, democratical line, why, I dare say he would turn you adrift on a three-inch plank, with both your ears nailed down to it, to learn you bashfulness. The way he served three young gentlemen in the Med. No, no: you don't want to go arsing around with the old ways: the French did so, and look at the scrape it got them into....
-- Patrick O'Brian, HMS Surprise
Posted by John Weidner at August 23, 2007 10:09 PM
Who claims the metric system is better because it's based on "natural" measurements? More over, the equator to pole measurement was abandoned over a century ago, the author should try to keep up :-).
But what this reminds me most of is Catholic bashing by people who obviously have no knowledge of Catholicism, given that he doesn't even know the fundamental basis of the thing he's bashing.
P.S. Odd, isn't, that one so opposed to modernity lauds the calculator, the ruination of the math skills of our youth?
P.P.S. And yes, it *is* handy that a cubic decimeter of water is one kilogram.
A.O.G. is right. I hadn't even known the meter was originally intended to be one-whateverth of the earth's circumference. The usual claim, instead, is that the metric system is better because it is based solely on multiples of 10, and so conversions between various scales that measure the same quantity (meter -> centimeter) become near-transparent so that you don't have to think about what you're doing.
I happen to view this as a drawback of the metric system BTW. You don't have to think about what you're doing.
Posted by: xmath at August 24, 2007 05:57 AMTrust me, guys, the metric system is one helluva lot easier to use for engineering purposes than English. I was trained in the metric system, and have a working knowledge of the English system. Believe you me, you don't want to use the English system for much of anything-- trying to remember the difference between slugs and pound-force and pound-mass and when to apply the fudge-factor of 32.2 feet-per-second-per-second to convert from one to the other...... gah.
Metric is sooooo much easier.
So much so that if confronted with a problem in English units, I convert everything to metric, do the math, and then convert back into English.
Posted by: Hale Adams at August 24, 2007 01:57 PMHis argument seems to be that Imperial is better for things you handle directly, while metric is better for indirect. So for physical objects, such as fluids, you have a measurement that is easily divisible by twos, while for manipulation of forces, you have metric.
In other words, I'd rather cook with Imperial measurements because then I can halve or double the recipe quite easily, without having to figure out fractional amounts on my measuring cups. And to send a probe to Mars, stick with the metric, because it doesn't do to lose the craft due to a conversion error.
Posted by: B. Durbin at August 25, 2007 11:25 AMB.,
John may have a point when it comes to cooking-- the metric system has no direct equivalent of tablespoons, teaspoons, and so on. But halving a recipe shouldn't be all that difficult-- if you have spoons or little cups graduated in cubic centimeters (or milliliters, more likely) and the recipe calls for 10 ml of allspice, half of that is 5 ml and you can either use your 5 ml spoon or simply fill your 10 ml spoon halfway.
Where metric would really come in handy is when you find you have to feed an invading army at holiday-time and have to increase your recipes four-fold or ten-fold (!) to feed that army. If that recipe calls for 10 ml of allspice and you need to increase it ten-fold, simply move the decimal point one place to the left to get 100 ml. In English, you have to stop and rack your brains to first take one-and-a-half teaspoons, increase it to 15 teaspoons, and then figure out just whatthehell is 15 teaspoons is terms of cups or whatever..... Maybe a good cook (which I ain't) has those measurements memorized forwards and backwards. Me, my head hurts just thinking about it. :)
Posted by: Hale Adams at August 26, 2007 09:54 AMDuh. I knew I should have proofread that post. Make that, "move the decimal point one place to the right".
Like the drill-sergeants bellow at skittish recruits learning to march: "Not THAT right, your MILITARY right!"
:)
I really have no trouble doubling, tripling or whatever-ing recipes...just takes a moment of thought. And if you aren't certain what tripling two teaspoons will do, you can always dump two teaspoons in three times...
That said, I do kinda wish we were on the metric system, because you feel like you're accomplishing so much more when you run 5K than when you run a touch over 3 miles...the "mileposts" come so much more frequently!
