Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 17:59:07 -0800
Reply-To: Jake de Villiers <crescentbeachguitar@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Jake de Villiers <crescentbeachguitar@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Metric this, metric that
In-Reply-To: <3e9baba99abaac1ebf442764ca5ac595@knology.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
That's the John Bange I was talking about!
On 1/31/06, Jim Felder <felder@knology.net> wrote:
>
> John,
>
> You saved me the trouble of sending what I just wrote, almost exactly
> what you wrote.
>
> Jim
>
> On Jan 31, 2006, at 10:33 AM, John Bange wrote:
>
> >> Non-intuitive? Water freezes at 0, boils at 100. How is that not
> >> intuitive??
> >>
> >> Not so much non-intuitive as under-descriptive. Freezing and boiling
> >> of
> > water are really only convenient marking points for scientists and
> > engineers. The freezing and boiling point of water at sea level are, in
> > fact, utterly arbitrary marking points! Why not the boiling point of
> > alcohol? Or the freezing point of mercury? When most people talk
> > temperature, they're talking weather. In that regard, the Fahrenheit
> > scale
> > has a more appropriate scaling. Most human-habitable areas experience
> > temperatures that range inside 0-100F for the most part. Centigrade,
> > though,
> > is optimized for science, which marks the same temperature range as
> > -17 to
> > 37C. This results in a rather overly-coarse degree of resolution,
> > forcing
> > the use of an awkward decimal place for certain applications. The
> > metric
> > system is indeed very logical and rational, but it lacks the same
> > degree of
> > seat-of-the-pants convenience the older systems. The fact that we have
> > calculators now has obscured for many people the fact that (10 fingers
> > notwithstanding) we can't easily do decimal math in our heads. Our
> > brains
> > are MUCH better at estimating halves, thirds, quarters, etc. The
> > original
> > French metric system is very much a product of the "Age of
> > Enlightenment",
> > with science and rationality being emphasized over tradition. This
> > resulted
> > in a quite a bit of reasonably useful traditional baby being thrown
> > out with
> > the bathwater. The metric system is great, but there are several places
> > where, for reasons of internal consistency based on scientific
> > convenience,
> > it fails to achieve the same degree of conventional utility as the
> > system it
> > replaced.
> >
> > --
> > John Bange
> > '90 Vanagon - "Geldsauger"
> >
>
--
Jake
1984 Vanagon GL
1986 Westy Weekender "Dixie"
www.crescentbeachguitar.com
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