David Cameron Says Brits Should Be Taught Imperial Measures 942
00_NOP writes: Children in the U.K. have been taught in metric measures in school since (at least) 1972, but yesterday British Prime Minister David Cameron suggested that they should actually be taught in Imperial measures (which are still in use officially to measure road distances and speeds, but not really anywhere else). Is this because he hasn't a clue about science or because he is catering to a particular political base?
FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time for national units to finally be put out to pasture. Both US units and UK units.
-uso.
Re:FP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Like i've said before, i willing to make a trade: USA starts using metric and we'll start using decimal point. Fair enough?
Re:FP? (Score:5, Interesting)
Avery other nation has already made the trade, they switched to metric because imperial units were completely unusable when dealing internationally.
Just recently it was found out that the Vasa ship [wikipedia.org] was built asymmetrically because the workers were a combination of Swedish and Dutch and there was 11 inches on a Dutch (Amsterdam specifically) foot and 12 inches on a Swedish foot, so while the difference between the feet isn't that big the difference in the inch sizes are pretty significant.
Staying with national specific units is just retarded.
Re:FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Vasa was built asymmetrically because it was a Swedish engineering project. All Swedish engineering projects by definition must start big, go way over-budget, become completely unusable and reach market so late that they're no longer interesting. The project then burns to ashes, rises from the ashes reborn as something amazing and get sold to someone else. As an example look at "ericsson pipe rider cable modem" on Google and you'll see a proper Swedish engineering project that went so completely shitty that it would have killed the company and ended up rising from the ashes as a patent pool on the 10,000 things they created while failing at this.
This is why I refer to all products resulting from failed Swedish projects as Vasa Projects.
Re:FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
You realize everything you wrote is equally true if you remove the word "Swedish," right?
Re:FP? (Score:5, Interesting)
Staying with national specific units is just retarded.
It's only retarded if trade is your primary concern. While I would prefer that the US were a little more metric, I can hardly blame the milk manufacturers for not abandoning their equipment just to make the 1 gallon milk jug round off nicely to 3 or 4 liters. And road signs - there really is no compelling reason to go towards km on the roads. It only becomes an issue for the minority who cross into Canada and Mexico, and those people are quite capable of reading the "km/h" letters on their speedometer.
Engineering is another matter - in the vast majority of cases there really is no excuse to be using anything but metric. We have a certain failed Mars probe to prove the case. It drives me crazy that I need both a metric and a standard set of socket wrenches and hex keys. A small matter, but still quite strange. Many (most?) of the appliances that I have are assembled with standard-unit nuts, bolts, and screws. Now, I'm sure there aren't a lot of American appliances exported overseas, but it still seems insane... Whirlpool must replace their drill bits and driver bits fairly often - it's not clear to me why they stick with standard sized consumables.
Re:FP? (Score:5, Informative)
They aren't capable of reading the km/h letters on their speedometers. Really. We have to put signs up all over the place near the border reminding US drivers that our highway speed limit isn't 120 miles / hr.
Re:FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you switch to metric doesn't mean you have to re-round all your products. If it's a 3.4 litre container, or dual-labelled, its not a problem. In metric countries, lots of things are in odd units. 375ml cans of coke for example. It doesn't matter.
Re:FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
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In the US, almost every consumer good has both metric and standard units. Milk, for instance, is labeled as 1 gal and 3.78 L.
Re:FP? (Score:4, Interesting)
My French teacher (who was English) reckoned that everybody should use a comma (like the French) for the decimal separator because it was actually the only important piece of punctuation in numbers and therefore should be more obvious than just a dot.
Re:FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FP? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the US they use "point" which is one syllable. There is no place in aviation radio where the decimal point isn't implied which makes using "decimal" a bigger waste of radio time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well then, I guess by that logic, all of literature is wrong, because I'd argue that in writing, a new sentence is more important than a pause within a sentence. Since I doubt we'll be changing the rules of literature, then I guess the decimal point + comma digit separator makes reading numbers consistent with literature:
$123,456.78 vs $123.456,78 (feel free to substitute the monetary unit of your choice)
"One hundred twenty three thousand, four hundred fifty six dollars. And seventy eight cents"
vs
"One hundr
Re:FP? (Score:5, Interesting)
I get where your teacher was coming from in thinking it should be made as obvious as possible, but the primary problem we contend with in making it obvious is one of ambiguity, not recognizability. Commas are frequently used for denoting entries in a series in a sentence, and numbers oftentimes appear in a series. Consider the following:
A) 123,456, 789,0
B) 123, 456, 789, 0
C) 123, 456,789, 0
Effectively, we're relying on the spaces to provide necessary meaning. (A) represents two real numbers, (B) represents four integers, and (C) represents two integers and a real number, but at a quick glance, it isn't necessarily apparent which is which since the only difference between them is where the spaces are located. Moreover, had a space been forgotten due to a typo, it would have substantially altered the meaning of the series, and unlike words that may be affected in a similar way (e.g. "good one" vs. "goo done"), which are relatively easy to recognize as typos within context, we rarely have useful context clues with numbers from which to recognize that a simple typo has occurred.
Contrast that with the use of the decimal point:
A) 123.456, 789.0
B) 123, 456, 789, 0
C) 123, 456.789, 0
It's clear where each number begins and ends, and what quantity it represents. That said, decimal points have the potential to become ambiguous when dealing with the ends of sentences, but even there, they are unlikely to cause confusion, given that it's rather rare that we have back-to-back sentences with the first ending in a number and the second beginning with one. Besides which, even when we do, we generally have ample context clues in the text that can help us to recognize that one sentence has ended and another has begun.
Just as I don't see how most of* my fellow Americans can keep arguing for using Imperial units, I don't understand how some Europeans can continue to argue for using commas instead of decimal points. Using an entirely different punctuation mark may be a better option than either the comma or the point, but if we're constrained to choose between the two, I have yet to hear a great case for why the comma is the superior choice.
* I say "most of", because I actually have had several of my engineering friends, particularly those in petroleum engineering, provide specific examples of situations in which they greatly prefer to use Imperial, rather than metric, units. Apparently it's one of those situations like weight vs. mass where the two units aren't actually analogous, and working with the metric unit ends up making the computations significantly more convoluted. In most other cases though, they, and I, tend to prefer metric (even if I don't necessarily think in terms of metric on a daily basis).
Re: (Score:3)
The ISO standard (31-0) is to use a narrow space to separate digit groupings, and then either a comma or a decimal as the delimiter of the fractional part. So Ten-thousand four hundred thirty three and ninety seven hundredths would be
10 433,97 or 10 433.97
but neither
10,433.97 nor 10.433,97
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It's time for national units to finally be put out to pasture. Both US units and UK units.
You are welcome to try to change all the street signs in the UK using miles, and all the speed limits using miles per hour, and I'll predict you'll have utter chaos because the percentage of drivers who can figure out that 80km/h = 50mph is quite low, and the percentage of drivers who can do that calculation in their head without taking their hands off the steering wheel and their eyes off the road is tiny.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Don't UK cars normally have both kph and mph on the speedometer?
Re:FP? (Score:4, Insightful)
We did it in Canada. Other countries have too. Are you claiming people are less intelligent in the UK?
(Here's a hint... for a decade, you post signs in both, then rotate them out as they wear...)
Re:FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Australia made the transition back in 1974.
You'll survive.
Re: (Score:3)
British cars have the speedometer marked in mph and km/h. It would be a few weeks and then everything would be back to normal.
Re:FP? (Score:5, Informative)
Australia completed this change in the 70’s very successfully without any of the problems you are claiming. Educating the public about the changeover and the new speeds is part of the process. Also, do you think that anyone from the UK who takes their car across to France or Ireland has trouble adapting to the speeds? All modern cars have km/h speeds indicated, even if only as a secondary scale.
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Yeah, or all of Canada in the 70's. It's impossible. Give up now.
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I just change the 1 inch pipe to 25.4mm pipe instantly, is it a magic?
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I just change the 1 inch pipe to 25.4mm pipe instantly, is it a magic?
It depends how old the pipe is. An 70 year old British pipe would have to grow by 46nm, while a similar aged US pipe would have to shrink by 51nm. And if it was 2 or 3 hundred years old, and from Scotland, France or Netherlands, it would even be outside the normal tolerance one might expect for such a pipe.
Re:FP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Canada adopted the metric system at THE SAME TIME as the US adopted it. Difference is that the Canadian government didn't cow-tow to the people whining and bitching about how difficult it was. The US people said "nu-uh" we're not going to do that. The individual states resisted. Metric was done in the US.
I was in grade school when metric was brought in (yep, that old), so I was at a disadvantage, adoption-wise. The generations before us continued to use Imperial measurements. The generation behind us would be much more comfortable using Metric. We got stuck with both.
My skis are 165Cm. I travel about 100km/h on the highway. I'm 5'10". For temperature, I do "cooler" as 20 Celsius and below, warmer as 70 Fahrenheit and above. We just adapt.
'Muricans (Score:5, Informative)
America knows it isn't special.
I live in the US and a good portion of the US population does think it is special. They are wrong but they do honestly and earnestly believe it. "Greatest country in the world" and all that nonsense.
America is lazy and hates change.
America is anything but lazy though you are correct that many of them do hate change. Americans work more hours than almost anyone else in the world on average so lazy isn't a label that really fits. But people in general do not like change.
Metric is taught in most schools, especially those in science.
Foreign languages are taught in most schools too and yet only a minority of native born americans are bi-lingual. Doesn't matter what is taught in schools if it isn't used in the real world.
By the end of the century America will be Metric too.
I do not share your optimism on that though I wish it would happen. Officially we do use metric but I don't see the US switching to metric for daily use in my lifetime and I'd honestly be surprised if it happened in the next 100 years. Maybe it will but I'm dubious.
Re:FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've forgotten about changing all the speedometers...
Oh, you mean the speedometers that have both measurements on them already? All US cars do. Why the ignorance?
..and re-educating people to think of fuel consumption in litres/100 km instead of miles per gallon.
Yes, because apparently the "E" and the "F" next to the new MPG fuel gauge means can't EFfing remember what this means anymore.
Then you'll need to start on the railway system.
The people who use them every single day will suddenly be lost? Forget how far it is to get home? Have you thought about the toilets yet, because they're gonna start flushing in the opposite direction. I hope people will remember how to use them.
That will still leave the international airways system that refers to altitudes as 'Flight Level' which is height in units of 100 feet !
Unless you're the pilot, you care about ONE altitude level when flying. Then one on the ground when you land safely.
Yes, I mock this because Americans are forced to convert to the rest of the world all the time when traveling, and it is humanly possible. Even if the US changed every single speed limit sign tomorrow to from MPH to KPH, how hard is it to match a number on a guage in front of you to the sign posted on the road?
I have a feeling any "conversion" would be about as difficult to handle as your cable company changing the channel lineup around. Perhaps a few weeks of grumbling, but eventually you get used to it.
Re:FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a feeling any "conversion" would be about as difficult to handle as your cable company changing the channel lineup around. Perhaps a few weeks of grumbling, but eventually you get used to it.
I for one am more impressed that a country who's citizens believe they are in the greatest and best country in the world, able to put men on the moon and build up an economy and military might that rules the world, somehow figure themselves incapable to achieve what 42 other countries around the world have done in the past 300 years.
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It's worth recalling that that whole "man on the moon" endeavour, and other space missions, have gotten messed up (some more than others) because of different engineering teams using US Standard AND Metric units. Had they just used Metric like ALMOST EVERYONE ELSE, there'd be less hassle.
Re:FP? (Score:5, Informative)
1.8 Metres is just as user friendly as foot when you're brought up in it.
And when was the last time you read ancient English scrolls ?
By that logic we would still be writing glyphs and doing arithmetic without the 0.
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1.8 Metres is just as user friendly as foot when you're brought up in it.
How about we create a metric friendly unit for human measurement called fut.
1 fut = 30 cm
1 fut = 10 dinches
1 dinch = 3 cm
So, instead of a height of imperial 5"8' or a non-intuitive 172cm, we get a more intuitive 5.7 futs.
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I'm fine with 90 - 60 - 90, too.
Which definitly HAS that ring that your... what would you be calling it? does.
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I've heard these retarded reasons so many times when I lived in England... as if using 2 separate units and fractions was easier than using simple numbers
- is it really easier to say "6 foot 4 and a half" instead of "1.94 metres". guess what? nobody measures height of people in metres. people just say "i'm 194"
- what about ounces and fractions tea/tablespoons? again, retards would claim they don't want to talk in hundreds of mililitres. fine, for larger quantities we use decilitres (2dcl == 200ml == 7oz and
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A foot is about the size of an adult foot, it makes sense. ... and the actual length of a imperial foot is only 33cm
Sure, that is why my GFs foot is 26cm long and mine is 40cm
Time btw is not "imperial" you have a strange idea what imperial is about.
Metric has its place, but using it everywhere makes no sense. :D
True. But the examples you gave make no sense either. BTW, if laymen say "metric" we pros usually call it SI. And the "second" is an SI unit
Re:FP? (Score:4, Informative)
The Royal Navy essetially stamped out the slave trade throught the world. And the empire abolished slavery at least a generation before the US. And it has never been legal in England so go fuck yourself you ignorant bastard.
Re: (Score:3)
But... Doesn't that notation defeat the express purpose of SI? I was taught that the beauty of it was being able to use decimals. You know, base ten and all...
Re:FP? (Score:4, Informative)
When I'm driving in France, I switch my sat-nav to metric and I'm done. I have no problem switching between the two measurement systems at all. If you think you'd have a problem, I guarantee you are wrong. At the worst case, it'll take you a few weeks.
Re:FP? (Score:4, Funny)
Math is Hard.....
Yup, David Cameron is Barbie.
Re:FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Go and ask any timber merchant for a bit of 2 by 4 and they will know what you are talking about but then ask them for what the actual size is. They will give you two answers, one for sawn timber and one for plained timber. The answers they give will be in millimetres and neither will be anything close to 50.8mm x 101.6mm. The length will also be given in metres.
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Centimetres should never, ever be used in engineering. Millimetres are far more suitable for working with wood. They completely eliminate the need to work with any decimal points or fractions. When Australia converted to metric, the building industry very intelligently decided that mm is to be used exclusively and cm are not allowed.
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To respond to just two of your straw men (three bullet points): Do you really think changing to metric means we'll stop using d/m/y dates? And for liquids, I've been buying 2L bottles for decades now, and you don't order "0.28L," you order (in Germany/Åustria) "kleine" (0.3L) or "grosse" (0.5L).
Reminiscing much? (Score:5, Funny)
You're not an empire anymore, and going back to imperial measures won't make you one.
Re:Reminiscing much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple answer (Score:5, Informative)
Is this because he hasn't a clue about science or because he is catering to a particular political base?
Both.
Mostly though because so many conservatives have a "we have always done it that way" attitude. Many of them don't have a clue that imperial measures are very different from US customary ones (we have 20 fluid ounces to a pint, and the US has 16). Many also don't know their pecks from their bushels, or their furlongs from their rod, poll, or perch [vermessungsseiten.de], but think the system must be good "because its traditional".
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Well . . . the UK did manage to switch to the "New Pence", and get away from shillings, farthings and half-crowns. If anyone even knew what they were worth.
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Well . . . the UK did manage to switch to the "New Pence", and get away from shillings, farthings and half-crowns. If anyone even knew what they were worth.
A shilling was 1/20th of a pound or 5p in decimal
A farthing was a quarter of an old penny. There were 240 old pennies in a pound so a farthing was 1/960 of a pound or just over a tenth of a new penny
A half-crown was two shillings and six pence, or an 8th of a pound, so 12.5p
Re:Simple answer (Score:4, Interesting)
The US/Imperial does indeed have that 16/20 difference. I like my 568ml of real ale, but honestly the US system is much more sensible in that it's consistent with weights. But only marginally. They both share the 4 pints to the gallon, but there's no weight equivalent.
No the closest weight equivalent is the stone which would be weight of 3.5 gallons of water.
And what's the volume equivalent to a cwt and how many of them to the ton (long or short)?
And anyway should we measure volume in the ounce-derived system, cubic length units or acre-feet?
And anyway the differences are deeper. In the US/Imperial system, 1 floz is the volume of 1 ounce of water, but measured at different temperatures, so even teh base units differ.
Anyway I think we should go back to imperial units sothe 100m sprint can yet again be called the hundred yard dash. What ho!
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Re:Simple answer (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a reaction to UKIP. Show how English he is, how much he wants to stick with English tradition instead of the modern EU way. Metric martyrs and all that bollocks.
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Yeah, the metric martyrs thing was dumb, but bear in mind even UKIP only wanted traders to have the *option* of selling in pounds and ounces. AFAIK they haven't said they want children to be downgraded to retarded imperial measurements in school. If they did they'd probably lose my vote. This seems to be unique Cameron stupidiy.
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No person in the United Kingdom has ever been prosecuted for selling in pounds and ounces. If you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you.
If you knew your facts you would know that people have been prosecuted for selling goods using scales that don't have an official calibration certificate; which is something completely different.
Now it might be the case that you can only get scales calibrated using the metric system these days. However there is nothing stopping you going up to a trader asking for a
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Mostly though because so many conservatives have a "we have always done it that way" attitude. ... think the system must be good "because its traditional".
I think you may have inadvertently stumbled upon the textbook definition of conservative. Congrats.
Re:Simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
...The very point of the Fahrenheit scale is its comprehensibility, and it is indeed good for that...
Beyond the reason of 'that's what I grew up with', how is the Fahrenheit scale more comprehensible than the Celsius scale?
Re:Simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Water freezes at zero and boils at one hundred.
What could be simpler?
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0 is a cold winter day, and 100 is a hot summer day.
Re:Simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
0 is a cold winter day, and 100 is a hot summer day.
0 C is a freezing winter day, 8 C is a cold winter day, at 35 C it's a hot summer day and at 100 C I'm getting severely burned.
So what is the difference exactly, except that you learned a set of numbers in Fahrenheit trough your experience, and we learned another set in Celsius trough ours?
Re:Simple answer (Score:4, Insightful)
So what is the difference exactly, except that you learned a set of numbers in Fahrenheit trough your experience, and we learned another set in Celsius trough ours?
There's no difference -- it's all arbitrary. I think that's what the GP's point was. The Fahrenheit range of 0-100 is roughly the range where it's possible for humans to actually be outside for a while and be okay. (I said "roughly" -- I know it isn't precise.) 0 C is also a meaningful number for weather purposes, etc., but 100 C is not.
All the scales are arbitrary, and they all have advantages and disadvantages.
Personally, other than noting roughly where 0 C is for the purposes of knowing whether I'm likely to see rain vs. sleet vs. snow, I find the whole concept of temperature used for weather forecasts nearly useless. Between wind chill, effects of humidity, effects of cloud cover vs. full sun, etc., temperature is just one factor that really isn't all that relevant -- since, to our bodies, what matters is rate of heat transfer, not temperature.
When I've lived in a relatively warm, humid climate, for example, the number I MOST cared about in weather forecasts was dewpoint. If the dew point is above 70 F, I'm going to be perspiring like crazy outside, no matter whether the temperature is 72 F or 95 F. If the dewpoint is 55 F, it's possible for me to be comfortable even if it's in the 80s or even higher. In other situations, it might be some other factor that's most important.
Point is -- the temperature scales are all based on arbitrary references points, so who cares? The only reason to argue is just so we all work on the same standard. And the main reason to argue for Celsius over Fahrenheit is that most of the world has adopted Celsius, not because it has some wonderful features that make it superior. (I'm all in favor of dropping Fahrenheit, by the way -- even though I grew up with it. It doesn't matter to me. But, on the other hand, there's also no real good "scientific" reason to make the switch other than ensuring consistency internationally.)
Re: Simple answer (Score:4, Insightful)
A change of 2 degrees fahrenheit is approximately 1.1 degree change in centigrade.
So why would you ever use a decimal? Yet, that is how it's done.
As a Breton... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As a Breton... (Score:4, Informative)
Breton - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
Briton - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
Anyone who says something so stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Does not deserve to hold a place in office.
What, a fucking idiot.
No other way to put it, sorry.
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Science curriculum (Score:2)
Cameron is a 1/2 feet ... (Score:2)
... also known as a dick.
This unit measure, like inches and feet, comes from a body part of a ancien dead king.
Bad idea (Score:2)
The best quote from the article (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that this has been true from the time of Mills, 1806 - 1873, so it's not a recent phenomenon.
I would hypothesize that there is a direct correlation between conservatism and stupidity; the more extreme the conservatism, the stupider the person.
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Note that this has been true from the time of Mills, 1806 - 1873, so it's not a recent phenomenon.
I would hypothesize that there is a direct correlation between conservatism and stupidity; the more extreme the conservatism, the stupider the person.
I grew up in a conservative area. All of the stupidest people there were far left or far right, pretty evenly distributed. I've noticed that liberals tend to ignore really stupid liberals so they end up thinking that only conservatives can be stupid.
You see this in politics. Dan Quayle misspeaks and that makes him an idiot. Joe Biden does the same stuff and "hey, Joe just misspeaks sometimes, ha ha ha."
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Except the least educated areas all vote Labour.
Scotland (Score:3)
Scotland had a chance to run away from that madness but they missed it.
Pandering (Score:5, Interesting)
It's very unlikely the Conservatives will win another term thanks to UKIP, not because UKIP stand a chance but because the first-past-the-post system ensures Labour will win a handy majority.
Why I don't want to change (Score:3)
As an American, I'm tougher than the Europeans, and I can prove it. I can take heat up to 104 degrees. The Europeans are in trouble when it's only 40!
who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Science uses the metric system universally, even in the UK and the US, and outside science, it hardly matters. In particular, while the thought of dealing with non-metric units may seem daunting to people raised on metric, to people raised on imperial units, it's just another unit; if you have inches, miles, feet, and acres, having one more length unit hardly makes a difference.
Advocacy of the metric system seems to be more a kind of political shibboleth. Keeping non-metric units is a matter of national pride, an expression that a country is rich and powerful enough not to have to give in to international uniformity. Advocating metricization is something people use to appear more rational and more scientific, and people from countries who are already metricized like to use it to express their silent resentment at the fact that other countries have been able to maintain a larger level of independence.
metric.org.uk (Score:3)
Anybody interested in this issue should look at http://www.metric.org.uk/ [metric.org.uk]
It gives a lot of information about how stupid the imperial system is in general, and in particular in its implementation in Britain.
There are two kinds of countries (Score:5, Funny)
1) Those that use the Metric System; and
2) Those that have landed a man on the Moon.
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while "1 cup" and "1/2 cup" do. So when a recipe calls for 1 cup of anything, you can measure that quickly.
You rarely see this in UK measurements, for one thing in the UK cup sizes are not standard. My wife (from the USA) found it confusing at first that things were either given in capacity or weight (fluid ounces and pints/pounds and ounces in traditional UK books) and not various cups or spoon sizes.
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if you use cups as a size, you'll never repeat the same quantity twice, cup is only an approximate quantity, but every time i use 125g or 125ml of anything, its the same every time. Tell me how you make a specific metric measure when the comparable measure its based on is never the same twice.
"125ml and 250ml have no practical relationship" - eh??? one is exactly twice the other whereas 1 cup and 1/2 cup are not
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Only if you're European. If you're from the US, 1 cup is a very exact volume.
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I think he's being an idiot.
I don't agree with his policies or his party ideology either, but I think it is incorrect to call him an idiot. He knows very well what he is doing, and I think he is leading the country competently, in the sense that he is not blundering around stupidly and making the overall situation significantly worse for the whole nation.
As you say, metric is eminently useful, not just because it makes it trivially easy to compare small quantities to large ones (just a matter of where to place to decimal point), but a
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Especially given that in the 2011 Scottish Parliament election the SNP only polled 45% of the popular vote, which interestingly is pretty much the same proportion of the vote they got in the referendum. They didn't have a democratic mandate for the referendum in 2011 and giving them one was stupid. Even stupider was allowing to drag on for years, should have been quick and in say 2012.
Nah, the stupid thing was to let it be a simple majority vote of 50%+1.
Weighty decisions, such as changing the fundamentals of a political system (including basic laws/Constitutions/political unions/etc) really do need to require a supermajority in order to add hysteresis to the system. It's just untenable to have a razor thin majority decide matters like this, because it could vacillate too easily.
No one would would have been sweating if the vote had set a threshold of 2/3 majority.
Re:Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason is, 125ml and 250ml have no practical relationship, while "1 cup" and "1/2 cup" do. So when a recipe calls for 1 cup of anything, you can measure that quickly. If it's half a cup, then you use half a cup, or if you have it calling for 1.5 cups, you use the 1/2cup 3 times.
Actually, cooking is the one place that US imperial measurement drives me up the fucking wall. 1 cup of something trivially measured by volume isn't so bad, though 100ml is just as easy to measure. The big issue is when you get to "1 cup of flour" or "1 cup of butter" - things that are much more easily measured by mass, or things like "1 cup of cherry tomatoes" where the amount you get will vary based on the size and density of the particular tomatoes you have today.
Basically, no, the kitchen is exactly the place I want metric measurement - it is if anything the best example around a house of where you need accurate scientific style measurement.
Re:Idiot (Score:4, Informative)
1 cup of flour is trivially measured by volume: Just grab the "1 cup" cup from your set of measuring cups, scoop up flour from your storage container, level. You're done. If you're using measuring cups, you can make a batch of cookie dough without using a scale or having to look at the actual measurement.
US recipes usually don't use "cups" of butter, they use "sticks" of butter. If you live where butter isn't sold in US sticks (113.4 grams), you're screwed.
A Tablespoon is 14.8mL (Score:5, Insightful)
1 cup of flour is trivially measured by volume: Just grab the "1 cup" cup from your set of measuring cups, scoop up flour from your storage container, level.
And if you do that you are going to get a different amount of flour every single time. Flour is a powder with a LOT of air in between. If you are looking for consistency you MUST measure flour by weight because you'll get different packing densities by the method you recommend. Sometimes it doesn't matter but when it does you have to use weight, not volume. ALL professional bakers measure flour by weight and never by volume.
US recipes usually don't use "cups" of butter, they use "sticks" of butter. If you live where butter isn't sold in US sticks (113.4 grams), you're screwed.
A stick of butter is 8 tablespoons or approximately 120mL. You're only screwed if you are clueless.
Re:Idiot (Score:5, Informative)
1 cup of flour is trivially measured by volume: Just grab the "1 cup" cup from your set of measuring cups, scoop up flour from your storage container, level. You're done.
This is indeed easyâ"but very inaccurate: it can lead to the measurement being out by as much as 30%.
MOD PARENT UP.
Professional bakers actually don't use volumes or weights when they state a recipe -- they use something called "baker's percentage," where 100% = the weight of the flour. Not the volume; the weight. All other ingredients are stated in proportions relative to the weight of the flour, making it easy to scale a recipe up or down. This is because bakers actually realize that weighing is so important because of the compressibility of flour.
If you're making bread, for example, an error of 30% in measurement of flour is the difference roughly between the stickiest wettest possible dough you could work with (producing a very crusty bread with large holes, like pizza or ciabatta dough) and a dry dough that is so tough that it's barely kneadable by hand (like bagel dough). Almost all of the varieties of bread fall in that range of about 30% error in flour measurement.
Baking requires somewhat more precision than other cooking, because once you throw the batter/dough in the oven, you can't make modifications. It's not like making soup where you can just taste it while cooking and say, "oops! I forgot the salt!" and just add some and everything will turn out okay.
If you're baking bread or a cake and say "1 cup of flour," you might as well just say "Add enough flour to get the 'right' consistency... whatever that is... you just have to know." Because with volume measurements of flour, it's REALLY hard to get consistent results unless you're skilled in recognizing what the final batter/dough is supposed to be like already.
Re: (Score:2)
The only problem with that is that there are at least 3 definitions of cup that I know of (metric, imperial and U.S. customary), which kind of defeats the purpose of having a recipe in the first place.
And the approximation problem is something you constructed for yourself. Here we typically describe recipes using deciliters. Which is a nice, standard unit which you can scale up or down as needed. And, no, we don't start with imperial measurements and round off. If you want to do scones my way you will have
Re: (Score:3)
A cup in the US is 1/16 gallon = 1/4 quart = 1/ pint = 8 oz. = 237ml.
Though Canada uses a "metric" cup, 250ml.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Interesting)
As you said, another populist soundbite that will be quickly forgotten. The only advantage to teaching kids Metric was that learning to do all the conversions helped practice mental arithmatic but in an age where everyone has a calculator on their smartphone that's really not so important anymore.
Re: (Score:3)
because EU is a good scapegoat. the really stupid stuff is home brewed in UK.
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Re:Feet and inches (Score:5, Informative)
try and work will millimeters in engineering and you soon find out that thousands of an inch are the only way to measure small tolerances
What's wrong with thousands of a mm? Here in Europe, engineers, machinists and the like have happily worked with metric for ages.
Re:Feet and inches (Score:4, Funny)
Intel is now producing chips on it's 5.51181102 × 10-7 inch fabs and that's the way it likes them - you couldn't accurately describe that with the overly complicated metric system and you know it.
So please don't come here spouting off about how metric is better.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, this. Cameron has plenty of obnoxious policies he can be criticised for, but he's not about to abolish the metric system. This was just an off the cuff response to a question about his personal outlook, not the manifesto for the next election:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
In the UK, a few Imperial measures are pretty entrenched (miles for distance, stones for body weight, feet for height, pints for milk and beer) but younger people tend to think in grams rather than pounds and ounces. The metric sys
Re: (Score:3)
He said taught, not use. There is a massive difference. Personally don't see the harm in that at all.
He was responding to the point that "Schools should teach pupils mainly in imperial and not metric measurements". I have nothing against teaching arcane units, in fact I find it interesting - but to stop teaching metric is just plain stupid
Re: (Score:3)
This. Teaching both and their conversions isn't a terrible idea. Favoring the older units that are different from the rest of the world is a pretty bad idea.
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Right on. The yanks will never put a man on the moon with such backward thinking.
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The metric system is a crutch for people who can't do any math except moving decimal points...