Apathy what a great word.
I saw it once spray painted on a wall in Toronto.
It said “Toronto has too much apathy but who gives a damn anyway”
I think there is too much going around.
IIRC, SterlingNorth, 0 degrees Fahrenheit was determined by mixing equal amounts of ice and…something else…salt?
Checking Cecil, I find http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a891215.html which says:
“We’re gonna have lawyers here. It’ll be a fun time.”
–R.R.S.
Actually, I have the opposite feeling about this. It is very hard to feel the difference of a 1 degree change in Fahrenheit, but you can just barely tell a 1 degree change in Celcius. To me, that makes it more meaningful.
There is also the goofy and misleading use of 98.6 as normal body temperature in Fahrenheit. That decimal place makes normal boby temperature seem a lot more precise than it really is. We only chose that number, because it is a translation from 37 degrees Celcius
The worst offender remains uncorrected even in presumably metric societies: the HMS (hours:minutes:seconds) time system.
I’m still waiting for my first digital days. millidays chronometer.
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I think the reason that time has not been revised by the metric system is because it can never be fully integrated into a single decimal numbering scheme in a way that is still reasonable for everyday use.
Why? Because our measurement of time is based on two completely independent cycles-- the Earth’s revolution around the Sun, and the rotation of the Earth.
We can’t have one nice decimal measurement that encompasses both cycles, so why bother? It is imaginable that such a metric measurement would be done in a society that spends most of its time in deep space. If we started living in deep space, I could imagine us creating a time system based on seconds (with kiloseconds, megaseconds, etc).
AHunter, if you ever get a chance to go the Smithsonian, check out their collection of time pieces. You will discover that when the metric system was invented and then imposed on the French people during the revolution, a decimal time system was also imposed. The people loathed it, and it was disposed of as soon as it could be.
>>while contemplating the navel of the universe, I wondered, is it an innie or outie?<<
—The dragon observes
I’m sure you guys read about the new Internet time devised by Swatch. It’s sort of decimal.
Here is there explanation:
I think that 86.4 seconds is to long an interval to ever become pratical. Therefore, it’s just a gimmick and will never catch on. Anyone thinking something else?
ct
When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout
Do you know which museum this is in?
Undead, Sorry but I couldn’t say off the top of my head. I remember seeing the timepiece collection some time ago though it might have been part of a limited exhibition.
>>while contemplating the navel of the universe, I wondered, is it an innie or outie?<<
—The dragon observes
Not at all. Briefer periods would be measured in centibeats, not quite a second.
I must say, I think the English system has a certain panache that the metric doesn’t, but I have to weigh in with the Metrists on the practicality of conversion. It may be best to work on one subset of industries at a time. It must be possible to divide industries into largely disjoint sets (like food service and the auto industry). Change them one at a time, rather than abandon the English system altogether at once.