G
Guest
Guest
RE: Stagnation? No.
>This reminds me of something else
>that crazy old man said:
>
>
>"An ounce you can hang by
>your finger. A pound you
>can hold in your hand.
>A stone you can hold
>under your arm. A hundredweight
>you can hang by your
>shoulder, and a ton is
>what a horse can pull
>in a carriage."
>
>My point is that it isn't
>accurate enough.
Oh it's accurate enough for most things. A "stone" and a "hundredweight" are hardly used, but a pound, ounce and ton are used quite a bit and have accurate relations between them: 16 ounces to a pound, 2000 pounds to a ton.
>There's much more
>a horse can pull in
>a carriage than an exact
>ton.
Estimation. As stated above, a ton is 2000 pounds.
>Sure, "half a cup"
>is easy and convenient to
>remember, approximately ,
>but it's simply not as accurate
>as 340 ml.
Oh it is easy, you grab your "cup" measuring cup and fill it half-way. You don't have to fill up a clear cup and measure it out to the accuracy of a milliliter to get your measurement.
>And you
>want most accuracy when you
>cook.
Are you kidding? If you need to measure out your ingredients to the precision of a milliliter, you're obviously not a real cook. *Real* cooks use their intuition. How do you explain a "pinch?" Do you actually think that a "tablespoon" of salt means an exact amount? No, it means you take a general amount of salt which would just about fit on a tablespoon and dump it in. That's why purely recipe-cooks don't produce very good meals, they have no sense of how to flavor and make their food. You don't see French cookbooks saying "add 50.66ml of vinegar" or "10.002 milligrams of salt," you see them saying, "add a dash of vinegar," or a "pinch of salt."
>And who has said that the
>metric system can't be as
>easily visualized? If you asked
>a metric person how much
>250 ml was, I'm sure
>he'd pour out a pretty
>acccurate amount of fluid.
Yeah, but you're going to see him raising up his beaker and pouring it out to exactly 250 ml, worrying if he's estimating correctly between the 1ml lines.
>250
>ml isn't any harder to
>remember than your quart.
You don't need to remember it, you figure it out.
>Or
>half a liter - one
>pint. We have visualizationable measures,
>it's just that it's better
>if you can divide one
>measurement into smaller measurements without
>doing complex maths.
When has dividing a gallon into four quarts been hard? The only conversions which are hard to remember are things like miles to feet.
>And the Fahrenheit scale is the
>same matter as the imperial
>system- it's inobvious. Of course,
>you Fahrenheit people think of
>it as normal and use
>it like we use the
>Celsius scale, but in fact
>I think it's a pretty
>stupid way of depicting temperature.
Well it was the first standard way to measure temperature. Celcius came a lot later.
>Instead of taking basis in
>a (relatively) permanent temperature like
>the freezing and boiling point
>of water, you use something
>as variable as human body
>temperature.
Zero was derived by finding the coldest temperature obtainable by melting ice with salt and the 100 mark was Farenheit's body temperature at the time.
>So for you, it
>makes it hard to tell
>when it's freezing, like you
>said. In Celsius we just
>have the rule that below
>0 is frost and snow,
>you know.
>And you say Fahrenheit is easier
>to relate to high climate?
>Tell me how.
Yeah but you have a very unfriendly high temperature when related to average climate. What, 37.7 degrees Celcius is 100 degrees Farenheit? It's easier to deal with 100 as a "hot day" than some abstract number like 37.7. The same goes for Celcius when dealing with freezing.
Now don't get me wrong, I would rather we'd be using the metric system too, but there are valid reasons why the old system has been met with so much lazy conversion.
The truth is that the metric system is being taught here just as much as over in Europe. The English system is only really perpetuated in the older generations. The younger generation has been brought up on the metric system and it is extremely rare to see any industries using the old system. The only place you really see the old system is on road signs, bathroom scales and canned drinks (which also have metric conversions on them too).
All scientific measurements use the metric system and it is the only system taught in schools except to relate it back to the English system when someone asks.
-Xotor-
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>This reminds me of something else
>that crazy old man said:
>
>
>"An ounce you can hang by
>your finger. A pound you
>can hold in your hand.
>A stone you can hold
>under your arm. A hundredweight
>you can hang by your
>shoulder, and a ton is
>what a horse can pull
>in a carriage."
>
>My point is that it isn't
>accurate enough.
Oh it's accurate enough for most things. A "stone" and a "hundredweight" are hardly used, but a pound, ounce and ton are used quite a bit and have accurate relations between them: 16 ounces to a pound, 2000 pounds to a ton.
>There's much more
>a horse can pull in
>a carriage than an exact
>ton.
Estimation. As stated above, a ton is 2000 pounds.
>Sure, "half a cup"
>is easy and convenient to
>remember, approximately ,
>but it's simply not as accurate
>as 340 ml.
Oh it is easy, you grab your "cup" measuring cup and fill it half-way. You don't have to fill up a clear cup and measure it out to the accuracy of a milliliter to get your measurement.
>And you
>want most accuracy when you
>cook.
Are you kidding? If you need to measure out your ingredients to the precision of a milliliter, you're obviously not a real cook. *Real* cooks use their intuition. How do you explain a "pinch?" Do you actually think that a "tablespoon" of salt means an exact amount? No, it means you take a general amount of salt which would just about fit on a tablespoon and dump it in. That's why purely recipe-cooks don't produce very good meals, they have no sense of how to flavor and make their food. You don't see French cookbooks saying "add 50.66ml of vinegar" or "10.002 milligrams of salt," you see them saying, "add a dash of vinegar," or a "pinch of salt."
>And who has said that the
>metric system can't be as
>easily visualized? If you asked
>a metric person how much
>250 ml was, I'm sure
>he'd pour out a pretty
>acccurate amount of fluid.
Yeah, but you're going to see him raising up his beaker and pouring it out to exactly 250 ml, worrying if he's estimating correctly between the 1ml lines.
>250
>ml isn't any harder to
>remember than your quart.
You don't need to remember it, you figure it out.
>Or
>half a liter - one
>pint. We have visualizationable measures,
>it's just that it's better
>if you can divide one
>measurement into smaller measurements without
>doing complex maths.
When has dividing a gallon into four quarts been hard? The only conversions which are hard to remember are things like miles to feet.
>And the Fahrenheit scale is the
>same matter as the imperial
>system- it's inobvious. Of course,
>you Fahrenheit people think of
>it as normal and use
>it like we use the
>Celsius scale, but in fact
>I think it's a pretty
>stupid way of depicting temperature.
Well it was the first standard way to measure temperature. Celcius came a lot later.
>Instead of taking basis in
>a (relatively) permanent temperature like
>the freezing and boiling point
>of water, you use something
>as variable as human body
>temperature.
Zero was derived by finding the coldest temperature obtainable by melting ice with salt and the 100 mark was Farenheit's body temperature at the time.
>So for you, it
>makes it hard to tell
>when it's freezing, like you
>said. In Celsius we just
>have the rule that below
>0 is frost and snow,
>you know.
>And you say Fahrenheit is easier
>to relate to high climate?
>Tell me how.
Yeah but you have a very unfriendly high temperature when related to average climate. What, 37.7 degrees Celcius is 100 degrees Farenheit? It's easier to deal with 100 as a "hot day" than some abstract number like 37.7. The same goes for Celcius when dealing with freezing.
Now don't get me wrong, I would rather we'd be using the metric system too, but there are valid reasons why the old system has been met with so much lazy conversion.
The truth is that the metric system is being taught here just as much as over in Europe. The English system is only really perpetuated in the older generations. The younger generation has been brought up on the metric system and it is extremely rare to see any industries using the old system. The only place you really see the old system is on road signs, bathroom scales and canned drinks (which also have metric conversions on them too).
All scientific measurements use the metric system and it is the only system taught in schools except to relate it back to the English system when someone asks.
-Xotor-
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http://www.poseidonet.f2s.com/files/nostupid.gif
[/div]
(2204 pounds)