Why is it that we are supposed to be completely metric in line with EEC regulations here in the UK and thus during the current heat-wave virtually anyone born before the 1970s has to struggle with doing daily mental conversions from Centigrade to good old Farenheit in order to make sense of it (or I dunno, maybe it's just me... numbers never were my strong point!) - anyway, why is it that when it's very hot it's suddenly "100 degrees in London!" instead of in the mid 30s, and yet when it's very cold it's "temperature plummets to minus 5!"

And then on the other hand some poor village greengrocer gets prosecuted and fined for selling his apples in pounds instead of kilos because we're not even allowed to think in pounds any longer, and yet when a celebrity baby is born (or more properly, a baby is born to a celebrity I suppose) it invariably weighs "7lb 8oz" or whatever.

Maybe shopkeepers should start weighing goods by the baby. "I'll have half a baby of potatoes, please" "Why thankyou sir, and is there anything else I can get for you today?"

Ah yes - but which half? Right? Left? Top? Bottom?

Are we talking naked baby or one with filled nappy? And if the latter, disposable or proper Terry ones?

Do we use dummies in place of ounces? "That piece of lamb weighs 3 babies and 6 and half dummies"

And if we're supposed to be metric, how come everyone (including Europe) use half's as in half a litre, half a kilo?

Very odd.

I refuse to go metric - pounds & ounces, gallons & pints, Farenheit, feet & inches & yards (drives people in fabric shops mad!!!)

Well then, I guess we are not going against "the rest of the world" by not switching to metric as some would like us to believe.

Ptolemy - I think part of the problem is that 30C just doesn't sound all that hot. Whereas 100F does.

And people always say 'I don't understand all this furrin stuff - I only know feet/pounds/whatever' .... only they don't. Asked how many pounds in a stone or yards in a mile and most people don't have a clue. Nor have they any real notion of what the quantities they so revere actually are; how big is an acre, in terms of a football pitch? You only know what 5 pounds of spuds looks like because it says '5 pounds' on the bag.

And who cares, anyway. It is isn't illegal at all to use imperial measures (just so long as you use metric as well) and getting sentimental about units of measurement is one of the most dribblingly stupid things people can exercise their tiny minds on. It's not the units that matter - it's the things being measured that are important.

Centigrade is infinitely superior to Fahrenheit because it is based on an understandable scale based on common experience - everyone knows what boiling and freezing are. Metrication generally happens not because base 10 is in any way superior but because a) it has a consistent base (which Imperial doesn't) and b) computers and adding machines can handle it without having to be specially programmed.

They can call our currency Deutschmarks, for all I care, just so long as they pay me enough of it.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

it wasn't 30 it was 38C and it was blooming hot enough!

does anyone still try and make sense of newspapers and tv news? for them it all drama, misery and tragedy, the only way Portugal appears on the news is now with the fires, or when the bridge fell...

i just try and ignore the media as much as i can, and read bbc news website occasionaly ...

What bridge falling when?

And Carla - any news from a certain 'bird'?

I wondered that too, Auntsassy! (loved the babies dummy analogy by the way!) - perhaps it only happened on the BBCi website?



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* I'm backing the campaign to get the official Stalker for 2007 evicted *

No news from that bird, but more interviews in the pipeline (simon and schuster on wednesday and maybe a kids publisher dunno when - this is via an agency)

To be honest i have no hopes whatsoever from the bird... oh well, at least i won't be so nervous for other interviews



Post Edited (08-11-03 18:26)

I have to use metric weights (& sometimes other metric measures) at work, as I'm a laboratory technician, but generally prefer Imperial ones (on an emotional basis, and because I find using base-10 for almost everything rather boring...) otherwise... I do prefer Centigrade to Fahrenheit, for measuring temperatures, however, because the former has such an obvious basis (which is something that the rest of the metric system can't really lay claim to...) and after all Fahrenheit is neither of British origins nor that much more traditional than Centigrade anyway.

And if we can still use non-metric units for time then why not do so for other fields of measurement? Nobody's recommending a switch from minutes/hours/days/etc to dekaseconds/hectaseconds/kiloseconds/etc, at least for non-"scientific" purposes, are they?

As for metrication being more suitable for computers & adding machines _ Having seen a (teenaged) shop assistant use a pocket calculator to add two two-figure numbers together and STILL get the wrong answer, I'd prefer to see a greater emphasis on teaching numeracy (which, in my opinion, the use of so many different scales in Imperial measurements & pre-decimal currency almost certainly encouraged...) rather than increasing depdendance on machines.

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Warning! Product may contain Newts!

Base 10 is a great deal easier when you are doing your calculations in your head, as I frequently do. When I was quite a small girl, not long after the decimal system had been introduced, I decided to buy my dad a box of liqueur chocolates for Christmas (in those more innocent days it was still possible for a child to buy such a thing as a gift). The shop had two different boxes, each with a different weight and price, and one was not a multiple of the other. The assistant asked me which I wanted, and I said I would have to think about it for a moment, because I should prefer to buy the one which was the better value (that was clearly my dad's genes talking!). I did a quick calculation, not exact but to a good enough approximation to get the correct answer, and bought the right box, much to the astonishment of the assistant.

Now I'm not telling this story in order to boast, merely to point out that even an intelligent and numerate eight-year-old might have balked at doing the same mental calculation with shillings and pence.



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That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

Ifg you want to use 'British' measurememnts for temperature, then use Kelvin. 311K sounds even hotter, dontcha know?

And if a shop assistant can't cope with simple arithmatic like that, then what chance would they have with imperial measurements?



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Simon - my point exactly - and far more eloquently put too :)

As for the argument that metric makes more sense in computing terms, I'm afraid that's a lost argument for as long as there's a 3½" floppy disk drive...

My computer doesn't have one. Do I win?



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Nah, sorry mate - the rules were so long as there's a 3½" floppy disk drive. There's still about, oh, 10 million loose in the wild. They're not even an endangered species yet.



Post Edited (08-11-03 20:31)

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* I'm backing the campaign to get the official Stalker for 2007 evicted *

What if it becomes an 8.9cm drive?

Maybe imperial still rules as long as there's a bigfoot?



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I don't know, PSD. I give you 25.4 millimetres and you go and take 1.609344 kilometres :)

This really isn't about metrication at all. The core issue is about falling meekly into line with EU directives. If Britain is the "last archaic stronghold of imperial measurement", then why are eggs still sold world-wide by the dozen, and why is BSP (an old imperial measurement) the internationally accepted standard for gas and water pipe union threads?

Knowing this governent and their skill at "fudging" the issue, what they'll probably do next is introduce driving on the right to fall into line with the rest of Europe, but in stages. First of all lorries, in order to speed up cross-country freight, then the following year private cars. That should make life interesting.



Post Edited (08-11-03 20:32)

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* I'm backing the campaign to get the official Stalker for 2007 evicted *

Driving on the right, wonderful idea! About time you all fell into line with everyone else.

We're happily aligned with prosperous and cultured countries such as Japan, Australia and India in driving on the left, Tracy :)

Actually there's one street in London with decidedly revolutionary tendencies. It is outside the Savoy Hotel. It dates from the days when horse cabbies, seated on the right side of the vehicle, wanted to open the doors for their passengers, without forcing the fares to cross the road to reach the pavement. So on Savoy Street, a turning off the Strand, traffic drives on the right. But that's currently the only place in England.

How to confuse the hell out of anyone gong to stay at the Savoy!

Erm, actually, when you drive through a ford you should technically be on the right, as you are then a boat.

No, really...



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.