🚀 go-pugleaf

/comp.lang.postscript/ifarqhar@mqccsunc.mqcc.mq.OZ (Ian Farquhar)/Jan 21, 1990/
> I am just amazed by the above argument.  It basically says that the
> metric system is unintuitive because it is impossible to express four
> whatsits in a integer number of millimeters!

Well, that is so.  That's why you buy your milk and gasoline by the liter
and not cubic meter.

> I was never taught imperial,
> but have picked up a bit over the years.  I fail to see that the system
> has even one single virtue.  How can sensible people cling to a measure
> such an an acre that was originally defined as the area that one man and
> an ox could plough in one day?

How many square meters is a hectare?

You use whatever you are accustomed to.  I was brought up on metric and
didn't encounter the English system until I moved to the U.S.  And guess
what: you do get used to 32 degrees being freezing, 95 being too hot, and
72 being just right.  And you remember that it's about 1,000 miles from
Chicago to Denver, and you know that they can be driven through at roughly
1 mile a minute.  And you even start remembering things like "5280 feet in
1 mile" (especially if you live in Denver, the "Mile High City", and every
town's greeting sign in the state lists its elevation, as do signs on all
mountain passes).

You remember units that you use.  Just like you remember the units of time:
60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in
a week, a variable number around 30 of days in a month, 12 months in a
year, sometimes 365 and sometimes 366 days in a year... hardly a system
resembling metric, huh?

Jacob
--
Jacob Gore		Jacob@Gore.Com			boulder!gore!jacob