Comment On Classics Week: The Really Windy City

I live in Chicago, and thats not a misprint.

I live in Guernsey and I recall that day. I threw a frisbee and seconds later it had hit me in back of the head.

The guy with the umbrella is awsome

I live in Cheyenne, Wyoming. That is a calm day.

That red spot in Jupiter is envious now.

Why is the temperature in Celsius but the wind speed is in miles per hour?

Hey! Why does the wind get to break the speed of light?

Disgruntled DBA:

Hey! Why does the wind get to break the speed of light?

84258 miles per hour is 23.4125 miles per second.
The speed of light in a vaccuum is about 186000 miles per second. The wind has a bit of catching up to do.

The best part of this one is definitely the picture of the guy with the umbrella appearing instead of a PICTURE NOT AVAILABLE. It shows that a decent, but funny, programmer was involved at some point.

It's a UK thing. Although they mostly use the metric system, they also use miles for distances, miles per hour for speeds, acres for land area, etc.

18Rabbit:

Why is the temperature in Celsius but the wind speed is in miles per hour?

It's a UK thing. Although they mostly use the metric system, they also use miles for distances, miles per hour for speeds, acres for land area, etc.

Someone:

18Rabbit:

Why is the temperature in Celsius but the wind speed is in miles per hour?

It's a UK thing. Although they mostly use the metric system, they also use miles for distances, miles per hour for speeds, acres for land area, etc.

Weird...

Someone:

It's a UK thing. Although they mostly use the metric system, they also use miles for distances, miles per hour for speeds, acres for land area, etc.

In Canada, we started metricizing in the early '70s and we're a schizoid lot about it to this day. The units in which one reflexively tends to think of various quantities is a deeply ingrained bit of second nature and difficult to change.

I'm 43 years old, so I got an early start in Imperial and then learned metric in school. I think of weather temperatures in Celcius, though I have a fair sense of their Fahrenheit equivalents and can translate when necessary. My parents put Celcius in the same category as Urdu. I think of traveling distances in kilometres and speeds in km/h, but of heights and weights of ordinary human-scale objects (such as humans) in feet, inches, pounds and ounces. I buy my gasoline in litres and my draft beer in pints. I cook in teaspoons, tablespoons, and cups and I set my oven in Fahrenheit, but my grass seed comes in kilograms and back in the day my weed came in grams.

Of course, being as intimately entangled with US markets and media as we are, it's hard to get away from exposure to the old ways, albeit US Standard rather than Imperial. I do wish the US would bite the bullet and go officially metric like the rest of the planet, but I expect that will be a long time coming. It's a solidly conservative culture in many ways. Perhaps they'll have to lose a couple more billion-dollar Mars landers to conversion errors first.

Around the world in 17.7266154 minutes!

Captcha: Kungfu

And unlike the rest of the anglophone world, you write neither "tyre centre" nor "tire center" but "tire centre". Go figure.

On a slightly related note (sanity checks on weather forecasts), I always find it amusing when the current temperature is higher than the predicted high for the day (or lower than the predicted low).

Even if it is slightly dishonest, I'm surprised they don't have something like

predicted_high < current_high ? current_high : predicted_high

where they print the forecast high...

The Real WTF is that they use Celsius for the weather.

EvanED:

On a slightly related note (sanity checks on weather forecasts), I always find it amusing when the current temperature is higher than the predicted high for the day (or lower than the predicted low).

Even if it is slightly dishonest, I'm surprised they don't have something like

predicted_high < current_high ? current_high : predicted_high

where they print the forecast high...

My favourite is the daily high that's lower than the daily low.

Now maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I wonder if it's a coincidence that the number was: 84 2 85 mph.
Possibly they meant to type in 84 to 85 mph?

John Cowan:

And unlike the rest of the anglophone world, you write neither "tyre centre" nor "tire center" but "tire centre". Go figure.

Ah, yes, "Canadian English"... the regional setting that even most Canadians don't think of. I work in Canada, for a Canadian-owned company, and all of my documents must be written in US English, because, of course, that's our larger market. My wife works in Canada for a different wholly Canadian-owned company with exactly the same requirement. The only really Canadian language we write is French Canadian and that's because we don't sell into the European market.

T$:

Now maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I wonder if it's a coincidence that the number was: 84 2 85 mph.
Possibly they meant to type in 84 to 85 mph?

Even that would be hurricane-force winds, which isn't likely.

At first I thought the umbrella guy was a body in a river.

cmptths:

I live in Chicago, and thats not a misprint.

The speed of sound is about 769 MPH, so this works out to a wind velocity of Mach 109.6 This would be a seriously windy day, even for Chicago.

Sgt. Preston:

I do wish the US would bite the bullet and go officially metric like the rest of the planet, but I expect that will be a long time coming.

Actually the US _is_ officially metric. But when the bill passed (late 60's or 70's IIRC) they tacked on a line that anyone can measure in whatever standard they want (metric or english) and the government will have to accept it. So the only ones this affected was the national standards folk who defined the US mile, gallon, etc. in metric equivalents. Without the ability to force anyone we just go on, inch by inch, mile by mile, while the rest of the world zips by going km/hr

Scott:

At first I thought the umbrella guy was a body in a river.

Now that would be Chicago.

[quote user="Anonymous Coward"]
It's a UK thing. Although they mostly use the metric system, they also use miles for distances, miles per hour for speeds, acres for land area, etc.[/quote]

Weird... [/quote]

That's not so bad. I've been told by someone across the pond there that they buy their "petrol" in litres, but measure their fuel economy in miles per gallon (uk).

EvanED:

Even if it is slightly dishonest, I'm surprised they don't have something like

predicted_high < current_high ? current_high : predicted_high

where they print the forecast high...

That's not dishonest. They've just made a new forecast. I don't care if they made a forecast this morning and got it wrong, they've got more information now and should make this easy new forecast.

Sgt. Preston:

Disgruntled DBA:

Hey! Why does the wind get to break the speed of light?

84258 miles per hour is 23.4125 miles per second.
The speed of light in a vaccuum is about 186000 miles per second. The wind has a bit of catching up to do.

Excuse my halo 2 talk but.......

pwned

Someone:

18Rabbit:

Why is the temperature in Celsius but the wind speed is in miles per hour?

It's a UK thing. Although they mostly use the metric system, they also use miles for distances, miles per hour for speeds, acres for land area, etc.

Most importantly Pints for beer (and not the wimpy US Pints).

The Earth's escape velocity is ~24600 mph

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity

The 12°C are only an estimate. The real temperature could not be determined because the friction heat vaporized the thermometer.

Are 40mph enough to fly a kite with an 18kg weight attached to it? Only if the kite is really big. This corresponds to the 80,000 tons at 84,000 mph since the force of air resistance is proportional to the square of the velocity. So you would need a big, incredibly tough kite and a hell of a strong rope, and certainly one that's not inflammable.

Don't you mean one that is inflammable

[snip]
I do wish the US would bite the bullet and go officially metric like the rest of the planet...
[/snip]

Take your lazy metric system and stuff it. The USA got to be the 800lb. gorilla of the world using US Standard units. The only reason the lander crashed is BECAUSE of the metric system - if they had just used US Standard units there would BE NO conversion errors, and no crash! You want metric, YOU convert from US Units!

mikko:

The USA got to be the 800lb. gorilla of the world using US Standard units.

800lb? Now how much is that in metric?

The USA were the 362.87 kg gorilla. That's no longer neccessarily the case, as evidenced by the Euro surpassing the Dollar in value and the ECB considering decoupling the European key interest rate from the American one, as China and India are becoming as important markets to the EU as the USA.

I won't go into how during the time the USA became the sole superpower you also had stuff like racial segregation and no smog laws. Coincidence does not equal causation.

verisimilidude:

the rest of the world zips by going km/hr

Actually km/h not km/hr. Metric system is not just units and prefixes, but a large and important set of usage rules.

I've discovered that not only Americans but even us Aussies - in theory metric since ages ago - just fail to have any clue about them.

Gsquared:

T$:

Now maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I wonder if it's a coincidence that the number was: 84 2 85 mph.
Possibly they meant to type in 84 to 85 mph?

Even that would be hurricane-force winds, which isn't likely.

Strilanc:

The best part of this one is definitely the picture of the guy with the umbrella appearing instead of a PICTURE NOT AVAILABLE. It shows that a decent, but funny, programmer was involved at some point.

To me that's a picture of a very windy day, which it would be with 84 to 85 mph.

Willie:

The Real WTF is that they use Celsius for the weather.

Surely Celsius is a more natural fit for a programmer's brain?

"Is it cold enough to freeze?" is expressed as (Temp_c <= 0)

"Is it hot enough to boil water?" is (Temp_c >= 100)

That makes a lot more sense to me than using magic numbers:
(Temp_f <= 32) or (Temp_f >= 212)

jeez:

The USA were the 362.87 kg gorilla. That's no longer neccessarily the case, as evidenced by the Euro surpassing the Dollar in value and the ECB considering decoupling the European key interest rate from the American one, as China and India are becoming as important markets to the EU as the USA.

From a programmer's point of perspective the euro is one big WTF, why name something "euro" if it's supposed to unify currency among countries? It'll never survive anno 2590 by the time we will have a global currency that's not just for Europe. America could never adopt it.

Catprog:

Don't you mean one that is inflammable

Look up "inflammable" ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/inflammable ), it means exactly the opposite of what you think it means. Yes, in- usually means "is not", but not in this case. Yes, English is a very odd language.

GuntherVB:

It'll never survive anno 2590 by the time we will have a global currency that's not just for Europe. America could never adopt it.

But by the time we spread across the galaxy thanks to Sender Spikes, we'll have adopted the Loony. (Kudos to anyone that understood that)

From a programmer's point of perspective the euro is one big WTF, why name something "euro" if it's supposed to unify currency among countries?

Umm, actually it's supposed to be the currency for the European Union, whence the name.

Otherwise I'd concede that "globo" would've been a better name.

[snip]
Take your lazy metric system and stuff it. The USA got to be the 800lb. gorilla of the world using US Standard units.
[/snip]
I completely agree. The British used Imperial units to measure, well our big frickin empire. Quarter of the globe, all laided out in miles and pounds and pints.

Then we switched to metric, now look at us...

Graham S:

Willie:

The Real WTF is that they use Celsius for the weather.

Surely Celsius is a more natural fit for a programmer's brain?

"Is it cold enough to freeze?" is expressed as (Temp_c <= 0)

"Is it hot enough to boil water?" is (Temp_c >= 100)

That makes a lot more sense to me than using magic numbers:
(Temp_f <= 32) or (Temp_f >= 212)

That would be

"Is it cold enough to freeze a saturated solution of salt in water?" and

"Is it hot enough to be called fever if it were the body temperature for a human being?"

So how many Globo is a Loony?

Graham S:

Surely Celsius is a more natural fit for a programmer's brain?

"Is it cold enough to freeze?" is expressed as (Temp_c <= 0)

"Is it hot enough to boil water?" is (Temp_c >= 100)

That makes a lot more sense to me than using magic numbers:
(Temp_f <= 32) or (Temp_f >= 212)

0 and 100 are just as much magic numbers as 32 and 212. And anyway how often are those two constants actually important to a programmer? For any real work with temperature you use Kelvin, but Farenheit works great for weather. In many places 0 and 100 are close to the normal limits of atmospheric temperature.

From a programmer's point of perspective the euro is one big WTF, why name something "euro" if it's supposed to unify currency among countries? It'll never survive anno 2590 by the time we will have a global currency that's not just for Europe. America could never adopt it.

That's okay. By then, we'll all have adopted the Renminbi or the Rupee.

Strilanc:

The best part of this one is definitely the picture of the guy with the umbrella appearing instead of a PICTURE NOT AVAILABLE. It shows that a decent, but funny, programmer was involved at some point.

I don't see that this is anything unusual. The guy with the umbrella is probably the picture for very windy. Very windy is probably defined as > some threshold. The code probably doesn't even notice that it's *FAR* greater than the threshold.

Sgt. Preston:

I think of weather temperatures in Celcius, though I have a fair sense of their Fahrenheit equivalents and can translate when necessary. My parents put Celcius in the same category as Urdu. I think of traveling distances in kilometres and speeds in km/h, but of heights and weights of ordinary human-scale objects (such as humans) in feet, inches, pounds and ounces. I buy my gasoline in litres and my draft beer in pints. I cook in teaspoons, tablespoons, and cups and I set my oven in Fahrenheit, but my grass seed comes in kilograms and back in the day my weed came in grams.

And we buy our hotdogs in packages of 12 but the buns come in packages of 8...