• Mr. E (unregistered) in reply to Chris P. Peterson
    Chris P. Peterson:
    A fail to be sure. Proof that even a basic unit test goes a long way. Reminds me of a co-worker who wrote a circle drawing routine that generated over a billion points in one of the paths through the code. An epic fail that could have been caught with a simple unit test that exercised all the paths through the code.

    I bet if they had unit tests, the one they wrote for this tested 6PM

  • (cs) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    miko:
    TRWTF is definitely the murican AM/PM over-complication of it all. Why bother? Why not just give in and do like the rest of the world? The day starts at zero (00:00) and ends at 24 (24:00) because there are 24 hours in a day. Simple as that.
    What's a murican?
    3/8ths of a frooblat.
  • (cs) in reply to EatenByAGrue
    EatenByAGrue:
    Zagyg:
    Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning

    That's nothing - check out this bit by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings:

    The dead swans lay in the stagnant pool. They lay. They rotted. They turned Around occasionally. Bits of flesh dropped off them from Time to time. And sank into the pool's mire. They also smelt a great deal.

    The Scottish Bard is still the greatest:

    Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay! Alas! I am very sorry to say That ninety lives have been taken away On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

    etc... William Topaz McGonagall - The only poet I know to comment on civil engineering

  • (cs)
    the videos were off by different amounts; an hour earlier here, two hours later there, and only in the evening.
    I call shenanigans. The videos could be off by two, four, six, eight or ten hours in either direction, or in the case of the six o'clock hour, by nothing at all. But they could never be "an hour earlier".

    I'd like to be the one who uses the security videos at his performance review: "See there? The video clearly shows that I was still hard at work at my desk at 9:00 PM every night, while your golden boy Dave in the next cubicle is shown leaving at 3:00 PM!"

  • (cs) in reply to JC
    JC:
    TRWTF is Americans using cups for measuring cooking ingredients.
    You'd expect them to use buckets, yes.
  • jay (unregistered)

    When I was in high school and I was studying chemistry and physics, I thought the advantages of the metric system were obvious and overwhelming, and I couldn't understand why people didn't bite the bullet and switch.

    Then I graduated from school and started living a real life. And I discovered that, for the average person going through his day to day life, the advantages of the metric system don't really make much difference. Sure, with metric it's easy to scale from small units to big units. So what? How often do I really want to know how many golf balls I would have to stack up to reach the Moon? Yes, it's easier to convert between centimeters and kilometers than between inches and miles. So what? How often do I want to convert between inches and miles?

    Arguably, the standard system is superior for day-to-day use because the units were invented to be a convenient size. It's easy to work with small integers and simple fractions. I can grasp "2 cups" instantly in my head, faster than I can grasp "600 ml". And I find "1 1/3 cups" easier than "330 ml".

    Yes, Americans have to remember 12 inches to a foot and 5,280 feet to a mile. Europeans have to remember all the prefixes, "centi", "milli", "deci", "deka", etc.

    All told, I'd rather use metric. But on a scale of 1 to 10, it's like a 5 versus a 6, it's just not that big a deal. Or on a scale of 1 to 12, it's like a 6 versus a 7. :-)

  • dpm (unregistered) in reply to xaade
    xaade:
    dpm:
    miko:
    The day starts at zero (00:00) and ends at 24 (24:00) because there are 24 hours in a day.
    Technically, a day begins at 00:00:00 and ends at 23:59:59 --- you have an off-by-one error.

    23:59:59.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999....

    Addendum (2013-07-09 10:28): Which is the same as 24:00:00.

    (first response) No, it's not. Clocks do not display fractions-of-a-second, so what are you going to show for the second after 23:59:59? 00:00:00, not 24:00:00.

    (second response) Moot, because the original poster described a range which by any interpretation included both endpoints --- the first second of the first day and the first second of the second day --- which is incorrect.

  • jay (unregistered)

    For simple practicality, it makes sense that if we're going to divide time into am and pm, that we not further complicate the matter by adding special designations for midnight and noon that are only valid for a fraction of a second each day.

    I don't care about technical definitions of what "am" and "pm" stand for, their astronomical significance, or the history of the terms. To keep the clock simple, I want 12:00 to be either am or pm, just like any other time.

    Given that, it makes sense to call noon 12:00 pm and midnight 12:00 am. That maintains consistent transitions of the clock. 10:00 am is followed by 10:01 am. 11:00 am is followed by 11:01 am. So it's just easier if 12:00 am is followed by 12:01 am.

    To put it another way, am/pm is a higher order amount than the hour. So it should change only as a "carry" when adding 1 to the hour.

    Better still would be if instead of "12" we said "0" so it was a neat carry. At which point you might as well just switch to a 24-hour clock.

    Or we could go metric and have 10 decidays to the day. Think how that would simplify time arithmetic!

  • jay (unregistered) in reply to miko
    miko:
    Please convert to the metric system already, so we can speak to each other without confusion... "1 inch is 0.083333333 feet" and "1 cup is 0.0625 gallons" who can keep track of those decimal values? How do you even remember if it's 0.0833 or 0.0625?

    Umm, you realize that no one says 1 inch = .08333 feet, we say that 1 foot = 12 inches. "12" is not a very difficult number to remember. Not obviously more difficult to remember than "10".

  • (cs) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    I agree 100% with that. However the US tendency to measure liquids in recipes in cups is why I still have some US cup-fraction measuring scoops at home. It's moderately annoying.
    You all still gives weights in "stone". You don't get to complain.
  • Andrew (unregistered)

    IMO the real fail was that Michael just checked the db timestamp and assumed there was no bug without ever even considering the fact that it might be the presentation layer that had a bug, not the db.

    That is an egregious mistake in debugging...

  • jay (unregistered) in reply to miko
    miko:
    1 cubic metre of water = 1000 litres = 1000 kilos. 100 degrees, water turns to gas. 0 degrees, water turns to ice. (under normal pressure) Same scale. Always 10 based. Simple. You should try it! :)

    Why do you say 1 cubic meter OF WATER = 1000 liters? I believe 1 cubic meter of sand, or 1 cubic meter of iron, or 1 cubic meter of chicken brains, all would also be 1000 liters.

    And why is the celcius scale based on freezing and boiling points of water? Why not freezing and boiling points of fluorine? Or of glycol antifreeze? Okay, that scale is useful if you're working with water, but for anything else, it's just as arbitrary as Farenheit.

  • jay (unregistered) in reply to emmayche
    emmayche:
    If you think that the metric system is the only thing standing in the way of Americans and Europeans speaking to each other without confusion, then you are, to be kind, hyperfocused.

    Of course it's not JUST the metric system. It's the metric system AND day-month-year versus month-day-year.

  • jay (unregistered) in reply to dpm
    dpm:
    No, it's not. Clocks do not display fractions-of-a-second, so what are you going to show for the second after 23:59:59? 00:00:00, not 24:00:00.

    Most digital clocks don't show seconds either. And analog clocks show as much precision as you care to read into the movement of the hands.

    But that's beside the point. The question was not, "What is the last time displayed for the day on such-and-such brand and model clock?" but "When does the day end?" I don't say that a foot is 11 inches because that's the highest number that appears on my ruler. (Or for you metric folks, that a meter is 90 centimeters because that's the highest number that appears on my meter stick.)

  • jay (unregistered) in reply to Mr. E
    Mr. E:
    I bet if they had unit tests, the one they wrote for this tested 6PM

    There's probably some law of nature about this. If a program works correctly in x out of a possible y total cases, you will test exactly x cases, and they will be the ones that happen to work.

  • Water, Water Everywhere (unregistered) in reply to jay
    jay:
    And why is the celcius scale based on freezing and boiling points of water? Why not freezing and boiling points of fluorine? Or of glycol antifreeze? Okay, that scale is useful if you're working with water, but for anything else, it's just as arbitrary as Farenheit.
    Fahrenheit is based on the freezing brine and 'normal' human body temperature. Freezing brine is very repeatable, but human body temperature varies considerably between individuals and even the same individual on different days. This, it's utterly useless for calibration.

    At least Centigrade is based on two repeatable constants - you can measure (and manipulate) air pressure relatively simply to get the same answer twice.

    Thus it is possible to calibrate your Centigrade instruments, far more accurately than your Fahrenheit ones.

  • (cs) in reply to foo
    foo:
    You prefer [a base of] 12 or 30, computers like powers of 2, mathematicians would like a prime number[...].
    What's the advantage of a number system with a prime base?
  • (cs) in reply to Water, Water Everywhere
    Water:
    Fahrenheit is based on the freezing brine and 'normal' human body temperature. Freezing brine is very repeatable, but human body temperature varies considerably between individuals and even the same individual on different days. This, it's utterly useless for calibration.

    At least Centigrade is based on two repeatable constants - you can measure (and manipulate) air pressure relatively simply to get the same answer twice.

    Thus it is possible to calibrate your Centigrade instruments, far more accurately than your Fahrenheit ones.

    You're a troll or an idiot. The historical basis for Fahrenheit has no bearing on modern calibration techniques.

  • 7eggert (unregistered) in reply to Rollyn01

    Especially if 11 AM ends just two hours before 11 PM ...

  • 7eggert (unregistered) in reply to Rollyn01
    Rollyn01:
    This is one of the reasons for me that the 24-hour format makes more sense, less ambiguity to work. Then again, It could be that it can never get a good gauge on whether it's morning or evening by looking at a 12-hour clock. Damn summers and winters.

    Especially if 11 AM ends just two hours before 11 PM ...

  • (cs) in reply to JC
    JC:
    TRWTF is Americans using cups for measuring cooking ingredients. Especially things like flour, which can vary in density quite significantly depending on if it's sifted, how well packed it is in the packed etc.

    So the real WTF is using volume, not the units of measurement? Your comment contradicts itself.

  • (cs) in reply to Kivi
    Kivi:
    foo:
    You prefer [a base of] 12 or 30, computers like powers of 2, mathematicians would like a prime number[...].
    What's the advantage of a number system with a prime base?

    Presumably because it divides only by itself or one, which makes it really convenient. Yeah... convenient.

    Addendum (2013-07-09 15:14): (with the obvious exception of binary of course, which genuinely is convenient)

  • Someone (unregistered) in reply to miko
    miko:
    TRWTF is definitely the murican AM/PM over-complication of it all. Why bother? Why not just give in and do like the rest of the world? The day starts at zero (00:00) and ends at 24 (24:00) because there are 24 hours in a day. Simple as that.

    Please convert to the metric system already, so we can speak to each other without confusion... "1 inch is 0.083333333 feet" and "1 cup is 0.0625 gallons" who can keep track of those decimal values? How do you even remember if it's 0.0833 or 0.0625?

    But you have no problem remembering that a minute is 0.016666667 hours, an hour is 0.0416666667 days, and a day is either 0.0027377583 or 0.0027397260 years, depending on the year?

  • (cs)

    stop being irrational

  • EvilCodeMonkey (unregistered) in reply to cellocgw
    cellocgw:
    dpm:
    miko:
    The day starts at zero (00:00) and ends at 24 (24:00) because there are 24 hours in a day.
    Technically, a day begins at 00:00:00 and ends at 23:59:59 --- you have an off-by-one error.

    Damn-- I've been cheated out of a second every single day!

    ([<{ please check for whoosh before angrily correcting me}>])

    Technically, cellocgw is incorrect. The day ends at 23:59:59.999999999999... (keep adding nines until you get tired of it) You're only cheated out of 1/infinity of a second.

  • 7eggert (unregistered) in reply to xaade
    xaade:
    Steve The Cynic:
    JC:
    TRWTF is Americans using cups for measuring cooking ingredients. Especially things like flour, which can vary in density quite significantly depending on if it's sifted, how well packed it is in the packed etc.
    I agree 100% with that. However the US tendency to measure liquids in recipes in cups is why I still have some US cup-fraction measuring scoops at home. It's moderately annoying.

    I suppose you could keep a small scale and measure by grams.

    Now let's read the recipe ... three cups of water ... I'll use three grams. Three spoons of oil ... I'll use three grams ... why the didn't it work out?

  • the river eating government cheese (unregistered)

    Be nice to the poor Europeen feelings. It does bother them so when you remind them that the system of measurement they do go on about is just as arbitrary and baseless as any other. Take a minute and look up the original definitions of common SI units.

    That's right, they're just as arbitrary, malleable, and bogus as anything else. But by gawd they just won't shut up about them.

  • BrunoTR (unregistered) in reply to xaade
    xaade:
    Exactly. If you don't need to be exact, there's no need to have a metric system. Use whatever measuring system is the most convenient, and I've found the standard system much more convenient for cooking. Much much more. Plus, it's much better to have a system that works better with fractions. Sometimes you want to divide the recipe by a third or fourth, much better to have a system that handles that better.

    Agreed. And that's the sum of my problems with the standard "system": it's not a system, it's a bunch of cups and bottles and barrels (and feet!) that people in the 1600s used to cook and sell grain. They were different from one country to the other (probably from one house to the other!) but tradition makes them endure till today so they had to be "standardized" and "systematized" so that all feet measured the same and all cups could hold the same amount of flour - which, in fact, they don't, so why call that amount of flour a "cup" at all?

    If you are cooking, a cup is useful as a makeshift unit of measurement, and fractions of a cup are esay to visualize, but don't call it a system, call it a cup.

    xaade:
    In terms of comparing height of people at glance, it's much easier to have feet than meters IMO. I find it better to have numbers that fit the context. It's not helpful to know that I'm 2 meters and my wife is 1.678 meters. How do I relate those two. 6 and 5 just work better.

    Of course you could use decimeters. 20 and 17 is easier. But when I want non-exactness, I prefer fractions that are easier to relate in my head.

    I can see what you mean, but I believe this comes entirely from your familiarity with the units. If you ask me how do I relate 2m to 1.678m, the answer to me is simple: by a little over 32cm, which I can easily visualize because these are the units I have been using my whole life.

    You actually made this a little more evident to me when you mentioned decimeters - you see, they're part of the metric system, but we don't really use them much. We normally measure things in milimeters, centimeters, meters or Kilometers - decimeters, decameters and hectometers are not commonly used. So when you say 20dm, since it's not one of the units I commonly use, I have to first convert it to meters or centimeters before I can actually make sense of it. BUT, unlike converting from standard / imperial, in this case I just move the decimal point.

    xaade:
    Yes, you could say 5/12 is bigger than 1/3 faster if you just compare the decimals, but it's more than just if one is bigger, it's bigger by how much. Ok, .41666 - .33333 = .08333. But how useful is .0833? Does that mean anything to you? It doesn't to me. 5/12 - 1/3 = 5/12 - 4/12 = 1/12. 1/12. I just prefer that number. I immediately know that 1/12 is 1/4 of 1/3. And if I was cooking, it's more helpful to have that in my head and have a 1/12 measuring cup, than to have my measuring cups labelled .08333.

    But I guess I'm just biased.

    I do believe this is exactly that: bias, from habit. Your measuring cups are graduated 1/12, 1/6, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 3/4; our measuring cups are graduated 50ml, 100ml, 150ml, 200ml, 250ml. I'm as apt at juggling these numbers to get the amount I need as you are with your fractions, based on practice, habit and familiarity. If I'm somehow in the situation that I need to add 0.0833 liters of something to my recipe, I'll just add a little less than 100ml - I'm sure the end result will be acceptable.

    In the end, to me it all comes to this: if I go to, for example, McDonald's, I wont ask for 300ml or 500ml of coke (or, say 16 US fl oz of coke). I'll ask for a small coke or a medium coke. I know what it means and they know what it means - but it doesn't mean "McDonald's small soda" should become an international standard of volume measurement outside of McDonald's.

  • Flaming Shearer (unregistered) in reply to miko
    miko:
    TRWTF is definitely the murican AM/PM over-complication of it all. Why bother? Why not just give in and do like the rest of the world? The day starts at zero (00:00) and ends at 24 (24:00) because there are 24 hours in a day. Simple as that.

    Please convert to the metric system already, so we can speak to each other without confusion... "1 inch is 0.083333333 feet" and "1 cup is 0.0625 gallons" who can keep track of those decimal values? How do you even remember if it's 0.0833 or 0.0625?

    But noooo... The day does not end at 24:00. It ends just before that.

  • trtrwtf (unregistered)

    Horses for courses. The sort of measuring system you use depends on your needs. If you're baking bread, you don't need precision - 2 to one flour to water, by volume, a small amount of yeast, a correct amount of salt (~1 tsp per loaf, or so). Mix well, let sit overnight, and bake in a Dutch oven (preheated to ~450 or 500 F)

    If you're making pastries or cakes, you might want more precision. Use a good scale, keep track of what you do so your experiments are repeatable.

    What's to worry about? Use the thing that works best.

  • Wyrm (unregistered)

    In this "imperial vs metric" war, why did nobody mention that the problem is NOT the 1 foot = 12 inches conversion. The problem is the inconsistency: 1 foot = 12 inches, then 1 yard = 3 feet, then 1 mile = 1,760 yard... Numbers are completely random: how can you seriously build anything consistent there?

    Not to mention reference points: 0 Celsius is clear: freezing point of water at normal pressure. (yes, "normal pressure" is part of the official definition and is itself well-defined.); 100 Celsius is the boiling point of the exact same element in the same conditions. 0 Farenheit is the freezing point of a mixture of water and ammonium chloride; then 32 F (why this value, exactly?) is the freezing point of water. I've even read the definition of Farenheit was based on three points (for a linear scale?) the third point being "the human body temperature". (whose? how is that a constant?)

    Now, I could agree with a base 12 system, save for two points:

    • the inconsistency I mentioned above (the imperial distance system is NOT base 12, not to mention weights and volumes);
    • the simple fact that we use a decimal numeric system, so base 10 scales are... well... more consistent.
  • Heavy Zed (unregistered)

    If you're going to calculate "hours after midnight or hours after noon" from a 24 hour time, that's a modulo. So the operator you want is %, as in 

    $hour = $hour % 12

  • Miles Davis (unregistered) in reply to Wyrm
    Wyrm:
    In this "imperial vs metric" war, why did nobody mention that the problem is NOT the 1 foot = 12 inches conversion. The problem is the inconsistency: 1 foot = 12 inches, then 1 yard = 3 feet, then 1 mile = 1,760 yard... Numbers are completely random: how can you seriously build anything consistent there?

    Not to mention reference points: 0 Celsius is clear: freezing point of water at normal pressure. (yes, "normal pressure" is part of the official definition and is itself well-defined.); 100 Celsius is the boiling point of the exact same element in the same conditions. 0 Farenheit is the freezing point of a mixture of water and ammonium chloride; then 32 F (why this value, exactly?) is the freezing point of water. I've even read the definition of Farenheit was based on three points (for a linear scale?) the third point being "the human body temperature". (whose? how is that a constant?)

    Now, I could agree with a base 12 system, save for two points:

    • the inconsistency I mentioned above (the imperial distance system is NOT base 12, not to mention weights and volumes);
    • the simple fact that we use a decimal numeric system, so base 10 scales are... well... more consistent.

    A mile is 8 furlongs, a furlong is 10 chains, a chain is 4 rods, and a rod is 5.5 yards or 16.5 feet. These date back to when map surveyors would measure land using actual metal rods and chains, hence the names. Three miles is a league, which is about how long you will walk in an hour's time.

    It's arbitrary and stupid today, of course -- historical systems of measurement basically stem from one profession and then get generalized out to where they don't quite fit; hence different ounces for gold, for other solid objects, and for liquids, just to throw one example out there. Historically, there would be no need for conversion -- a goldsmith would use the Troy ounce and an apothecary would use a different one. How many pecks to a firkin? They're both volume units! Who cares? A peck is what you use when you're measuring vegetables and a firkin is what you use when you measure beer.

    Anyway, Americans get a bad rep for this, but a lot of engineering projects are all SI these days. (SI is still arbitrary, of course, but it's at least less stupid). All of our scientists are using metric and it's been a requirement in most Federal government work ever since that time that the Mars Climate Orbiter turned into the Mars Climate Impactor. Check the nutritional information on food -- it's all milligrams and (kilo)Calories. The road signs are all still miles, of course; mustn't disrupt the proles, but really, who cares about that?

  • Nakilad (unregistered) in reply to Roby McAndrew
    Roby McAndrew:
    EatenByAGrue:
    Zagyg:
    Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning

    That's nothing - check out this bit by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings:

    The dead swans lay in the stagnant pool. They lay. They rotted. They turned Around occasionally. Bits of flesh dropped off them from Time to time. And sank into the pool's mire. They also smelt a great deal.

    The Scottish Bard is still the greatest:

    Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay! Alas! I am very sorry to say That ninety lives have been taken away On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

    etc... William Topaz McGonagall - The only poet I know to comment on civil engineering

    'Share and Enjoy'

  • Heavy Zed (unregistered)

    Threads like this are fascinating. I'm betting very few people engaged in this discussion about measurement systems are actually reading anything they haven't seen before. They probably even realize this with some amount of frustration because "it's so simple, why doesn't everybody see my point of view?".

    To me that leads to the conclusion that, regardless of what value these particular arguments have in terms of their appeal to logic, utility, or whatever, their presentation can have no impact on the current state of the discussion, therefore it is no use repeating them.

    Given the frequency of aimless discussion threads like this one it seems this conclusion is either very uncommonly arrived at or is recognized and then ignored and I can't say I really understand why.

  • trtrwtf (unregistered) in reply to Heavy Zed
    Heavy Zed:
    If you're going to calculate "hours after midnight or hours after noon" from a 24 hour time, that's a modulo. So the operator you want is %, as in 
    $hour = $hour % 12

    You mean like "clock arithmetic"?

  • Miles Davis (unregistered)

    Clearly we should all be using Planck units. I'm going to go have about 8e103 Planck Volumes of beer now.

  • Heavy Zed (unregistered) in reply to 7eggert
    7eggert:
    xaade:
    Steve The Cynic:
    JC:
    TRWTF is Americans using cups for measuring cooking ingredients. Especially things like flour, which can vary in density quite significantly depending on if it's sifted, how well packed it is in the packed etc.
    I agree 100% with that. However the US tendency to measure liquids in recipes in cups is why I still have some US cup-fraction measuring scoops at home. It's moderately annoying.

    I suppose you could keep a small scale and measure by grams.

    Now let's read the recipe ... three cups of water ... I'll use three grams. Three spoons of oil ... I'll use three grams ... why the didn't it work out?

    Because cooking oil is less dense than water and you are intentionally misunderstanding the suggestion anyway.

  • off by one (unregistered) in reply to dpm
    Technically, a day begins at 00:00:00 and ends at 23:59:59 --- you have an off-by-one error.

    And you have another off by one error. If you're in UTC, some days end at 23:59:60.

  • real-modo (unregistered)

    It's comment threads like this one that keep me reading The Daily WTF.

    A piece on an abysmal piece of code (WTFs: not using the language's built-in function; no unit test--or any test; and blithely using the same value as a string, a number, and a string again on consecutive lines) generates a comment thread that almost immediately spins out of control, leaping into violent arguments about the cases required by different Latin prepositions, cooking recipes and the merits of the metric system.

    Truly brillant, people! Bonuses all round.

  • Miles Davis (unregistered) in reply to off by one
    off by one:
    Technically, a day begins at 00:00:00 and ends at 23:59:59 --- you have an off-by-one error.

    And you have another off by one error. If you're in UTC, some days end at 23:59:60.

    The existence of leap seconds is easily the worst decision that any standards body has made in the past fifty years.

  • Anonymous Douche Bag (unregistered) in reply to Heavy Zed

    What about when $hour == 12? $hour % 12 == 0. Hey, at least it's right more often.

  • Hasse (unregistered) in reply to miko
    miko:
    Steve The Cynic:
    Of course, if you are worrying about the conversion between cups and gallons, you're probably doing something wrong. (Notably: why the hell are you measuring cooking ingredients - the normal stuff you measure in cups - in **gallons**?)

    You are right - something is wrong when you measure in cups or gallons ;) Different households have different cups - some even have different sized cups for coffee and for tea.

    No, I wouldn't know which to use, I heard there is also a difference between dry and wet ounces, and that fact alone is enough for me to NOT trust those scales. I recently saw a graph of how much sugar is in a coke bottle, but the coke bottle volume was measured in ounces (I think) and the amount of sugar in it was measured in cups - how is that in any way relevant to each other? You guys mix your scales all the time, and it is so confusing.

    1 cubic metre of water = 1000 litres = 1000 kilos. 100 degrees, water turns to gas. 0 degrees, water turns to ice. (under normal pressure) Same scale. Always 10 based. Simple. You should try it! :)

    There where times where the measurements where dependent on the current king. The lenght of he's foot was the foot measurement and the lengt of his underarm was an el. Grain was measured with top and salt evend. Past dates and times can be challenging as every country changed from julian to gregorian on different years and dates. Time zones are intresting as they might shift different for different countries from year to year (Riyad: +3.07 1988 and 1989)

  • (cs) in reply to Roby McAndrew
    Roby McAndrew:
    William Topaz McGonagall - The only poet I know to comment on civil engineering
    There's the famous Betjeman poem on Slough, although I suppose that's as much about culture as about civil engineering.
  • (cs) in reply to EatenByAGrue
    EatenByAGrue:
    Zagyg:
    Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning

    That's nothing - check out this bit by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings:

    The dead swans lay in the stagnant pool. They lay. They rotted. They turned Around occasionally. Bits of flesh dropped off them from Time to time. And sank into the pool's mire. They also smelt a great deal.

    Not sure the poetry cited is actually by her or not, but Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings is an actual person who once sent poetry to Douglas Adams. He reviewed it in the cruellest way he possibly could, which sums him up as being a bit of an egotistical knob-head when it comes down to it.

  • I kill them (unregistered)

    Bad poetry , but nowhere near Vorgon level.

  • (cs) in reply to xaade

    I've never seen anyone defend the imperial system before. Ever. In 24 years of life, including copious amounts of time spent on the internet, this is the first time. I don't know if I should be impressed or depressed. Probably a little of both.

    I've also never seen someone just straight up not understand the metric system like this. What's 1/4 of 10? Are you serious?

  • (cs) in reply to drake
    drake:
    Everybody should get over themselves. The easiest measuring system to use is the one you grew up using. Converting, especially as an adult, is difficult no matter what direction you are going.

    It is if you're terminally thick, of course. Any adult human being with the remotest fragment of intelligence has no problem adapting to take advantage of changes to its environment. Anyone else deserves to suffer the consequences caused by that inability and not demand that the nimbler of intellect be forced into inefficient practices.

  • the river eating government cheese (unregistered) in reply to aapis
    aapis:
    I've also never seen someone just straight up not understand the metric system like this. What's 1/4 of 10? Are you serious?

    I know rite? 1/4 of 10 is OBVIOUSLY easy: 10/4.

    Captcha: abico. I think you need to borrow my abicos to help you with your "mathses".

  • (cs) in reply to Wyrm
    wyrm:
    In this "imperial vs metric" war, why did nobody mention that the problem is NOT the 1 foot = 12 inches conversion. The problem is the inconsistency: 1 foot = 12 inches, then 1 yard = 3 feet, then 1 mile = 1,760 yard... Numbers are completely random: how can you seriously build anything consistent there?

    Imperial units are based on every day measures that easily map to a mental understanding of ergonomics and the world around you. Very helpful in the days when access to precise measuring tools was limited. They're still usefull today for building a quick guestimate of things:

    1 inch = the length of one segment of your thumb 1 foot = the length of your forearm from your wrist to the crook of your elbow. Also approximately the length of your foot. Obviously sizes varies dramatically, so assume a normal adult male (which would have been relatively homogenous within a culture) 1 yard = the length of your stride, or half your armspan 1 mile = a 20 minute walk

    You're right in that the relationship of the numbers is arbitrary, but so's the relationship of seconds to a day, days to a year, etc. It's all just based on observations of the world around us and not designed to fit a particular number system like metric.

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