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Scientific American makes first endorsement in 175yrs
- Thread starter $kully
- Start date
I have a good friend who reads a lot. Before she retired, she was the UCSB Chancellor's chief of staff.
She makes me feel unworthy. I'm glad she tolerates me.
No, you don't.
It looks like you're done with the Falwell pic. Thanks you!
Now for the next question. The Newport, Rhode Island sailing scene. Yacht regattas and sh!t. Can you comment on the political leanings of owners of those boats, and possibly the crew?
I don't know anyone who owns a legit Newport yacht. If I had to guess I would say they are mostly NY hedge fund types or old money-- so make your stereotypical political assumptions
In terms of their crew, my nextdoor neighbor's son captains big deal yachts as a profession so I have the sense that those guys are fairly normal middle class oriented people although it would not surprise me if there are some trust fund types who get into that too
the net of all of the above is I doubt the political leanings of that community are uniform
'mericans never could figure that metric sht out and those elitist scientists finally accepted that.
too many words.
Metric's not hard to figure out. For me the biggest pain in the ass would be Americans verbally relaying temperatures. 5 degrees Fahrenheit is no big deal planning my day, in general. 5 degrees Celsius is a big deal.
From what I can tell, the two main arguments in the US are as follows:
1. "I don't know what the f--k a kilometer/celsius/liter is."
This you are going to get with any new adoption. And honestly, decimal pointing meters fucking sucks. Inches/Feet/yards is better day to day. I shouldn't need four syllables to say a unit. Feet. Inch. Yard. Mile.
I might take this more seriously if I could watch something British on youtube and not hear how many 'stone' someone weighs.
2. It's easier to eyeball quarters of an inch vs millimeters.
Grab a wrench and work on something. Everyone in the US who spends any regular time wrenching on something is going to be able to eyeball a half inch on something, and with just a hair more time, the same goes for 1/2" vs 5/8"
Now work on your Shimano sh!t on a bicycle. You need 8.754 kilowrenches to cover every millimeter to save some gay ass thing called a "gram".
Almost nobody who lacks familiarity with a given part/component/gadget/what have you is going to be able to eyeball 7mm vs 8mm. That makes tinkering a pain in the ass if you have to grab four wrenches, try them all for the perfect fit, put them all back...
From what I can tell, the two main arguments in the US are as follows:
1. "I don't know what the f--k a kilometer/celsius/liter is."
This you are going to get with any new adoption. And honestly, decimal pointing meters fucking sucks. Inches/Feet/yards is better day to day. I shouldn't need four syllables to say a unit. Feet. Inch. Yard. Mile.
I might take this more seriously if I could watch something British on youtube and not hear how many 'stone' someone weighs.
2. It's easier to eyeball quarters of an inch vs millimeters.
Grab a wrench and work on something. Everyone in the US who spends any regular time wrenching on something is going to be able to eyeball a half inch on something, and with just a hair more time, the same goes for 1/2" vs 5/8"
Now work on your Shimano sh!t on a bicycle. You need 8.754 kilowrenches to cover every millimeter to save some gay ass thing called a "gram".
Almost nobody who lacks familiarity with a given part/component/gadget/what have you is going to be able to eyeball 7mm vs 8mm. That makes tinkering a pain in the ass if you have to grab four wrenches, try them all for the perfect fit, put them all back...
You just need to put metric in terms Americans can understand.
1) A kilometer is just under 11 football fields (not including the endzones). Flat-earthers should have an easy time with this conversion.
How thick is your wetsuit? I used a 4/3 "mil" in Santa Cruz, but I think a 3/2 mil is probably good enough for LA. ( Mil is one syllable)
Celsius, yeah, this one is kinda tough to convert, involving maths and all, but it's basically just whatever F temp is, subtract 30 and divide by 2. Reverse for C to F. It's not hard, and it's useful when traveling. Oh wait, we an't go anywhere that uses metric. Damn. Also Celsius is one fewer syllables.
A liter is just over a quart (33.8oz, many water bottles are this size), it's also exactly one half of one 2-liter bottle of diet Coke/Coke/soda. That should not be hard to visualize for most Americans.
2. Centimeters, dude, which are just about 4/10ths of an inch. Again, easy to visualize. I can usually pick out mm wrenches without reading them. But also I have eyes, so I can read them, luckily most wrenches are labeled. I suppose your point holds more for blind people work on cars and stuff.
Stone, I have no fucking clue how to convert nor why the Brits still use it (only for body weight, commercially they're metric too). What a dumb UOM, stone.
Brits are fat, and they don't want anybody else knowing how much they weigh. It's the curse of warm beer
The analog to km is miles, not yards, which is a distance some people would walk/run, or more likely, sit on a couch eating while watching someone else run 100 yards. The people you need to convince to make the change are driving a kilometer, not walking it.
Celsius offset is 32 and the multiplier is 9/5; this is how American to Surrender temp fckps happen.
Anyone who needs to care what a gallon of gas costs can't do the math to convert to liters.
Nuts aren't normally labeled; show me someone eyeballing bicycle components and I'll show you stripped tools/hardware.
I don't feel like saying 318cm or whatever the f--k when I want to say a foot.
I used to do GIS for a living (if you could call it a living, didn't pay shiat). One day I was groundtruthing (confirming what's in the map files with what's actually on the ground) with another intern who was driving. The GPS unit displayed in meters. I would tell the intern driving, "should be on your right in 200 meters" and he says, "buh, I can't wrap my mind around meters". I'm like, dude, it's basically a yard for practical purposes and he's like, "It's still weird". The guy also used to hunt deer from a moving vehicle, so that should give you an idea of what he was like.
I like using grams and millimeters for taking measurements. It's nice being able to report and record measurements in whole numbers such as 15 millimeters or 35 grams instead instead of 0.59 inches or 1.23 ounces. Also for easy conversion into PPM/B.
Yes, a failed rough meters/yards conversion for anything between a yard and most of the way to a quarter mile, that's a slappable offense. That's the kind of person who doesn't even know they're slightly different. Did you tell him to wrap his mind around your meater for practical purposes?
I used metric all in science classes and prefer it for that sort of work. I have to deal with whatever unit of measure and conversion people have at work, so that's the customer, whomst's unit is always right, flexing.
Hardware on Japanese gearing would be in 1/64 of an inch and it's already metric anyway so no practical loss there.
Feet still rule though.
Isn't that the formula old creepy guys use to figure out how young is too young?