Dave Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote (I believe tongue in cheek): > Indeed!
> Why, just last night, I was working with furlongs and fifths of seconds... > Dave It's interesting that you mention this. Over the last several weeks I have been reading Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" to my children. It contains references to furlongs, fathoms, and leagues. My children are able to relate to these units because they are simple multiples of units familiar to them. This is similar to bilingualism inasmuch as it makes excellent (and not so old) literature accessible. As long as some want to dismiss the English system as having a silly basis, may I propose we consider the hour, minute, and second. These are ridiculous units for the same reasons. Originally the second was one-sixtieth of one-sixtieth of one-twelfth of one-half of a day. At present the official definition of the second is goodness-who-can-recall-how-many oscillations of the light emitted by a certain atomic electron transition (again, who can recall which?). Yet, how many SI units are derived from the second? How much pain would be involved in incorporating Swatch Time in a new international system of units and using that to replace SI? In fact, at the time the metric system was developed (in revolutionary France) a decimal time unit was also developed (this has been discussed in this forum before. One could regard Swatch Time as a marketing revival of this concept.) It didn't catch on, and France eventually went back to the second. But it would have been easier for us to use now than the second had it caught on. Then we can move on to consider degrees, arcminutes, and arcseconds. We could do geography in radians! After that, how about monetary units? Legal systems? Language? Cultural norms? Hair length? Etc. We keep using these units because they are familiar and not too inconvenient, and the transition would be inconvenient. In the U.S. we continue to use the 'English' system for similar reasons; we continue to use inches for much the same reason we don't have robust professional leagues for soccer (er, football)--one we like and the other we don't much care for. Jim ------------------- ---------------------- -------------------- | Jim Cobb | 540 Arapeen Dr. #100 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Parametric | Salt Lake City, UT | (801)-588-4632 | | Technology Corp. | 84108-1202 | Fax (801)-588-4650 | ------------------- ---------------------- -------------------- To question a wise man is the beginning of wisdom. -- German proverb
