Yes, it’s from a book called “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader” and that book was resting on a closed toilet seat in a nation that only kind of uses the metric system in certain situations… however, you’d be surprised how much you can learn after a single visit to any local fast-food joint!
The metric prefix system is a fantastic invention, akin to the arabic number system. Honestly it’s surprising no one came up with it sooner… but (and I’m sure I’ll catch some flak for this) the metre is an awkward length - it’s too big for human scale measurements. The decimetre is not as bad but still not very good, and it’s also not commonly used. The centimetre has the opposite problem - it’s too small for the human scale but too big for precision work.
Don’t get me wrong, the horrible conversions between imperial units make the system unusable for me, but the unit lengths themselves are scaled to humans because they weren’t initially defined arbitrarily by some committee (why should the distance from the pole to the equator be used as the baseline for a measurement used by humans?). I think the inch and foot are great lengths to use on a daily basis, they feel quite natural.
What annoys me the most is that we could have had the best of both, since the foot and inch are only a factor of 12 apart, so we could have had a metre measuring about one foot and a decimetre measuring about an inch.
All measurements are arbitrary. This feels like that Fahrenheit debate where “60 feels natural for room temperature” as if anyone has any idea what number a room should be. A meter is just a chunk of distance about this size (holds hands apart). There’s nothing a foot can add to a measurement that a meter can’t. You’ll need fractions and smaller or bigger units in all real world cases anyway, so having easy conversions is much more useful than a “natural” base unit.
why should the distance from the pole to the equator be used as the baseline for a measurement used by humans?
For both philosophical and scientific reasons, they wanted a definition that could be recreated any where in the world, certainly not the thumb or foot of any one man. With the “distance from pole to equator” definition, you just need to measure a long north-south axis (say a few hundreds km), and knowledge about the figure of the Earth helps you scale that to the full definition. You can do that anywhere on Earth.
Another considered definition was the length of a pendulum whose half period is 1s, but even at the time the effect of local gravity was deemed to be too much
That’s not the point I’m trying to make. You can derive a length from any number of physical constants to make it reproducible, but considering the divisor of exactly ten million suggests the metric committee were far more interested in making something ‘clean’ than something human-friendly. They could have basically done what they do with the modern redefinitions of the metre - the distance travelled by light in 1/299792458 ths of a second. Obviously they chose that number to keep the definition in line with the original, but they could have done that with the original definition to make the metre basically any length they wanted, but they didn’t.
I think the inch and foot are great lengths to use on a daily basis, they feel quite natural.
Well that would be because you use them on a daily basis. I find meters and centimeters perfectly natural too, and would be hard pressed to think of a situation where the scale of inches and feet would be strictly better.
Nice try! I live in a metric country and use exclusively metric units.
How do you know how it feels to use imperial if you exclusively use metric? And daily!
Because I have had to work with American companies as part of my job for the past couple years. For the entirety of my personal life and the rest of my professional life I use metric. I’ll grant you I should have said ‘almost exclusively’ in my previous comment, but I think that’s just splitting hairs.
I have this book, its great! Some funny bullshit in there
Hmm… What We Did Before Smartphones. I should write a book so the Young’s dont forget ye olden ways.
Literally because it scaled
The paragraph on the meter should mention that their measuring error from the pole to the equator was .02%, which, without using satellites or even electricity, is fucking impressive.
So how the hell was it done? Long piece of rope? Hot air balloon? Or having a bird fly from one point to another and timing it?
Calculations. In 240 BCE, Eratosthenes used a stick. He basically found a place where the sun was directly overhead, and measured the shadow from a stick a known distance to the north of that location. He approximated the circumference of the earth to be 25,000 miles, which was off by 99 miles.
How do we know the conversion of whatever length unit he was using, in modern units?
Uhh, educated guesses. The stadion wasn’t exactly standardized. Most of the conversions I see put 10 stadia at 1 mile so that’s what I went with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadion_(unit)
The main thing is his methodology was precise.
Lots of triangulation and extrapolation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_measurement_of_Delambre_and_Méchain
That is impressive & a nice amendment on your part. Thank you for the added detail
Uncle John’s bathroom reader!
I know this has nothing to do with the metric system, but I saw the toilet paper roll around the page number and got a surge of happy brain sauce due to the happy memories of all the copies I owned through the years: 2Heyyy I’ve got two of Uncle John’s books on the commode right now!
I think this snippet misrepresents the accuracy of the former definition of the metre. Sure, it’s no longer the distance from the equator to the pole (the modern definition uses the speed of light and the period of transition for a particular atom), but the difference is quite small. The circumference of the Earth around the poles (so 4 times the distance from equator to pole) is 40007.863 km. In Napoleonic times scientists had a pretty good idea what the shape of the Earth was.
Earth squeezes and stretches and wobbles & rotates. Time as we know it changes in length because it is the common nature of “time” to become chaos which then becomes order. Hylomorphism or Impermanence is to Entropy as measurement is to the fundamentals of size. Who is to say that the distance between two points should be constrained to the barriers of human existence & understanding. All we have is pictures & words, maybe a few trinkets that will become dust that becomes something else that attempts to quantify reality.
Earth squeezes and stretches and wobbles & rotates.
Sort of, yeah, Earth is a bit wider around the equatorial axis than around the polar one.
Time as we know it changes in length because it is the common nature of “time” to become chaos which then becomes order. Hylomorphism or Impermanence is to Entropy as measurement is to the fundamentals of size. Who is to say that the distance between two points should be constrained to the barriers of human existence & understanding. All we have is pictures & words, maybe a few trinkets that will become dust that becomes something else that attempts to quantify reality.
This reads like an unfortunate confluence of psychosis, psychoactive substances and LLMs.
While I can’t speak for my chemical imbalances, I can certainly assure you I am %100 not a fucking algorithm or some lame ass excuse for manufactured digital intelligence…
Sort of, yeah, Earth is a bit wider around the equatorial axis than around the polar one.
Thanks for explaining that a fucking ball is easier to squeeze at it’s widest part, genius.
What are you talking about? That isn’t what they said, and a ball doesn’t have a widest point. That’s more or less the definition of a ball.
The distance between the two poles is smaller than the distance from one side to the other following the equator. The earth isn’t quite a ball, it’s a bit squashed because of way it spins
Okay, a ball is equally wide but sometimes it gets squeezed and becomes tallish
To agree on a unified measurement system for things like engineering, science and commerce across nations and cultures is a question of practicability though, not pseudophilosophical ramblings.
I say we measure everything with how angry it makes the French.
Earth squeezes and stretches and wobbles & rotates.
Don’t we all, Earth, don’t we all…
Also, unlike the imperialist system it is not utter horseshite.
Love me some Uncle John’s. I’d recognize that page number decorator anywhere!
Uncle John knows the correct way to mount toilet paper.
I have two bathrooms and do both.
The real question is; which do I use for my personal lou or WC or wash closet or bathroom or powder room or shitter?
If you don’t want to offend anyone, just leave the spool sitting upright on the lid
Or an apology note and a bucket full of water
Or three seashells
Someone so consistently responding to themselves is pretty entertaining.
So we only know a kilogram of water weighs a kilogram because of an arbitrary decision by the French? How much does it really weigh?
It doesn’t even weigh a kilogram. It masses one kilogram. It’s weight will be something like 9.8 Newtons.
Ever since that dude translated the Rosetta stone they’ve been up their own asses.
The other fun thing is with the new calendar, they literslly reset the count to year 1. The coins for the first few years literally said “l’an 7” or “l’an 11”.
“We decide when history starts” is a hell of a sentiment.
We still do it, we just celebrated new year 235
I’m still sad decimal time didn’t catch on.
It would have worked so well. 2 digit timestamp gives you 15 (old)minute accuracy which is just perfect for appointments and organizing your day. Digital minutes would be a bit longer than old minutes which is fine for bus/train times etc. Digital seconds a bit shorter than old seconds which is great for timing things. I always thought a second was a wee bit longer than it ought to be anyway.
“We decide when history starts” is a hell of a sentiment.
It’s only consequencial if you want to get rid of anything that was imposed by the church.
I like that sentiment if it starts with us having the knowledge to be better than before
Americans could at least have the decency to spell “metre” correctly, but no, they have to go and change the spelling of a measurement system they don’t even use.
It’s called “meter” in lots of metric countries though (I know because I live in one).
I’m willing to give them the spelling if they just adopt the fucking metric system.
I’m on the phone with them.
They said they’ll do it after France or Canada does first. Not sure if they got the memo, or if they are just being silly again.
i think it is ok, as meter more correctly matches the pronounciation
Got two letter 'e’s in it, and they’re both pronounced differently. To be fair, it’s far from the most divergent spelling-to-saying word in English. Some wrong-looking abomination like ‘meetir’ would be even better.
Well…at least most of them pronounce data as DAY-TUH because of Star Trek.
The other pronunciation is horrendous.
Speaking of which, aluminum is pronounced fwaganah-schreple.
*aluminium
Watch or I’ll go nucular on your ass
I mean yeah, Metric scales.
Everything can be scaled. 1 can be two halves & 3 can be 12 .025’s. or we can all just agree that everything is based on various systems of measurement invented by humans who can hardly agree on their own origins and the purpose of their existence, or even the right to exist.
I don’t think anyone can in good conscience say that inches scale to small measurements. Sure, you can use them, but subtracting 8/1000 out of something that is 1 5/8 and noting the final length is just unwieldy.
You don’t need to get super existential about it, imperial was invented before we invented 0 and the decimal system and it shows. Sure the difference in basic units is irrelevant, no one cares what the meter or inch is defined as, the “superior” one is just what you’re used to and have an intuition for. But having units that relate to each other in round ways and can be easilt rescaled to the precision/range required can be nothing but a benefit
Maybe you’ve never heard of decimal inches. Anything under 1/32" people start using ‘thou’ as in thousandths of an inch.
Subtracting fractions is something you can learn. Children can even do it.
Measurement works because it’s accepted on it’s own terms.
If I were to believe that 1 is 2, it would be very difficult to explain that 2 is indeed double the normal amount of 1.
The same goes for some alien species that has too many or not enough fingers and doesn’t use prime numbers because of this.
I don’t personally believe that math is truly universal. But maybe I’m being existential ;)
Is someone really arguing that prime numbers are a thing because we have 5 fingers?
So you just learned it exists or what?
Did you just learn about insults? Because I’m your Mum and you should know better than to speak to me like this.
Maybe you should learn a bit more about them because that was a terrible attempt.
If you’d like a better insult, I recommend you go into a dark room and think about why I would bother even responding.
Facts to remember the next time some French guy on the internet makes fun of Freedom Units™. The Metric system is basically arbitrarily defined as well, since the thing they meant to base it on was incorrect.
Edit: I forgot the /sarcasm tag and pissed off some French guys on the internet.
Hey it’s me some French guy on the internet. I think the main argument for the metric system is how they all connect together in a simple way. 1km is 1000m, one cube meter of water is 1000L, etc. We don’t really care what the base unit is.
Or my favourite ratio, 1l of water is 1kg and it’s close to that for most food grade liquids.
It is great when cooking, your kitchen scale (which you should own!) works as an easy way to measure liquids as well. Need 500ml of water? Just measure 500g and you are done.
While technically it is only true for very specific water and temperatures at sea level, for everday cooking it is close enough with almost any liquid.
Dimensional analysis is really neat
I think you need to look up what arbitrary means. This is by definition not random
This sounds like something a sassy person might say whilst pushing up their glasses to view a document which is rolled up tightly into a scroll and shoved into their own anus after they realize the room is watching them try to read the outside of a butthole scroll.
I’m sorry, for clarity which system are you considering Freedom Units?
“Freedom units” is a satirical term implying a system of measurement used by Americans
otherwise known as “arbitrary nonsense units”
“Arbitrary Nonsense Units, Silly”
That spells ANUS… m o o n
Whatever USA decides to use to measure something, whether its inches & feet, bananas, football fields, or other randomly decided units of measurement.
Trump uses buildings as a system of measurement, having ass-hattedly used the empire state building to measure the horizontal length of the freedom pool, a desecrated monument of freedom which is now more or less a peeling swimming pool in front of the once beloved and now gilded in tacky gold flake/ grifted trophies; “white house”
Sacré bleu!!!
