Re: Name 3 countries you'd consider inviting to join the United States


Ever since I took chemistry in high school, I've thought that chemistry sets would be tremendously useful in the kitchen (the glassware, not the chemicals). Most of my grandmother's recipe books were in Imperial measurements, the newer ones were "bilingual," and I had to go out and get new measuring cups and spoons with metric measurements on them.Are you joking? It's much easier to just fill a measuring cup full of something than it would be to have to weigh each ingredient in a recipe.Although now that I don't work in science anymore and don't care about SI units as I once did, if you're going to change anything, I'd rather you started cooking by weight instead of volume. Bloody 'cups' of stuff. How do you take a 'cup' of butter? Just weigh it!
Actually, cooking/baking is really one of the few places where I use Imperial measures in my day-to-day life. Even my oven is set to Fahrenheit for simplicity... and I have no idea what Fahrenheit temperatures even are when used in relation to weather. (78 degrees? Is that warm, cool, what? No idea.) I'm guessing this is because so many recipes originate in the US.
Not to say that I don't have occasional issues with conversion. Brings to mind a funny story*. A number of recipes call for "1 14-oz can of sweetened condensed milk". OK, well that's a liquid, so I looked up a conversion and found 14 fl. oz. = 414 ml. But the cans sold here are all 300 ml. So, for each recipe that called for "one can", I bought two cans, and used about 1/3 of the second one. Sometimes, if I wasn't using condensed milk for anything else, the other 2/3 can would end up going to waste and have to be thrown out. And they're not cheap.
Well, I actually found out recently that the 14 oz is by weight, not by volume, and each 14 oz can contains about 1 1/4 cups, which is actually 10 oz by volume... which comes out to about... 300 ml. It turns out the size of the cans in Canada are the same as the cans in the US, so "1 14 oz can" actually equals "1 300 ml can". D'oh!!
Needless to say, this actually makes things easier, but I wish I hadn't wasted all the earlier part cans! And seriously, why is "ounce" both a weight and volume measure?
* Well, *I* thought it was funny...
I think this was asked and answered upthread. Federally, Canada's official languages are English and French. If I'm not mistaken, the province of New Brunswick is also officially bilingual.Google says America has 337 languages, including signed languages. None of which is a "official' language.
Does anyone here have an official language in their country?
Does anyone here have an official language in their country?
Sure, and, as I said, that's appropriate in science and technology. Not so necessary in everyday life, especially in a world where people can just point their iPhones at stuff rather than learn something.True you can never eliminate human error but you can minimise the risk of human error by using the same system.
I'm familiar with the story. It was human error. There are thousands, if not millions, of collaborative endeavors going on at all times that involve translations of language and and measurement. That's a reason to get things right, not a reason to homogenize the world.In the case of the Mars Climate Observer, yes it failed because of non-standardisation. Because 1 team used metric and another imperial. Had they both been using the same system they would have been no need to convert from one to another. Which is basically what happened
From wikipedia
However, on September 23, 1999, communication with the spacecraft was lost as the spacecraft went into orbital insertion, due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound-seconds (lbf s) instead of the metric units of newton-seconds (N s) specified in the contract between NASA and Lockheed.
So at first glance one or more human errors occured
1.>Lockheed failed to follow the NASA specification
2.>NASA failed to detect the error made by Lockheed
But the error was detected
The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed. A meeting of trajectory software engineers, trajectory software operators (navigators), propulsion engineers, and managers, was convened to consider the possibility of executing Trajectory Correction Maneuver-5, which was in the schedule. Attendees of the meeting recall an agreement to conduct TCM-5, but it was ultimately not done.
So yet more human errors failure to carry out TCM-5, the root cause of the error as I said earlier is due to companies using different measuring system.
How do you take a 'cup' of butter? Just weigh it!
There are graduated lines on the wrapping of the butter stick!![]()
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Although now that I don't work in science anymore and don't care about SI units as I once did, if you're going to change anything, I'd rather you started cooking by weight instead of volume. Bloody 'cups' of stuff. How do you take a 'cup' of butter? Just weigh it!
Are you joking? It's much easier to just fill a measuring cup full of something than it would be to have to weigh each ingredient in a recipe.
Isn't the US fluid ounce smaller than the imperial fluid ounce, I think under imperial a fluid ounce and an ounce are the same in terms of weight.
Ultimately sometimes governments have to spend money on things that aren't schools/hospitals/puppies that will benefit the country in the long term. In the case of the UK, the government saved quite a bit by simply changing the law on food labelling, forcing any cost onto those who made the packaging. Meanwhile, the government has stubbornly refused to change any of its own biggest source of imperial measurements, the roadsigns.
Ultimately sometimes governments have to spend money on things that aren't schools/hospitals/puppies that will benefit the country in the long term. In the case of the UK, the government saved quite a bit by simply changing the law on food labelling, forcing any cost onto those who made the packaging. Meanwhile, the government has stubbornly refused to change any of its own biggest source of imperial measurements, the roadsigns.
Well given the choice between spending my taxes on things like Health, Police etc.. and changing roadsigns to metric. I'll go with not using my taxes to change road signs to metric.
Then of course there is the other aspect that most cars in the UK have odometer's which show miles, speedometer's and whilst most speedometers show km it's in a smaller case so not always as easy to glance at.
But what benefit would changing all the roadsigns in the UK to metric be?
That's a pity.As far as units of measurement are involved, the world is homogenized.
If there were 90 regions of the planet dedicated to different unique units of measurement, how would that make commerce better?That's a pity.As far as units of measurement are involved, the world is homogenized.
As far as units of measurement are involved, the world is homogenized.
The World minus America, Liberia and Burma.
It isn't obsolete, just out of use. It's the unit of measurement we deserve, but not the one we need right now.As far as units of measurement are involved, the world is homogenized.
The World minus America, Liberia and Burma.
I consider this my favorite unit of obsolete measurement.![]()
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