Logic is in short supply and off-by-one errors are everywhere. Most people don't care. I think it's more doable to learn to just live with that than to reprogram mankind.
Imagine, for a moment, that AP adopted the OP's "don't count centuries" guidance. An enormous share of English-language publishing outfits would conform to the new rule in all future publications. Within a couple months, a large share of written media consumption would adopt this improved way of talking about historical time frames.
The best part? Absolutely no effort on the part of the general public. It's not like the OP is inventing new words or sentence structures. There's zero cognitive overhead for anyone, except for a handful of journalists and copywriters who are already used to that kind of thing. It's part of their job.
I think a lot of people take these sorts of ideas to mean "thou shalt consciously change the way you speak." In reality, we have the systems in place to make these changes gradually, without causing trouble for anyone.
If you don't like it, nobody's trying to police your ability to say it some other way - even if that way is objectively stupid, as is the case with counting centuries.
For scientific work I obviously prefer kelvin.
Celsius is nearly useless.
Ironic, given that one of the prime arguments in favor of metric is that it is easier.
Why do non-US people even care? And do y'all care that you are wrong? The US has recognized the SI. Citizens continue to use measurements they are comfortable with, and it does not hurt anyone. We are also not the only nation that has adopted SI but not made it mandatory. The UK is an obvious example.
Again, I'm back to 'why does anyone else even give a shit'? Aren't there more interesting things to ponder?
http://i.imgur.com/3ZidINK.png?1
For anyone not living in the US or Jamaica or Belize, it is Fahrenheit that is completely useless. Which is something like 7,7 billion people.
0 = water freezing temp is hugely useful heuristics for anyone living in moderate climate.
So what I am hearing is that sure, it makes perfect sense for US citizens to continue using Fahrenheit.
If you, as a US citizen, settle abroad, be prepared to run into a wall with Fahrenheits. People in the rest of the world don't have the intuitive grasp whether 50 degrees Fahrenheit is warm or cold.
Yeah that's the right terminology. I knew it when I said citizens it wasn't quite right but I blanked on the right answer. 'Residents' is pretty obvious.
> be prepared to run into a wall with Fahrenheits
I agree it's worth knowing just enough about celsius to use it casually when you are traveling. e.g. I just remember 20 is room temperature and every 5C is about 10F. Close enough. And remembering '6' is enough to remember how km and miles are related.
Anyone who is settling abroad ought to be able to pick up intuitive celsius in a couple days. When everyone around you uses the same measuring unit, you adapt pretty quickly IME.
Celsius is for chemists.
Celsius works significantly better in cold climates for reasons mentioned in another comment.
In my old apartment, the difference between 73F and 74F was enough to make me quite cold or hot. And that’s a difference of about 0.5C. I’m not arguing that Farenheit is better, but I definitely do prefer it for setting my thermostat (which is a day to day thing) , but then again I grew up using it so that could be why I prefer it too.
Probably because they were made for US and changed the labels? I've never seen a thermostat with 0.5 C increments in Europe.
> the change between 25C and 26C is actually pretty big
I would maybe be able to tell you if it's 23 or 27, certainly I can't tell 1 C difference.
Or cooks. Or anyone who cooks, which is most people
Farmers, drivers, people with gardens need to know if it will get subzero at night.
Nobody cares if it's 26.5 C or 26 C.
That's like ... your opinion man.
Personally I like knowing that water boils at exactly 100 degrees.
I do agree, though I live in Europe and C is the norm. I could never wrap my head around F.
That said, I think 0 is more important in daily life, below or above freezing. How much is that in F again?
There's also special warning for drivers if it was sub-zero because then the water on the roads freezes and it's very hard to break.
I'd say it's way more important a distinction than anything that F makes obvious.
That said I wished USA would move over to the unit everyone else is using, but only for the reason that everyone else is using it, that is the only thing that makes it superior, and it would take Americans at worst a couple of months to adjust.
That is an honest answer, which is refreshing. Beside that, there is not really any particular reason that the US has to make SI mandatory. We adopted SI nearly 50 years ago, we just did not make it mandatory. The US has a bit of national identity which leans towards rebelling, so making SI mandatory would probably be contentions anyway. And it's just not worth the argument, since it buys us very little of actual value.
I think the hardest unit to convert is probably length as there is not only a bunch of legacy systems and equipment out there, but Americans are very accustomed to fractional sub-units as opposed to the decimal cm, mm, etc. I’m not sure e.g. the building industry would ever stop saying e.g. four and five eighths. Personally I hate fractional lengths when using american tools. E.g. I’m used to a 11 mm wrench being smaller than a 13 mm wrench. I need to stop and think before I know which is smaller a five eights or a three quarters.
That's an interesting way to phrase it. I, and everyone I know, have both metric and SAE tools. At least for wrenches & sockets.
> I need to stop and think before I know which is smaller a five eights or a three quarters.
I'm with you there. I've gotten in the habit of just mentally converting every SAE size to 32nds. I wouldn't really mind losing SAE, but that is not happening. What really makes my blood pressure goes up is Ford ... they mix metric and SAE fasteners on their cars. WTF! Pick one! Subaru is at the other end, easy to work on because 10 & 12mm wrenches will work for maybe 9 out of 10 bolts or nuts.
A foot can be divided cleanly into 2, 3, 4, and 6. Ten is a really sucky number to base your lengths on. It only divides nicely into 2 and 5.
I agree it is really nice to use base-12 until it brakes, but it brakes much worse then metric. If you have to divide into 32nds everything about feet and inches is much worse (in metrics we would just use millimeters). The worst offender are wrenches which don’t order intuitively. In metric, if you 13 mm wrench is too big, you just grab an 11 mm wrench. In inches if your 13/16th inch wrench is too big, do you grab the 5/8th? or three-quarters next?
Or, perhaps I want to hang two photos on a wall, spacing them evenly - the math from the example above applies again.
Regarding your example of dividing 12 into 32 parts - I think that's another good example of the elegance of imperial units. Dividing a foot into 32 parts is 3/8 of an inch! A nice, tidy unit that you'll find on any ruler or measuring tape.
>In inches if your 13/16th inch wrench is too big, do you grab the 5/8th? or three-quarters next?
Neither - I'd grab the 25/32" wrench ;) You make a good point.
I will say that fractional units become more and more intuitive as you use them more often. In a pinch you can just multiply both parts of the fraction by two.
Here's the thing: with wrenches in fractional units, you can do a binary search. Let's say you start with the 1/2 inch wrench. Too small? grab the 3/4. Too big? Try the 1/4. Work your way down.
...or, just remember that a huge share of bolts you'll come by are 7/16" and just start there.
The way the metric system brakes isn’t actually all that bad, at worst you grab a calculator and write down the number.
And also bare in mind that this case is where feet and inches really shines, so we are comparing feet+inches at their best to metric at it’s worst. There are so many cases where metric is anywhere from marginally better to significantly better which does make up for that.
IMO the most significant reason for metric being superior is the universality of it. It is used everywhere in the world, including the USA, and that is an excellent quality of a measurement system which should not be understated.
I mean, that "0F to 100F is weather temperature range" completely falls apart unless you live in a very cold climate.
0F though is crazy cold. Where i live (south-western europe), getting below ~15 F is already considered extreme weather
All that to say that the farenheit system is really geared towards very cold climates. So it's kinda weird that it stuck in a country that also has pretty hot climates in the south
Where I live, 100F is a hellish, blistering day. 0F is just an uncomfortable day in January, but certainly not abnormal. Just wear your big coat and gloves.
That said, 100F in Wisconsin is a very different animal than 100F in Las Vegas. Wisconsin gets brutally humid as it gets hotter, and that makes it even more oppressive. Meanwhile, Nevada gets drier, and so the heat is more bearable.
If anything, I think it's kinda cool that Fahrenheit lines up with perceived temperatures this way, even across different climates with different humidity. Sure, you can point to extremes (Phoenix, Juneau) but those are... well, extremes. For most of us, it's pretty good!
+10°C is "it's somewhat cold, put a jacket on". +20°C is comfortable in light clothing. +30°C is pretty hot. +40°C is really hot, put as little clothing as society permits and stay out of direct sun.
Same with negatives, but in reverse.
Boiling water is +100°C, melting ice is very close to 0°C. I used that multiple times to adjust digital thermometers without having to look up anything.
It's the most comfortable system I can imagine. I tried living with Fahrenheit for a month just for fun, and it was absolutely not intuitive.
40 F is a good time for getting winter tires on.
As someone who lives in a humid, wet area that goes from -40 at night in winter to 100+ F in summer, I also vastly prefer Fahrenheit.
The difference between 60, 70, 80 and 90 is pretty profound with humidity, and the same is true in winter. I don't think I've ever set a thermometer to freezing or boiling, ever. All of my kitchen appliances have numbers representing their power draw.
I too live in a region with 80 (Celsius) degree yearly variation (sometimes more; the maximum yearly difference I've lived through is about 90 degrees IIRC: -45 in January to +43 in July), and Fahrenheit makes absolutely no sense to me in this climate.
If you want to convince yourself, go out on the road in non-winter tires when it is sub-40F, find an open space where you can experiment, and then do a panic stop. Like you might have to do if someone jumps out in front of you.
That is what convinced me to not wait until it was freezing before I put on cold weather tires.
It's the rare people that don't who actually change the world.
True and should not be forgotten in this debate.
But clear communication is a need many people have.
Same thing for "this weekend" when. Not spoken during a weekend.
Just like 11:45 can be told as "a quarter to 12"
While that is true, does it not illustrate exactly the problem? Nobody ever says someone is in their 17th year when they are 16. That would be very confusing.
Why not just fix the calendar to match what people expect?
There was no time when people said "this is year 1 AD". That numbering was created retroactively hundreds of years later. So we can also add year 0 retroactively.