[time-nuts] gravity controlled pendulumn clock?

[Reeves Paul]

Oh dear, what have I helped to get going :-) It has certainly been
interesting reading! My point was, as Chuck notes, that the metre, kilogram
etc. are no more 'precise' than a yard, pound etc. being, essentially,
arbitrary units and the 'imperial' units can be defined just as accurately
and in the same way. I will certainly concede that things become
'interesting' when converting between different units outside of the
'metric' system (and the 'metric' system went through several versions -with
distinctly odd units - before the current standardised one) but that just
relates to my comment on the reduction of mental arithmetic abilities
nowadays as against simple decimal point shifting......
I'm not sure I would agree on being 'forced' to take on certain measurements
- we are a lot closer to Europe (sort of...), after all - but pints, inches
and miles do seem more 'natural' (a litre is just too much beer) and you
could never measure a cricket pitch in metres!
That's all from me,

Paul Reeves     G8GJA



-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Harris [mailto:cfharris at erols.com] 
Sent: 14 December 2011 02:05
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] gravity controlled pendulumn clock?

Arnold Tibus wrote:
> I don't understand at all the arguments against the metric system and 
> the polemic remarks about. I second the statements of Neville and Jim.
>
> Without these intelligent french Astronomers like Jean-Baptiste-Joseph 
> Delambre, Pierre-François-André Méchain and J.J. Lalande (more infos:
> Ken Alder, The Measure of All Things), we would still have the severe 
> problems they had centuries ago!
>
> Reading WIKIPEDIA, http://en.wikipedia.org 
> /wiki/German_units_of_measurement,
> we find a good example of weird units (just for only a part of Germany):
>
> "Before the introduction of the metric system in Germany, almost every 
> town had its own definitions of the units shown below, and supposedly 
> by 1810, in Baden alone, there were 112 different standards for the 
> Elle around Germany. The metric system was a much-needed 
> standardisation in Germany."
>
> This was not only a german problem, and we still have today some 
> problems in the world in this area.

Standardization is fine.  Attempting to force the world's largest economy to
bend to the wishes of Europe isn't fine.  The US system has been
standardized for more than a century, and works very nicely.  Decimal
inches, decimal pounds, and seconds is every bit as valid a measurement
system as the equally arbitrary meter, kilogram and second.  Decimal inches,
decimal pounds, and seconds flies most of the airframes in the world, won
WWII, and took mankind to the moon and beyond.

Saying that the use of pounds, and yards is imprecise is simply ignorant.

>
> I believe we should think more about what we are saying and doing, so 
> we would do a big step forward to become a world community. ...

Regardless of our measurement systems, we are already a world community.

The strife we see in the world today is not the result of measurements, but
rather is the result of religion, politics, and culture.

-Chuck Harris

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