I am so angry right now

[Suzie]

18 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Now that I'm thinking about it @Vort, you remind me of Grandpa Simpson. 

You remind me of Lisa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know, that was uncalled for. LOL *jokeeeeeee*

[Guest MormonGator]

2 minutes ago, Suzie said:

I know, that was uncalled for.

No it wasn't. I love Lisa Simpson. Huge compliment, and funny too! 

[zil]

5 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Ermm.  Shouldn't that be in Kelvins?

35 minutes ago, Vort said:

Lower-case "k" when not beginning the sentence: "Shouldn't that be in kelvins?"

Kelvin's getting uncomfortable with you guys talking about things that should be in his [unnamed part(s)].

[zil]

30 minutes ago, zil said:

Kelvin's getting uncomfortable with you guys talking about things that should be in his [unnamed part(s)].

[Suzie]

Hmmmm..saying you're 55 kgs sounds so much better eh. Just two digits. 🤔

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Vort said:

Lower-case "k" when not beginning the sentence: "Shouldn't that be in kelvins?"

Then why do we capitalize the unit of measure? See?!?!  Even metric and other systems are SOOOOO inconsistent.

[Vort]

3 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Then why do we capitalize the unit of measure? See?!?!  Even metric and other systems are SOOOOO inconsistent.

Not sure what you mean. The terms "meter", "kilogram", and "second" are not normally capitalized. Even units named after people, such as "amperes", "farads", "henrys", and yes, "kelvins", are not normally capitalized.

The SI certainly has its inconsistencies, as with the use of the kilogram as the mass standard instead of the gram. But I'm still a proponent of the SI over the so-called Imperial or English system.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Vort said:

Not sure what you mean. The terms "meter", "kilogram", and "second" are not normally capitalized. Even units named after people, such as "amperes", "farads", "henrys", and yes, "kelvins", are not normally capitalized.

The SI certainly has its inconsistencies, as with the use of the kilogram as the mass standard instead of the gram. But I'm still a proponent of the SI over the so-called Imperial or English system.

Abbreviations are thus m, kg, & s. All lowercase.  The remainder of the units you mentioned are capitalized abbreviations.

Much better to have consitent letters than consistent math.  We all know how inconsistent math is.  So letters and words need to be perfectly consistent to make up for it. 

Thank goodness we speak English, the most consistent language on Earth.

[zil]

5 minutes ago, Vort said:

henrys

I'll take two, please:

[cdw3423]

If base 10 is so great, then why is there no metric hours minutes or seconds.  How hard could it be.  There could be 10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour and 100 seconds in a minute.  Then instead of 86,400 seconds in a day there would be 100,000 seconds in a day. 

But if you really want to improve things, we need a new calendar.  Here is how it should work. There will be 13 months in a year. Each month will have 28 days.  Those doing the math know that is only 364 days in a year.  So the 365th day will be an international holiday and will not actually be on the calendar.  On leap year it will be a two day holiday.  With this calendar no one will ever need to ask, what day of the week is that?  Because the first day of every month will naturally be the first day of the week (Sunday). So for the rest of time the 1st, 8th, 15th, & 22nd of every month will be on Sunday.  So when you invite your friends over for your scary movie night party on the 13th of next month, they will know it is on a Friday because Friday the 13th will happen every month. 

Who's with me?

 

Chris W

Edited October 16, 2018 by cdw3423

[anatess2]

20 minutes ago, cdw3423 said:

 

Who's with me?

 

Chris W

Nobody.   The French tried decimal time and can't make it stick because it is disconnected from its meaning in terms of human activity.  Time and calendars derive its meaning from earth rotation and orbit and positions of celestial bodies in the sky and, therefore, changes and can't be pinned down to a specific standard measurement.  But, the rise and set of the sun drives earth life activity, not only for humans but for everything else, therefore, adapting a different standard of time holds no meaning.

But, even then, the metric standard of time is calculated by seconds - not the seconds derived from the 86,400 seconds in a day but by some atomic measurement relating to the caesium 133 atom which I don't quite understand.  All I know is that it is a set measurement and doesn't change unlike the UTC second which can change even if only slightly within a mllenia.  Unix computer systems use this metric second for ease of calculation and, therefore, stores time as the number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970.  But even then, they still have to account for leap seconds.

Anyway, as a programmer, datetime computing bugs the heck out of me.

[Just_A_Guy]

30 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

Nobody.   The French tried decimal time and can't make it stick . . .

Thus bequeathing us Lobster Thermidor (and very little else).

[Vort]

1 hour ago, cdw3423 said:

If base 10 is so great, then why is there no metric hours minutes or seconds.  How hard could it be.  There could be 10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour and 100 seconds in a minute.  Then instead of 86,400 seconds in a day there would be 100,000 seconds in a day. 

The ancient Egyptians defined a cubit as the length of string that would produce a pendulum that would swing 100,000 times per day at the latitude of Thebes (I think).

If you made each base unit of time equal to a little over 2.6 seconds, you could have a day equal to 32,768 of those time units. In base 8, that would be 100000. The problem is that we don't use base 8. (Or use base 16 and make each time unit half as long, and you can have a day of 10000 "seconds".)

[cdw3423]

4 hours ago, anatess2 said:

Nobody.   The French tried decimal time. . .

"Who's with me?" Was referring to the calendar idea not the base 10 time idea.  That comment about base 10 time was intended to mock those who who are so emphatic that metric is better because it is base 10.  Really the most commonly used metric units are base 1000.  Base 60 is far superior.  After all 60 is a "Highly composite number", "Superior highly composite number", and a "Colossally abundant number" 10, 100,  1000 and all other powers of 10 are not part of any of those sets. 

But since this isn't a math forum I should probably shut up now. 

Chris W.

[MarginOfError]

52 minutes ago, cdw3423 said:

"Who's with me?" Was referring to the calendar idea not the base 10 time idea.  That comment about base 10 time was intended to mock those who who are so emphatic that metric is better because it is base 10.  Really the most commonly used metric units are base 1000.  Base 60 is far superior.  After all 60 is a "Highly composite number", "Superior highly composite number", and a "Colossally abundant number" 10, 100,  1000 and all other powers of 10 are not part of any of those sets. 

But since this isn't a math forum I should probably shut up now. 

Chris W.

The metric system is better because it is base in 10. But you are divorcing that statement from its context. It is better than English units because English units of measurement don't share a common base. 

Metric also has a certain convenience because it maps well to how humans interact with the world. Yes...because we have ten fingers. I have no doubt that humans could adapt to a base 60 system, but that makes a lot of very small increments for your measuring spoons.

The human experience, as anatess described, is why decimal time doesn't work. We could easily define the concept of decimal days, but we would have to abandon our concept of a year. Nature doesn't cooperate with tidy mathematical structures. .. not even base 60.

The issue with your calendar idea is that there can't be a holiday each year. There's 1.2425ish extra days each year. So again, you fall into this pit of one day that doesn't count each year, with a second day every fourth year, except on the 200th year. The lunar calendar, which is what you are proposing, is just as awful as the solar calendar. And living in base 7 is just silly.

With regards to time, I'd be content if we abandoned time zones and daylight savings. Everyone lives on UTC

 

[jerome1232]

2 minutes ago, MarginOfError said:

The metric system is better because it is base in 10. But you are divorcing that statement from its context. It is better than English units because English units of measurement don't share a common base. 

Metric also has a certain convenience because it maps well to how humans interact with the world. Yes...because we have ten fingers. I have no doubt that humans could adapt to a base 60 system, but that makes a lot of very small increments for your measuring spoons.

The human experience, as anatess described, is why decimal time doesn't work. We could easily define the concept of decimal days, but we would have to abandon our concept of a year. Nature doesn't cooperate with tidy mathematical structures. .. not even base 60.

The issue with your calendar idea is that there can't be a holiday each year. There's 1.2425ish extra days each year. So again, you fall into this pit of one day that doesn't count each year, with a second day every fourth year, except on the 200th year. The lunar calendar, which is what you are proposing, is just as awful as the solar calendar. And living in base 7 is just silly.

With regards to time, I'd be content if we abandoned time zones and daylight savings. Everyone lives on UTC

 

UTC... stands for coordinated universal time. It can't even get it's own acronym correct. Can I really trust that? Hmmmmmmmm?

[cdw3423]

40 minutes ago, jerome1232 said:

UTC... stands for coordinated universal time. It can't even get it's own acronym correct. Can I really trust that? Hmmmmmmmm?

You see the issue is it has a special kind of OCD, kind of like CDO only it likes to keep things in descending order which is why it has ODC.  It calls it's self UTC because the letters have to be in the right order, only backwards   Whatever you do, don't call it COD, no body does that anymore.

[cdw3423]

55 minutes ago, MarginOfError said:

you fall into this pit of one day that doesn't count each year, with a second day every fourth year, except on the 200th year

I never said anything about every 4th year.  I said on Leap year.  Leap year is has 3 rules, none of them have anything to do with 200 year intervals.  If the year is evenly divisible by 400 OR (it's evenly divisible by 4 and not evenly divisible by 100), then it is a leap year.

[MarginOfError]

You're correct, sorry. But my point still stands. If you have to ignore the existence of one or two days on any kind of basis, your system is crappy.

A calendar system like you propose sounds nice on the surface. But it's still a lunar calendar in a world that also has solar schedules. 

Which is why the ISO standard utilizes seconds as its base. The interpretation of months and years is merely a mask imposed upon the count of seconds.

[MarginOfError]

1 hour ago, jerome1232 said:

UTC... stands for coordinated universal time. It can't even get it's own acronym correct. Can I really trust that? Hmmmmmmmm?

Much like ISO is the international organization for standards.

[MarginOfError]

Side note: World Standards Day is on October 14th. 

The U.S. never celebrates or recognizes it on the 14th.  Is that not the most American thing ever!?

[zil]

2 hours ago, MarginOfError said:

And living in base 7 is just silly.

Obviously, the Lord was feeling a bit silly when he created the planet.

2 hours ago, MarginOfError said:

Everyone lives on UTC

Yes, my brother and I have been advocating this for years.

2 hours ago, jerome1232 said:

UTC... stands for coordinated universal time. It can't even get it's own acronym correct. Can I really trust that? Hmmmmmmmm?

It's French, you see.  When we rejected their decimal time, they were all upset, so we agreed to use their acronym while calling it Coordinated Universal Time.  (I wonder if either of us consulted the universe before making this decision.)

1 hour ago, MarginOfError said:

If you have to ignore the existence of one or two days on any kind of basis, your system is crappy.

Clearly your employer gives you too many vacation days.  Feel free to donate the extras to me.

[Guest]

10 hours ago, cdw3423 said:

If base 10 is so great, then why is there no metric hours minutes or seconds.  How hard could it be.  There could be 10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour and 100 seconds in a minute.  Then instead of 86,400 seconds in a day there would be 100,000 seconds in a day. 

But if you really want to improve things, we need a new calendar.  Here is how it should work. There will be 13 months in a year. Each month will have 28 days.  Those doing the math know that is only 364 days in a year.  So the 365th day will be an international holiday and will not actually be on the calendar.  On leap year it will be a two day holiday.  With this calendar no one will ever need to ask, what day of the week is that?  Because the first day of every month will naturally be the first day of the week (Sunday). So for the rest of time the 1st, 8th, 15th, & 22nd of every month will be on Sunday.  So when you invite your friends over for your scary movie night party on the 13th of next month, they will know it is on a Friday because Friday the 13th will happen every month. 

Who's with me?

 

Chris W

The calendar we are familiar with originally only had 10 months.  The time between December and March were "undated".  No official business took place due to winter.  Hence "DEC"-ember.  10th month.

When we moved on in the ability to travel and had increases in technology, we eventually added the additional months of January and February.  And February was the original end of the year.  That's why leap year adds days to that month.

As far as time...

Look up "metric day SNL" on Youtube.

[zil]

4 hours ago, MarginOfError said:

The human experience, as anatess described, is why decimal time doesn't work. We could easily define the concept of decimal days, but we would have to abandon our concept of a year.

I fail to see why this is an issue except that humans don't like to change their current, essentially arbitrary, ways for other arbitrary ways they're less used to¹.  We currently divide the earth's rotation into 24 things we call hours.  We could just as easily divide it into 10 things and call those hours.  Our lunar months aren't anymore.  We've decided to handle the earth's irregular rotation and orbit around the sun via things like leap seconds and leap years - there's no reason we couldn't impose some other arbitrary handling option, like declaring a non-calendar holiday every now and then.  (Yes, of course I'm aware of the programming nightmare that would be, because even if you could convince the profit-seekers to chill out a bit, you'd still have to tell the computer not to increment the date until a day (or so) later.)

¹This is the real reason we don't use metric everywhere - both methods are essentially arbitrary declarations along the lines of "this much physical space will be called by this name, so let it be written, so let it be done".  But humans like their established arbitrary declarations and don't like memorizing or otherwise adapting to different arbitrary declarations.  Thus, one either has to force them to adjust (kinda contrary to American philosophy), or tolerate their death grip on the old arbitrary decisions.  But don't worry, the good news is, one day the world will end.

[anatess2]

4 minutes ago, zil said:

I fail to see why this is an issue except that humans don't like to change their current, essentially arbitrary, ways for other arbitrary ways they're less used to¹.  We currently divide the earth's rotation into 24 things we call hours.  We could just as easily divide it into 10 things and call those hours.  Our lunar months aren't anymore.  We've decided to handle the earth's irregular rotation and orbit around the sun via things like leap seconds and leap years - there's no reason we couldn't impose some other arbitrary handling option, like declaring a non-calendar holiday every now and then.  (Yes, of course I'm aware of the programming nightmare that would be, because even if you could convince the profit-seekers to chill out a bit, you'd still have to tell the computer not to increment the date until a day (or so) later.)

¹This is the real reason we don't use metric everywhere - both methods are essentially arbitrary declarations along the lines of "this much physical space will be called by this name, so let it be written, so let it be done".  But humans like their established arbitrary declarations and don't like memorizing or otherwise adapting to different arbitrary declarations.  Thus, one either has to force them to adjust (kinda contrary to American philosophy), or tolerate their death grip on the old arbitrary decisions.  But don't worry, the good news is, one day the world will end.

It may be arbitrary but that arbitrary thing is based on a measurable constant.  Date-time on the other hand is not only arbitrary,  but also the arbitrary thing it is based on is not measurably constant, hence the challenge.