Tucker Carlson vs. the Metric System

[lpetrich]

That creepy, inelegant metric system by PZ Myers
Noting Video: Fox Host Tucker Carlson Attacks 'Inelegant, Creepy' Metric System that the U.S. Alone Has Resisted

"Almost every nation on Earth has fallen under the yoke of tyranny—the metric system," Carlson said. "From Beijing to Buenos Aires, from Lusaka to London, the people of the world have been forced to measure their environment in millimeters and kilograms. "The United States is the only major country that has resisted, but we have no reason to be ashamed for using feet and pounds."

Panero called the metric system "the original system of global revolution and new world orders."

Carlson replied: "God bless you, and that's exactly what it is. Esperanto died, but the metric system continues, this weird, utopian, inelegant, creepy system that we alone have resisted."

Esperanto? That's a constructed natural language that was intended to be an auxiliary language for international communication, a sort of linguistic neutral ground. But it was never very successful there, though some people like to use it.

They continued with how the English system of units made possible the Industrial Revolution and landing astronauts on the Moon.

"The metric system, meanwhile, is the product of the French Revolution. It was imposed at the business end of the guillotine," Panero said. "It's assumed to be progressive. It's assumed that everyone has gotten to be behind it."

Carlson characterized the metric system is "completely made up out of nothing."

They then jumped up and down on use of powers of 10, as opposed to 12's, 8's and 6's and the like, numbers with more small factors.

 

[bilby]

Tucker Carlson? I wouldn't trust him at all. Give him 25.4 millimetres, and he'll take 1.61 kilometres.

All metrology is 'completely made up' - but rarely 'out of nothing'. Imperial measurements tend to evolve from measurement based on human body parts, or on long-standing traditions, or both.

SI is intelligently designed, to be easy to use; It is based where possible on universal constants, so that no one body can define a standard to which others are beholden for calibration.

I wonder why Carlson prefers evolution over intelligent design.

 

[fromderinside]

Tucker needs to wear his bow tie. That way we'd be reminded just how far adrift he is of reality as it exists now.

 

[lpetrich]

From the 1880's in the US:

Then down with every “metric” scheme
Taught by the foreign school,
We’ll worship still our Father’s God!
And keep our Father’s “rule”!
A perfect inch, a perfect pint,
The Anglo’s honest pound,
Shall hold their place upon the earth,
Till time’s last trump shall sound!

Martin Gardner: "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science": "The Great Pyramid"

 Metrication,  Metrication in the United States
Metrication in other countries Metrication Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) | NIST Busting Myths about the Metric System | NIST The Metric System, Online Metric Converters, and Metric Conversion Calculator Download – US Metric Association Believe it or not, the U.S. Metric Association is 100 years old this year, and it's National Metric Week in America. | TreeHugger

Although most nations have officially adopted the metric system, conversion has gone only part of the way in some places, and many traditional units continue to be used in many places. The three official laggards, the United States, Liberia, and Burma, have all partially adopted the system.

Gov’t Pledges Commitment to Adopt Metric System | Liberian Observer - 2018 May 25
Is Myanmar Finally Going Metric? > ENGINEERING.com - 2017 Jul 27

 

[bigfield]

An exchange I heard on the radio between two cricket commentators:

Englishman: "How far is that in miles?"
Australian: "I don't know, because we use the metric system in Australia."
Australian: audibly smug smile
Englishman: "How far is that in kilometres, then?"

...mere seconds later...

Englishman: "How tall are you?"
Australian: "Six-five."
Englishman: audibly raised eyebrows
Australian: "Ah..."
Australian: "You got me."

 

[lpetrich]

The United States had a big push for going metric in the mid 1970's, but it soon faltered, and by the early 1980's, it stopped.

John Marciano’s Whatever Happened to the Metric System, reviewed.

In May of 1981, party people gathered for one of the nerdiest soirees ever to grace lower Manhattan. Billed as the “Foot Ball,” the event was an anti-metric shindig. Its revelers—including author Tom Wolfe and Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand—had joined to protest the encroachment of the metric system into modern American life. They threw shade on the meter and kilogram, and toasted the simple beauty of old classics like the yard and the pound.

What provoked this gathering?

... According to Marciano, there was a window in the mid-1970s when America was totally primed to go metric. President Ford signed an order, even. Elementary school teachers boned up on their decigrams and their hectares. It was all happening. “TAKE ME TO YOUR LITER buttons appeared on lapels,” writes Marciano, “and propaganda even turned sexy. … A poster was sold that featured a blond-haired beach beauty strapping on her bikini bottom with the slogan Think Metric above her and the numbers 92-61-92 below.”

But something went wrong along the way. By 1982, President Reagan had ended funding to the U.S. Metric Board, the main body charged with handling the switchover. The dream had dissolved. Long live the inch.

There was also a push in the 1990's, but that did not go very far, either. It provoked reactions like Why Metric Snobs Are Wrong - Foundation for Economic Education (2001) "So long as Americans defend their freedom, the measurement issue will never be decided in a government office."

Nothing is more contrary to the organization of the mind, of the memory, and of the imagination . . . . The new system of weights and measures will be a stumbling block for several generations . . . . It’s just tormenting the people with trivia.”

Such was the opinion of Napoleon about a novelty concocted by the Paris Academy of Sciences in the midst of revolutionary fervor: the metric system of measurement.

However, he recognized the value of a well-defined system of units, and he decreed the adoption of "mesures usuelles", "everyday measures", traditional French units turned into simple multiples of metric ones. Like a livre (pound) being 500 grams.

 

[lpetrich]

From one of PZ's commenters:

cgilder
6 June 2019 at 10:12 am

Doing hydrology in the US is so flipping stupid. We have to use cubic feet per second, gallons per minute, and acre-feet BY LAW for anything involving the govt. Montana state agencies also have this unit called a miner’s inch that I still haven’t figured out. Conversions are the devil’s workshop for errors, that’s for sure.

Instead of megaliters and liters per second.

A lot of traditional units have such variations as separate units for liquid volume and dry volume, and separate units for different materials. Like avoirdupois ounces, used for most mass measurements, and troy ounces, used for precious metals and the like. But one gram of gold weighs the same as one gram of wood.

The UK is only part of the way there, despite officially starting to convert in 1965. From another commenter:

Chris Phillips
6 June 2019 at 8:54 am

Basic American Exceptionalism carried to it’s irrational conclusion. Fortunately I never have to suffer the fools of Fox News gladly or otherwise. If I did, I would have had to have numerous new TVs to replace the screens broken by the objects thrown at them. Why so obsessive in this cult of the daft. God knows it is daft in the UK with areas in all different systems but we just get on on the basis of live and let live, natural conservatism, legislation and old age. Why get uptight about it why dealing with horses for courses?
For instance: fuel is sold in litres, but consumption is in mpg, speed in mph. Distances in miles on the road but timber is sold by the metre.
Architects work out areas in square metres but estate agents sell land in acres and building by the square foot.
All good fun and keeps the American tourist off balance. All good for a laugh round at the pub

Might we see another big push in the near future?
Transcript: Read Full Text of Gov. Lincoln Chafee's Campaign Launch | Time back in 2016:

Earlier I said, “Let’s be bold”. Here’s a bold embrace of internationalism: let’s join the rest of the world and go metric. I happened to live in Canada as they completed the process. Believe me it is easy. It doesn’t take long before 34 degrees is hot. Only Myanmar, Liberia and the United States aren’t metric and it will help our economy!

 

[James Brown]

The United States managed to convert soda bottles into liter-sizes. I don't know how we pulled that off, but none of the disasters that anti-metric folks predicted came true.

I suspect it's laziness combined with hubris. "The facts that I learned as a kid is the gold standard and may not be tampered with. Don't confuse me with your claims of efficiency. What we have now has been good enough for the entire time I have been alive; therefore it will be good enough forever."

See: The number of planets in our solar system, the words in the Pledge of Allegiance, and the QWERTY keyboard.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Having worked as an engineer mostly in the US, but a pretty long stint in the EU, and occasionally for EU or Asian based companies, I much prefer the metric system. It does take a while to get a 'feel' for the numbers, but it's really so much easier to deal with metric than US units.

 

[steve_bank]

I saw it. The video is probably on FOX.

I was degusted, upset, and fascinated to see that bullshit.

It is a wonder to me how one can get a college degree without being required to understand basic physics and units of measure.

The guy claimed the meter is defined by dividing the circumference of the Earth.

Meters is inconvenient because you can't measure in fractions. The foot and fractions were invented to make measuring easy for people. And so 0n.

 

[lpetrich]

That was the original definition of the meter: 1/10,000,000 of the distance between the North Pole and the Equator on the Earth's surface, as measured through Paris, France. That was used to create a secondary standard: the length of a certain platinum bar in a measurement lab in Paris, the mètre des archives ("meter of the archives"). This eventually became the primary standard, and it was that until it was succeeded by the length of a certain platinum-iridium bar. Then the wavelength of a certain state transition of the electrons in a krypton-86 atom, and finally the distance that light will travel in a vacuum over a certain time.

 

[lpetrich]

Here are the two kinds of pounds and ounces, the ordinary or avoirdupois one ("having weight" in French), and the troy ones. The avdp pound is a bit heavier than the troy one, and the avdp ounce a bit lighter than the troy one. Troy units survive as measurement units for precious metals, meaning that an ounce of gold weighs more than an ounce of lead, though with metric units, a gram of gold weighs exactly as much as a gram of lead.

[TABLE="class: grid"]
[TR]
[TD]System
[/TD]
[TD]Ounce grams
[/TD]
[TD]Ozs per lb
[/TD]
[TD]Pound grams
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Avdp
[/TD]
[TD]28.349523125
[/TD]
[TD]16
[/TD]
[TD]453.59237
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Troy
[/TD]
[TD]31.1034768
[/TD]
[TD]12
[/TD]
[TD]373.2417216
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

 

[WAB]

The main problem with the metric system is that it totally screws with rock lyrics, as in this example, penned by Gwimble Pyfkump of Cocking-on-Dungport, lead vocalist for Bill Sinus and the Nasaltones (1971-1976):



Don't Hold Back A Gram

I was rockin and rollin with my babeh
and let me tell ya she was drivin me crazeh
cuz she was a yellow-haired cheer-leader
and her sweater stuck out at least a metre

She was on the back of my motorscooter
when she reached around and squeezed my hooter°
and when I looked at my speedometer
I was doin a hundred and twenty kilometre

Bridge:

Yeah, we rocked all nite
and my babeh took a bite
o' my dy-no-mite!

We were rocking and rolling into the night
and trust me, we were not wrapped tight*
cuz we were high on a kilogram
of weed we got from a chick named Pam**

who my babeh knew up there in Toronto,
a cutie who got us hooked up pronto—
man she was mean and lean and tight,
and man she could shake it all thru the nite

repeat bridge***

Chorus:

Oh my babeh, my sweet sweet dear
I'm burnin' up like a lotta stère
of firewood, so gimme a dram
of that honey-lovin', don't hold back a gram.

so anyway, me and my babeh, I swear
we flew like lightnin over every decaire
and later I gave her every centimetre
of lovin' I could possibly feed her.

Repeat chorus ad nauseam.



* Frank Zappa
** Classic forced rime (rhyme for us mercins)
***'Where's that confounded bridge?' [anyone?]


° His babeh either squeezed his generative organ, or activated an alarm device, such as a horn. I am not certain which. I would have used the word 'lemon', but, alas, could not fink of a suitable rhyme...


This lyric was posted to another thread ages ago...

 

[steve_bank]

Lyrics before after around 1879 are a mystery to me.

The problem was more general.

There were foot-pounds, poundals, slugs, dynes, pounds force, pounds mass and a set of systems that were incompatible. Magnetics units is an example.

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chpt-14/magnetic-units-of-measurement/

In mechanics dealing with force and mass you had to be careful with dimensions and it was error prone. The kilogram and Newton fixed that. Before the spread of SI you were always going between systems from different areas and manufacturer's data.

Table at the bottom. Before SI you had to know numerous conversion factors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(force)

Metric and SI fixed all that.

Here is part of it. The rest is online. tucker Carlson metric

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/...145eee344e7b247d708c4bd3b12a442a&action=click

 

[Derec]

What lpeetrich said.

However, if Tucker Carlson has a problem with how a meter is defined, that means he has a problem how his favorite length units are defined as well. An inch is officially defined as 254 mm, it is pegged to the meter and not independently defined.

 

[Gun Nut]

Tucker Carson versus anything that has ever changed.

He should get back into radio... who needs that newfangled television. When I was a kid, we couldn't see what news commentators looked like... and we like it, damn it!

 

[fast]

What lpeetrich said.

However, if Tucker Carlson has a problem with how a meter is defined, that means he has a problem how his favorite length units are defined as well. An inch is officially defined as 254 mm, it is pegged to the meter and not independently defined.

I don’t have a problem with how it’s defined, but I’m speculating that some serious miscalculations could result from all the refinements, at least in complicated scenarios requiring extraordinary precision. Imagine a project that took into account various past measurements where precision was critical. If it was defined one way at time x, another way at time y, and another at time z, then if those measurements were considered in part with new measurements with yet another current and different metric variable, not only would a final result have potential for error in its own right and increased by other system conversions, but the complexity is magnified by not always knowing full well what the distance of a meter was based on when used in the past. I’m not saying it would be a common problem, but I’m saying the complexity could get ridiculously tedious.

 

[laughing dog]

What lpeetrich said.

However, if Tucker Carlson has a problem with how a meter is defined, that means he has a problem how his favorite length units are defined as well. An inch is officially defined as 254 mm, it is pegged to the meter and not independently defined.

I don’t have a problem with how it’s defined, but I’m speculating that some serious miscalculations could result from all the refinements, at least in complicated scenarios requiring extraordinary precision. Imagine a project that took into account various past measurements where precision was critical. If it was defined one way at time x, another way at time y, and another at time z, then if those measurements were considered in part with new measurements with yet another current and different metric variable, not only would a final result have potential for error in its own right and increased by other system conversions, but the complexity is magnified by not always knowing full well what the distance of a meter was based on when used in the past. I’m not saying it would be a common problem, but I’m saying the complexity could get ridiculously tedious.

You are making a kilometer out of a picometer. The various differences in definitional measurements according to Wikipedia ( History_of_the_metre, see the last section on the history of the definitions) are extremely small.

 

[fast]

What lpeetrich said.

However, if Tucker Carlson has a problem with how a meter is defined, that means he has a problem how his favorite length units are defined as well. An inch is officially defined as 254 mm, it is pegged to the meter and not independently defined.

I don’t have a problem with how it’s defined, but I’m speculating that some serious miscalculations could result from all the refinements, at least in complicated scenarios requiring extraordinary precision. Imagine a project that took into account various past measurements where precision was critical. If it was defined one way at time x, another way at time y, and another at time z, then if those measurements were considered in part with new measurements with yet another current and different metric variable, not only would a final result have potential for error in its own right and increased by other system conversions, but the complexity is magnified by not always knowing full well what the distance of a meter was based on when used in the past. I’m not saying it would be a common problem, but I’m saying the complexity could get ridiculously tedious.

You are making a kilometer out of a picometer. The various differences in definitional measurements according to Wikipedia ( History_of_the_metre, see the last section on the history of the definitions) are extremely small.

oh.

I thought the distance light travels would be impacted by its extremely small change.

Negligibly so, apparently. My bad.

 

[lpetrich]

I don’t have a problem with how it’s defined, but I’m speculating that some serious miscalculations could result from all the refinements, at least in complicated scenarios requiring extraordinary precision. ...

In such cases, one would be careful to track what measurement conventions one has used, so one can relate different conventions.

Astronomers have long done that with time conventions, for instance.