Re: measuring systems (was: Selenites)

Pablo Flores wrote:

> Personally, I don't like the English system. I hate all those feet, yards, miles,
> inches, pounds, gallons and so on. They appear continuosly on TV, in movies,
> and worst of all in documentaries. I bothers me when I have to think of
> normalized page sizes in inches; and I don't stand Fahrenheit degrees. Did
> you know that Fahrenheit placed the 0 in his scale by measuring the lowest
> temperature he managed to produce?
Why's that?  I mean, I can understand that you find it unwieldy to use
(if you ever had to use it, which if you live outside the US, you don't), but
does it spawn a real visceral dislike of it, just because it's different?
Many of us in the US (including myself) would like to see us move
to metricized version, but at present, that will be sometime in the
indefinite future.  Our economy just simply does not need to do it
right now: 70% of the GDP made by the US is consumed by the US,
not exported else where (which is to say, there is no overwhelming
need to do it, when some other nation whose trade is almost
exclusively export would not think twice about changing).

The fact is, there is no way to make a *perfectly* nonarbitrary
measurement system.  You will still always base it on something
that is ultimately arbitrary itself.  It's the same as with languages:
just as the actually phonemic string of words used to express
a concept is completely arbitrary, so the terms used to divide
up the same distance or capacity or whatever are also ultimately
arbitrary, however easy they may be to use in and of themselves.

=======================================================
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

We look at [the Tao], and do not see it;
  Its name is the Invisible.
                 - Lao Tsu, _Tao Te Ching_

Nature is wont to hide herself.
                 - Herakleitos
========================================================