Dreaming of a white Easter....

[bylo]

Originally Posted by Przemolog

What makes? The knowledge about relationship between the humidity and the subjective perception of air temperature? Do you mean that non-Canadians don't usually know this fact ?

Canadians generally know this but we like to joke about it. In Western Canada (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba) winter temperatures are often -40C while in southern Ontario they are usually much warmer, often close to 0C with wet snow and sometimes even rain. Westerners like to explain that their colder temperatures are more tolerable because "it's a dry cold" and that phrase has become something of a bit of a joke among Canadians.

As with many other countries there are regional rivalries. In Canada political and economic power has historically been concentrated in southern Ontario, especially in Toronto, so the rest of Canada often refers to that part of the country sarcastically as "the center of the universe."

BTW it snowed here again overnight and more is expected this afternoon. However the forecast says it will get to +14C and rain by Tuesday.

[DRNewcomb]

Originally Posted by bylo

Well that makes you an honourary(!) Canadian, eh?

Actually, I've shoveled snow once or twice. I don't ever need to do it again.

Of course, "dry cold" is not a Canadian thing; it's a western thing. They don't know about "dry cold" in Newfoundland.

[MATHA531]

Originally Posted by petkow

Resolute!! One place I do not want to be sent though I keep hearing threats! One of my friends ended up in Yellowknife. I guess it gets nippy enough there too. Not quite tomato growing weather!

By the way, I know now you've been doing this a long time, but until now I hadn't really realised you Canadians had gone Centigrade too! I suppose like here in the UK some of the older ones still think Fahrenheit though?

Not only that, but Canada has gone you guys one better and gone metric on distances too...

While we in the USA, years behind the times in so many things, have continued to use the old fashioned absurd Farenheit scale (even God doesn't believe in Farenheit as normal body temperature is a nice round 37 degrees C while it's 98.6 degrees F )...

Imagine some of the difficulties some of our mental midgets who travel have when they listen to the telly in London in the morning, hear it's 15 degrees today and start looking for their heavy winter clothing.

Yup we still make our kids learn there are 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 1840 yards (or 5,280 feet) in a mile and schools in the early grades actually give tests asking kids to make these conversions instead of teaching them 1000 meters in a kilometer (or in other words to convert 5000 meters to kilometers, just move the decimal three places left..try seeing how many of our kids or adults can convert 5000 yards to miles...

Just another indication, of course, of the technological inferiority of the USA! (BTW as you can see from the flag, I'm from the USA)

P.S. Why hasn't Britain converted distances from miles to kilometers as Ireland did...I thought the eu wanted this done?

[Przemolog]

Originally Posted by MATHA531

Not only that, but Canada has gone you guys one better and gone metric on distances too...

While we in the USA, years behind the times in so many things, have continued to use the old fashioned absurd Farenheit scale (even God doesn't believe in Farenheit as normal body temperature is a nice round 37 degrees C while it's 98.6 degrees F )...

The story isn't that simple :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Fahrenheit

"Finally, he defined the human body temperature as 96 °F.

Later, with the aid of a mercury thermometer that could measure higher temperatures, Fahrenheit adjusted his scale[3] so the high end was the boiling point of water, which he put at 212 °F. With the adjustment, normal human body temperature moved to the now familiar 98 °F"

BTW, as you can see, the guy was a German who was born in Poland, traveled to Russia, later lived and died in the Netherlands and was a member of The Royal Society of London. It's irony of history that none of the countries he was connected with by the place of living or the ethnic origin doesn't use his fancy temperature scale. The exception is UK where he was just a member of a scientific society .

Originally Posted by MATHA531

Yup we still make our kids learn there are 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 1840 yards (or 5,280 feet) in a mile and schools in the early grades actually give tests asking kids to make these conversions instead of teaching them 1000 meters in a kilometer (or in other words to convert 5000 meters to kilometers, just move the decimal three places left..try seeing how many of our kids or adults can convert 5000 yards to miles...

But why should anyone learn all this stuff nowadays? Electronics is so cheap now that everyone could carry a pocket converter (a separate one or built in a calculator, a cellphone or a palmtop .

Originally Posted by MATHA531

Just another indication, of course, of the technological inferiority of the USA! (BTW as you can see from the flag, I'm from the USA)

Don't exaggerate - any measure system in use is just a kind of social agreement. If Uncle Sam ever loses the #1 importance in the world, it won't happen because of not using the metric system, I think. The bolsheviks introduced the metric system soon after the revolution, however, the Soviet Union lost the rivalry with the USA .

After all, what inferiority? In the US, you have most cars with automatic transmission. As a "manual transmission challenged" European I do appreciate this .

[DRNewcomb]

Originally Posted by MATHA531

Yup we still make our kids learn there are 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 1840 yards (or 5,280 feet)

Even after you go metric you still have to remember there's 1852 m in a NM. That won't change until we can change the radius of the earth. I seriously doubt that land surveying will ever become metric because the whole system of property records was set up over 200 years ago. So kids in schools will still have to learn these units. The problem with the US and metric is that we're still a democratic country where old people have nothing better to do than vote in every single election and they don't want to change. No politician is going to risk his office to push metrification. Rather, we're engaged in creeping metrification. We now sell cans of soft drinks by the ounce but big bottles are 1 & 2 liters. All wine and liquor are sold in metric containers. OTHO, milk is sold by quarts and gallons. 40 years ago if your car needed metric tools you'd have to take it to a "foreign car" repair shop. I think that today most American cars are metric, except for the odometer and spedometer. With the exception of the use of strange units like "tons" and "BTUs" the electrical system has always been metric.

[MATHA531]

Originally Posted by DRNewcomb

Even after you go metric you still have to remember there's 1852 m in a NM. That won't change until we can change the radius of the earth. I seriously doubt that land surveying will ever become metric because the whole system of property records was set up over 200 years ago. So kids in schools will still have to learn these units. The problem with the US and metric is that we're still a democratic country where old people have nothing better to do than vote in every single election and they don't want to change. No politician is going to risk his office to push metrification. Rather, we're engaged in creeping metrification. We now sell cans of soft drinks by the ounce but big bottles are 1 & 2 liters. All wine and liquor are sold in metric containers. OTHO, milk is sold by quarts and gallons. 40 years ago if your car needed metric tools you'd have to take it to a "foreign car" repair shop. I think that today most American cars are metric, except for the odometer and spedometer. With the exception of the use of strange units like "tons" and "BTUs" the electrical system has always been metric.

First of all, nobody caught my big faux pas to show how unimportant it is...of course there aren't 1840 yards in a mile, there are only 1760 (although I did get the 5,280 feet correct)... What an idiot I am.

As a math teacher, 30 years ago there were commissions formed to plan the metrification of the USA and of course it hasn't happened but sometimes, I am afraid, it behooves government to make unpopular decisions if it is for the good of all in the long run...many years ago, in April 1971, there were all sorts of discussions as Britain was being forced to go decimal on its currency how dreadful it is and how the great British tradition of 20 shillings to a pound and 12 pennies to a shilling was something that people understood and how they would be unable to cope with decimalization of the currency (which when you get right down to it is pretty much the same thing)..but of course the government of Britain forced it on the public and by a month later, people were wondering why it wasn't done sooner. Now I do understand one objection to metrification of the USA is the tremendous costs of changing all the highway signs...many of the states have just recently changed all their signs to renumber exits from arbitary exit 1 at one state line to exit whatever depending on how many exits there were namely exit 2 followed exit 1 even if they were 25 miles apart...now in many states exits on freeways are numbered as to the number of miles from one state line..it cost lots of money and to metrify all the highways in the country would cost mucho dollars (I think it is for this reason Britain has been able to resist Brussels on this matter and keep the distances in miles on the motorways)...and at least they had Brussels to fall back on when most other things were metrified and could tell the people it wasn't us..it was those damn eu bureaucrats.

But a start could certainly be to adopt the Celsius thermometer so our mental midgets will know how to dress when visiting 99% of the other countries of the world...and they can leave the imperial measures for liquids too..after all you still order a pint in an British (or Irish) pub..but they can do away with the 20 oz. bottles of soda and substitute 0.5 l and of course we all know the 12 ounce can should be what 330 ml..also if gasoline was priced in liters, it wouldn't sound so bad...all good starts that could be accomplished easily (but won't happen for the reasons that were cited)..

Of course, the other pet peeve of mine which is caused by the same inability to get some older people to enter the 21st century is the continued existance of the $1 bill which costs the Treasury millions to constantly replace them...all the other countries we deal with don't have a 1 unit banknote...Britain doesn't, euroland doesn't, Canada doesn't, Australia doesn't...but we do. Of course the excuse has been we tried to get people to use Susan B. Anthony dollar coins and others and the public wouldn't buy into it...the reason being, of course, how puny these coins were....now make a dollar coin nice and thick like a UK£ and tell the people that to save millions in continually replacing old tattered $1 bills, they will become non legal tender in pick a period of time...euroland did it in less than 2 months to change all the money over...Canada and Britain were able to do it...why shouldn't we...of course there will be howls of protest but a dollar ain't worth very much today (now is it)...

BTW the latest blow to the USD, do you know the Swiss Franc is now worth more than a US$...and they don't have a CHF1 bill or even a CHF5 bill, the smallest paper money is CHF10.

But this ain't going to happen either...unless, as some have suggested, there is an inevitable monetary union between the 3 countries in North America to try to compete against the euro (that will be the final blow but it might very well happen within 15 years...(and we will feel as badly as many in the UK will feel when inevitably they are forced to swallow their pride and use currency without the Queen's picture on it when the UK is forced to join euroland).

Just some rambling thoughts with nothing to do early on a Sunday morning.

[PhotoJim]

Good news for me. I have a CHF10 bill stuck to my fridge with a magnet.

There would be no reason to renumber the exits on Interstates and freeways. Ideally they would be in metric, but they would still be useful if they were left in miles.

Saskatchewan changed all its signs to metric in the 1970s, with the exception of the ubiquitous "Townname 1" signs that are one mile from any town, village or hamlet, marking what services the town has (e.g. fuel, hotels, pay telephones, restaurants, etc.) for travelers. (We don't bother for cities because cities obviously have all of these things, but towns don't always.) They are still a mile from the towns. The province was originally going to change them to 2 km, but really, there wasn't much point. A mile and a km are not that different (at least for this purpose), and the purpose is to warn people that the town is coming up. I suppose that if the signs wear out, they could change them to "Townname 1.5 km" but I doubt they will bother changing them, and I agree that there is little point.