I'll choose parsecs since any part of my body is evenly divisible into
an integer multiple and I don't have to memorize any silly decimal or
binary or hexadecimal points. (at least close enough that the rounding
error is trivial) :-)
Chuck Norcutt
Andrew Fildes wrote:
>> If everything is better in decimal, why don't we have 10 hours days of
>> 100 minutes each? Just sayin' :-)
>
>
> Because when Robespierre attempted to introduce such a thing,
> recalcitrant old farts like you sabotaged it!
>
> Body sense? How many fingers do you have around your parts? 12?
> (Hmmmm....)
> A base ten system makes a lot more sense than any other, whether the
> basic stride length unit is arbitrary or not.
> However, in the interests of fair play, I'll include conversions into
> versts, bushells, cwt., cubits and parsecs in future.
> Which parts of your body do they correspond to?
> Andrew Fildes
> afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
> On 11/05/2010, at 7:52 AM, Moose wrote:
>
>> The old, sort of English system still in common use here makes a lot
>> of
>> sense to me at the level of living personal life. An inch is the
>> length
>> of the end part of my index finger, the span of the four fingers of my
>> hand is 6 in., my foot is about a foot long, elbow to fingertip is 18
>> in., the distance from nose to fingertip stretched out to the side
>> is a
>> yard, and thus the span of my reach is two yards or six feet.
>>
>> There is nothing about the metric system that has anything like the
>> body
>> level sense of the old English system of measurement.
>>
>>
>>
>
--
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