"ingo" <ing### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:Xns### [at] povrayorg...
> in news:3f4b9573@news.povray.org Warp wrote:
>
> >   Can you tell with a straight face "a mile is 63360 inches, 5280 feet
> > and 1760 yards, and this system is not stupid"?
>
> t's a matter of perception. Why would you need to do these conversions? If
> you want to give a certain length or distance it depends on the size what
> kind of unit you choose to express this size in. A baseball field is 120
> yards deep, a distance to travel is expressed in miles, small dimensions
> are in mills or inches, the hight of a plane in feet. Where to put the
> moment that you change from one to another unit is a matter of instict or
> lessons learned, but not completely arbitraily. In this regard the system
> is not different to our metric system. Just that the points of change are
> a bit sharper, it's 90 cm and 1.20 meter. But we also have halve a
> kilometer and 900 meters. A moutain we measure in meters, not kilometers.
>
> Ingo
>  ... who only orders his beer in a non metric way ... per pint.

Hmmmm. When I was a kid I thought clocks ought to only go to ten, not
twelve, and time work in a metric sort of way. I also believed the metric
system must be far superior a system of units due to the inherent
simplicity, being based on tens too, you know.
So in this respect I might differ from Ken's viewpoint. However, maybe by
being American or something, I can't let go of the rather stupid 12 inches
in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 52830 feet in a mile, etc. I never liked
fractions of inches either... but I just can't ignore the aggravation of
converting to millimeters and centimeters simply because we *must* do the
converting here in the USA. Like we can't break away from the so-called
standard units. Only thing I know of that seems so completely metric is the
larger beverage containers (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc.) sold in liters not
quarts or gallons. Now there's got to be something stupid there!
 :-D
P.S. it's things like this web page's answer to why a mile is a mile that
makes me wonder even more about this stuff.
http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/mile.asp

Bob H.

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