Yes, it is true. After THREE MONTHS of waiting, the vendor's solicitors 
have FINALLY released the draft contract.

Finally step #1 of my house purchase can actually begin...

Fun fact: For three months the estate agent has been promising me that 
the contract would appear in the next day or so. Every time a difference 
excuse as to why it hasn't happened yet, but "it's fixed now". On Monday 
my mother phoned them and suggested that I might pull out of the deal. 
By Friday of the same week, the contract had appeared.

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OK, so today I received a huge, bulging envelope stuffed with dense 
legal documents.

I swear to God, one document had an entire paragraph that took up a 
quarter of a page and contained no punctuation of any kind.

The really frightening thing was the one that had three sides of A4 
printed entirely in Helvetica 3-point. Do you have ANY IDEA how tiny 
that is?? Because, if you don't, it's three seventy-seconds of one inch, 
which is approximately equal to 1.058 mm. That's REALLY small.

Clearly I'm going to have to have a long conversation with my solicitors 
about this...

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> three seventy-seconds of one inch

I think that at least *some* Americans realize how ridiculous the
imperial measurement system is. It's a petty that resistance to change
is such a huge psychological phenomenon that it's not going to change
any time soon.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 18/07/2013 11:51 PM, Warp wrote:
> Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> three seventy-seconds of one inch
>
> I think that at least *some* Americans realize how ridiculous the
> imperial measurement system is. It's a petty that resistance to change
> is such a huge psychological phenomenon that it's not going to change
> any time soon.
>

Thus Spake Zarathustra.

The imperial system was not developed to make calculations easier but 
people's lives easier. If you have been brought up with it you will know 
how it describes the external world in a way that relates to human 
scales. I use both at work and at home and I much prefer inches and feet 
to centimetres and meters. It also has a sense of poetry to it.
So if it makes you think how many feet to a mile (5280) is that a bad thing?

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> The imperial system was not developed to make calculations easier but 
> people's lives easier. If you have been brought up with it you will know 
> how it describes the external world in a way that relates to human 
> scales. I use both at work and at home and I much prefer inches and feet 
> to centimetres and meters. It also has a sense of poetry to it.
> So if it makes you think how many feet to a mile (5280) is that a bad thing?

It doesn't matter which measurement system is used: If you have grown up
using it, it will feel "most natural" to you. To a person who has grown
up using the metric system it feels the most natural.

The thing is, the metric system is much more practical. It can easily be
used to measure very small and very large quantities and, what's more
important, converting between quantities is a lot easier.

How many millimeters are there in a meter? How many grams are there in a
kilogram? You don't have to actually make any calculations whatsoever.
You just shift the decimal point.

And you can go to very small scales, even ridiculously small scales,
without having to resort to awkward amounts.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 19/07/2013 08:42 AM, Warp wrote:
> It doesn't matter which measurement system is used: If you have grown up
> using it, it will feel "most natural" to you. To a person who has grown
> up using the metric system it feels the most natural.

Indeed.

> How many millimeters are there in a meter? How many grams are there in a
> kilogram? You don't have to actually make any calculations whatsoever.
> You just shift the decimal point.

How many cubic millimeters are there in a cubic meter?

A surprising number of adults appear to not actually know the correct 
answer to this...

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> The imperial system was not developed to make calculations easier but
> people's lives easier.

It just evolved as a mish-mash of whatever units people found best to be 
using individually for certain things. Nobody "designed" the system as a 
whole to work together.

> If you have been brought up with it you will know
> how it describes the external world in a way that relates to human
> scales.

You obviously find it easier only because you were brought up with it, 
for almost every other country in the world they find metric easier 
because that's what they were brought up with.

Also inches aren't suited for things the width of a human or smaller, 
which is exactly why you end up using crazy fractions like 3/8, 5/16 and 
29/32. I bet most people you stopped in the street wouldn't be able to 
add those 3 numbers together (and many probably couldn't even tell you 
the smallest). Or tell you how long it would be if you needed 1000 lots 
of 5/16. Try the same with 8, 9 and 23 mm it's - trivial.

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> How many cubic millimeters are there in a cubic meter?

> A surprising number of adults appear to not actually know the correct 
> answer to this...

Fortunately things are seldom measured in cubic meters. Liters do just
fine.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> It doesn't matter which measurement system is used: If you have grown up
> using it, it will feel "most natural" to you. To a person who has grown
> up using the metric system it feels the most natural.

Indeed, and a way to judge which one is "better" is to look at what 
happens when people are forced to change and stop using the old system 
completely.

In the UK in 1971 we changed from using a pound divided into 20 
shillings and a shilling in 12 pence to the new "metric" system of 100 
pence in a pound. Everyone was forced to make the change, you couldn't 
continue with the old system. Initially people complained and got 
confused, but very quickly afterwards everybody realised it was a far 
superior and easier to use system. *Nobody* I have ever spoken to (who 
was alive at the time) would want to go back to the old system and 
everyone generally thinks it was a good decision. At the time however I 
bet there were loads of people against it. People just don't like change.

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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> > It doesn't matter which measurement system is used: If you have grown up
> > using it, it will feel "most natural" to you. To a person who has grown
> > up using the metric system it feels the most natural.
>
> Indeed, and a way to judge which one is "better" is to look at what
> happens when people are forced to change and stop using the old system
> completely.
>
> In the UK in 1971 we changed from using a pound divided into 20
> shillings and a shilling in 12 pence to the new "metric" system of 100
> pence in a pound. Everyone was forced to make the change, you couldn't
> continue with the old system. Initially people complained and got
> confused, but very quickly afterwards everybody realised it was a far
> superior and easier to use system. *Nobody* I have ever spoken to (who
> was alive at the time) would want to go back to the old system and
> everyone generally thinks it was a good decision. At the time however I
> bet there were loads of people against it. People just don't like change.

LOL
It is really perversity (and trolling). I was hoping the Zarathustra comment
would give it away. (I was referring to my utterances not Warp.)
I went through a lot of effort and pain (literally) to learn and remember that
there were 240 pee (written d) in a pound and there were fourteen pounds in a
stone etc. The only thing that you can say for the imperial system is that it
keeps your mind active, by necessity. Well It was romantic sounding too. I mean
39 thou makes it sound as if you know what you are talking about and spending a
bawbee or a florin has a ring to it.

complain and it is easier to use.

Stephen the Elder (but not of the kirk)

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