It's never too late for holiday greetings, so Happy New Year!
A while back I was musing on some possibly dire implications of artificial intelligence and now I feel like Chicken Little. The sky isn't falling, at least not yet. A recent article, Superintelligence, The Idea That Eats Smart People, did a fine job of refuting my misgivings. I'd post a link but I want to start the new year on the right foot; the title should be enough for anyone to find the article.
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The tale of the freighter running aground reminded me of a much more expensive mistake. Didn't one of NASA's missions to Mars fail because someone used metric units instead of imperial units (or vice versa)? And then there's the anecdotes about American drivers getting speeding tickets in Canada because the posted limit was "100."
Although the metric system is superior in many ways, especially for calculations, it lacks a certain warmth of the imperial system. Knowing that the measurement of a foot is related to the length of a human foot is something I find oddly comforting. Same thing with the mile, a thousand paces from the days of ancient Rome. Sure, they can be inaccurate, but at the time it was close enough, and eyeball measurements are easier with the imperial system. I can more easily visualize something that is about two inches long rather than fifty millimeters long but maybe I need more practice. And don't get me started on horsepower, another part of the rich cultural history of imperial measurements.
What bugs me about the metric system is that for linear measurement you go from millimeter to centimeter, and then jump to the meter. What happened to the decimeter? You never hear about that one, nor the deciliter for volume measurements. It will be a sad day when I have to order 5 deciliters of Guinness instead of a pint or go to a deli and get about 200 grams of pastrami. It's just wrong.
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My guess about the usage of the number twelve can be traced to the usage of lunar calendar, way back in the day. The lunar calendar doesn't get much use today except for determining religious holidays like Easter, which is always moving around: the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. It must have been interesting when the religious bigwigs all got together to figure that one out. Wine may have been a factor.
As for dozens (from an old French word for "group of twelve"), well, why not? It's a quantity that is neither too big nor too small for many things. A "Goldilocks" measurement, if you will, and as Uncle Ken mentioned, easily divisible by many factors.
Not to be confused with doing the dozens, where "Your momma is so fat that...."
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"I'm unaware of base 3 in computer science, and Old Dog neglects to mention the coolest base in computer science which is the base 16 with it's A's through F's."
Ternary (Base 3) operations are interesting. Instead of the 0 and 1 values of binary operations they use the values of -1, 0, and +1. Certain kinds of calculations can be done more efficiently with ternary operations, or so I've read.
And no, the coolest base was not neglected; read the post again. I think Uncle Ken likes to yank my chain to see if his posts are being carefully read. Like his reference to "schillings" instead of shillings, but since he is a true baseball fan I can understand the lapse.
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In the spirit of perpetuating imperial measurement, it just occurred to me that one city block in Chicago is equal to one furlong. It may not be possible to work this into everyday conversation but is worth a try for the amusement value alone.
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