Metric and how not to use it.

Legend has it that the planet was divided into two halves. The dividing line is called the Meridian. Naturally, dividing things in half is always unfair to one party, so to keep the other half of the globe from becoming aware of how much they were cheated, the metric system was devised so that countries like France and Great Britain wouldn't know they ended up with the short end of the stick.

Weird Harold wrote:

drothgery wrote:Remember that Bud Light is about as much US beer as Foster's is Australian beer...

Doesn't matter who makes it, it is US beer because "Canoe Sex" is what sells in the US.

Bill Woods wrote: (Old joke)
A sample of American beer was sent in for testing.
The result: "Your horse has diabetes."

cthia wrote:Only the American Quarter horse produces beer. By the, err, quart of course.

The only difference between a brewery and a horse is a license to sell.

One of my foreign friends . . .

"I'll never figure out why some American breweries age their beer. Aged urine is still piss." LOL

Lord Skimper wrote:I under stand that RFC doesn't really under stand metric, I lived through the conversion times in Canada and in Canada we still use Miles and think of Km as a type of distant similar to a mile, even though it isn't.

a Km is 1000 metres. a Mile is 1 mile.

14,000,000 Km is 14,000,000,000 metres or 14 Giga metres or 14 Gm.

1,000 Km is 1,000,000 metres or 1 Mega metre or 1 Mm

1,000,000,000 Km is 1,000,000,000,000 metres or 1 Tera metre or 1Tm.

The speed of light is ~186,000 miles per second or 300 Mm per second.

Metric is based on the metre for distance. and 10's 100's and 1000's or many 1000's or 1000th of a metre not a Kilo metre.

Oh, I understand it. I'm just writing primarily for an audience that doesn't use it and would have had a hell of a time if I used the correct prefixes for the metric units above "kilo." Please recall that I started writing these books 25 years ago, when most people didn't think in terms of "mags" and "gigs" for their home computers. In fact, when I started writing this, I was writing on an Osborne portable computer with a pair of 92K single-side floppy drives. Yes, yes — I started the books that long ago. In fact, I'd written the first two books before Al Gore got around to inventing the Internet.

As a result, while most of us poor benighted Amuricans could get as far as kilo = 1,000 even back in the day, the majority didn't think in mega or giga or tera because they didn't get used in day-to-day life. If you'd like, I could do a global reedit that fixes them all just for the metric crowd, but I didn't see the point when I started writing for a (rather smaller) purely US audience who wouldn't automatically recognize the proper numbers of units referenced. So I talked in terms of "thousands of kilometers" or "megameters," and I even spelled both "metre" and "tonne" incorrectly for the same reason. So my present usage is sort of grandfathered in, in addition to (probably) still making more sense to a lot of my readers.

I am sure that a fair percentage of my US readership would have been able to take it in stride even 25 years ago; I frankly doubt that the majority of my US readership could have. In any case, I'm not going to change equines in mid-watercourse, so I'm afraid you're all stuck with it.

runsforcelery wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:I under stand that RFC doesn't really under stand metric, I lived through the conversion times in Canada and in Canada we still use Miles and think of Km as a type of distant similar to a mile, even though it isn't.

a Km is 1000 metres. a Mile is 1 mile.

14,000,000 Km is 14,000,000,000 metres or 14 Giga metres or 14 Gm.

1,000 Km is 1,000,000 metres or 1 Mega metre or 1 Mm

1,000,000,000 Km is 1,000,000,000,000 metres or 1 Tera metre or 1Tm.

The speed of light is ~186,000 miles per second or 300 Mm per second.

Metric is based on the metre for distance. and 10's 100's and 1000's or many 1000's or 1000th of a metre not a Kilo metre.

Oh, I understand it. I'm just writing primarily for an audience that doesn't use it and would have had a hell of a time if I used the correct prefixes for the metric units above "kilo." Please recall that I started writing these books 25 years ago, when most people didn't think in terms of "mags" and "gigs" for their home computers. In fact, when I started writing this, I was writing on an Osborne portable computer with a pair of 92K single-side floppy drives. Yes, yes — I started the books that long ago. In fact, I'd written the first two books before Al Gore got around to inventing the Internet.

As a result, while most of us poor benighted Amuricans could get as far as kilo = 1,000 even back in the day, the majority didn't think in mega or giga or tera because they didn't get used in day-to-day life. If you'd like, I could do a global reedit that fixes them all just for the metric crowd, but I didn't see the point when I started writing for a (rather smaller) purely US audience who wouldn't automatically recognize the proper numbers of units referenced. So I talked in terms of "thousands of kilometers" or "megameters," and I even spelled both "metre" and "tonne" incorrectly for the same reason. So my present usage is sort of grandfathered in, in addition to (probably) still making more sense to a lot of my readers.

I am sure that a fair percentage of my US readership would have been able to take it in stride even 25 years ago; I frankly doubt that the majority of my US readership could have. In any case, I'm not going to change equines in mid-watercourse, so I'm afraid you're all stuck with it.

What!!! An Osborne? When you coulda had a V8? - err Remington X? LOL

It should have been obvious you were writing to appeal to your American based audience. But even if all of your captive American audience were intimately familiar with the metric system, I'm sure you also wanted to attract more of that American audience. So I think you were spot on in your decision.

I'd like to say though, that you may be selling your audience short, inasmuch as they who actually cared about the nuts and bolts of missile acceleration and the like, would not have been intimidated by the metric system. Just like the foreign names in SoV, it would have added a measure of authenticity, or "rightness." IMO.

And those who don't care to go snooping under the hood at missile performance and the like, wouldn't care either way what the unit of measure is.

Thirty years ago, finding a female applying for a career in the computer industry was much of an oxymoron as a blonde with brains.

I knew that RFC understood metric just fine when I finally purchased one of his books. I can not remember which book it was or which edition, but the cover art didnt seem promising. I opened to a random page to be treated to a battle scene that was so blatantly analogous to old sailing ships of the wall that I was disgusted. Then I noticed the numbers on ship ranges, missile accellerations, velocities and flight times. After checking the numbers, I realized that David Weber understood not just metric but the math just fine.

Just FYI, I always presumed that Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle were getting their math right because of their educational backgrounds. Then I began thinking things through and checking the math. Corresponding with the late Doctor Pournelle (where is RFC's condolence message on the well wishing board?) resulted in the understanding that some things they got wrong while other things were literary license.

A few of the more interesting errors are:

The fusion powered photon drive used by the Empire ships in THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE are theoretically possible but the theoretical specific implulse is only 1/20 of the ISP of a much simpler fusion rocket. Pournelle and Niven simply presumed that the ISP of the photon drive would be better than the ISP of the fusion rocket because the exhaust velocity is Cee. The problem is that the limiting factor is the energy density of the fusion fuel.

After checking my math, Pournelle suggested that if I would build a working fusion rocket and a fusion powered photon drive, he would eagerly test them to compare performance.

Niven and Pournelle were very aware that they were taking liberties with Motie lightsail performance for THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE. Given the stated dimensions and mass of the the lightsail, they should not have needed to operate the laser cannon for more than a month much less decades to launch. Lightsails with thin film materials which can have extremely impressive performance. The presumption of absurdly low performance enabled the literary device of a battery of lauching lasers that were poweful enough to be the brightest object in the New Caledonia night sky for decades.

Just FYI, the math for a lightsail launching from a star is almost identicle to the equations for gravitational potential energy. The big trick is to subtract gravitational potential energy from "photonic" potential energy. The surface area to mass ratio of the sail dictates potential performance. More massive, brighter burning stars can generate higher launch velocities than less massive, dimmer stars in spite of their stronger gravity.

runsforcelery wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:I under stand that RFC doesn't really under stand metric, I lived through the conversion times in Canada and in Canada we still use Miles and think of Km as a type of distant similar to a mile, even though it isn't.

a Km is 1000 metres. a Mile is 1 mile.

14,000,000 Km is 14,000,000,000 metres or 14 Giga metres or 14 Gm.

1,000 Km is 1,000,000 metres or 1 Mega metre or 1 Mm

1,000,000,000 Km is 1,000,000,000,000 metres or 1 Tera metre or 1Tm.

The speed of light is ~186,000 miles per second or 300 Mm per second.

Metric is based on the metre for distance. and 10's 100's and 1000's or many 1000's or 1000th of a metre not a Kilo metre.

Oh, I understand it. I'm just writing primarily for an audience that doesn't use it and would have had a hell of a time if I used the correct prefixes for the metric units above "kilo." Please recall that I started writing these books 25 years ago, when most people didn't think in terms of "mags" and "gigs" for their home computers. In fact, when I started writing this, I was writing on an Osborne portable computer with a pair of 92K single-side floppy drives. Yes, yes — I started the books that long ago. In fact, I'd written the first two books before Al Gore got around to inventing the Internet.

As a result, while most of us poor benighted Amuricans could get as far as kilo = 1,000 even back in the day, the majority didn't think in mega or giga or tera because they didn't get used in day-to-day life. If you'd like, I could do a global reedit that fixes them all just for the metric crowd, but I didn't see the point when I started writing for a (rather smaller) purely US audience who wouldn't automatically recognize the proper numbers of units referenced. So I talked in terms of "thousands of kilometers" or "megameters," and I even spelled both "metre" and "tonne" incorrectly for the same reason. So my present usage is sort of grandfathered in, in addition to (probably) still making more sense to a lot of my readers.

I am sure that a fair percentage of my US readership would have been able to take it in stride even 25 years ago; I frankly doubt that the majority of my US readership could have. In any case, I'm not going to change equines in mid-watercourse, so I'm afraid you're all stuck with it.

cthia wrote:Thirty years ago, finding a female applying for a career in the computer industry was much of an oxymoron as a blonde with brains.

When I left graduate school in the mid-70s I got a job as a computer programmer at a financial services company for business software. From the beginning I had both women co-workers and managers. After retiring with almost 40 years experience, I believe that the female programmers I worked with were equal in ability, intelligence and drive.

cthia wrote:Thirty years ago, finding a female applying for a career in the computer industry was much of an oxymoron as a blonde with brains.

Actually, in the mid-'80s about a third of the people majoring in computer science were women.

https://jaxenter.com/women-in-computer- ... 33646.html

There was an article by a female engineering professor who argued that the main issue with getting women to complete degrees in STEM is that all the non-STEM professors and TAs constantly discourage them.

runsforcelery wrote:Snip... In fact, when I started writing this, I was writing on an Osborne portable computer with a pair of 92K single-side floppy drives. Yes, yes — I started the books that long ago.
...snip

Ah yes the Osborne-1, I remember it well, my first "portable"

Bill Woods wrote:

cthia wrote:Thirty years ago, finding a female applying for a career in the computer industry was much of an oxymoron as a blonde with brains.

Actually, in the mid-'80s about a third of the people majoring in computer science were women.

https://jaxenter.com/women-in-computer- ... 33646.html

That's about right Bill. I worked for a company in Silicon Valley who spearheaded a national project to fund and attract women via full scholarships and by aggressively soliciting and courting potential talent with a plethora of incentives, guaranteeing jobs after graduation, and optionally in many cases, running concurrent with OJT. That's when the national program that quickly became known as Work Study was founded. When I began programming, I didn't run into a single female in the computer field. At any of the several companies I was part of in the Valley, or came into contact with, in any discipline other than secretarial. Even artists working in the field tended to be male. I did hear of a few, but as I said, they were so rare they were jokingly referred to as oxymorons.

Now, that project would have kicked off in the late 70's, when millions were poured into the many participating programs around the country. Seeing an overall increase in female applicants by about a third by the mid to late 80's should have been just about right. The area most immediately needing attention would have been in junior high to high school, where guidance counselors were needed to steer qualified females into the sciences instead of the traditional disciplines of secretarial, business, home economics etc., etc. Even then, do note the difference of "current enrollment figures" vs "current professional career applicants." For the most part they were still "cooking in the many pots about campuses," so to speak.

In fact, that program drew national attention and appeal and a byproduct of it was the light shed on the fact that the same strategy should be emplaced for the black minority as well. Which was directly responsible for large grants being poured into historically black Engineering schools to ramp up the sea of qualified African American applicants in Engineering. Ron McNair of the NASA space program was a poster child for that mission. When the Challenger disaster occurred in 1986, these schools saw even increased funding for traditionally black Engineering schools.