Maybe someone can explain to me what Ralf
is driving at here. The question sounds possibly disingenous
to me so I didn't want to waste time on in the
"mock metric update" thread.

this was in "update".

I said:
brief progress report July 21 2002, 2:38 AM

Now we have a system where
c is a billion
G is a millioth
e is a quintillionth
h-cross is 10**-33

(in marked contrast with metric where these numbers
are definitely not powers of thousand)

and furthermore the system has the handy half-foot bryan
and gallon (cubic bryan)
and mile (ten thousand bryan)
and yard (1/1760 of mile)
and stone (1/3 of mass unit)
and pound (1/16 of stone)
and ounce (1/16 of pound)
and various other good auxilliary options
connected by pretty decent ratios
so it is working out
better than might have been expected...


NOTICE I DIDN'T SAY THAT THE NUMBER 1760 WAS
wonderful OR ANYTHING, it is just what you use as
a ratio if you already have a normal-sized
mile and want to define a normal-sized yard
BUT RALF REPLIED:

Ralf

Re: Mock Metric Update July 21 2002, 5:03 AM

I still don't see how the number 1760 is superior to the number 1000 in a decimal counting system...

Ralf

So how do I reply to Ralf? I could say "READ MY POST"
because of course I did not suggest that 1760 is superior to 1000 in a decimal counting system. and
am not sure what that means in this case.

Or Ralf, maybe you would like to be a little more
clear about what you are really asking?

the main thing, Ralf and anybody else listening, is
that the Bryan base units

bone (1.6 cm length unit)
dog (48 pounds mass unit, 22 kg)
snicker (1/18.55 second time unit)

derive from setting natural constants c,G,h-cross
equal to some powers of thousand, namely
billion, millionth, 10**-33
and that when one does that one automatically
gets the familiar mile and gallon as auxilliary
units. Bryan Parry recently (see the update thread)
suggested how to get the stone as auxilliary unit.
My intial focus was on the bare purely decimal system
consisting of the base units and the natural constants, however the auxilliary units are a
nice feature too because they accord with tradition.

So Ralf if you want to clarify what you are asking
about 1760 we can do it here where it won't take
up space on the update thread.

Isn't the problem actually about Ralf having a complete unified vision of a measuring system? The difference, in my view, is a fundamental difference of mentality and upbringing. Let me elaborate:

Ralf could not understand why we would have 14 lbs to a stone. I asked him that I didn't understand why it was relevant to know how many lbs there were in however many stone. I asked when this knowledge would be required in everyday affairs. Ralf was confused and responded, "well, your scales are presumably in pounds, so how do you know how many stones that is?". The answer is of course that our scales are scaled, as it were, in stone with the little pound divisions between the stone markers- this is how we know our weight in stone.

Now, I could probably give many, perhaps, dozens of examples of this way of thinking, but I think that this is the problem here: People like us (customary/Imperial unit users) do not find it relevant to know how many inches there are in how many ever miles and so on, as we use the specific scale for the specific task ie. we use miles when talking in terms of larg distances (2 miles, 6 miles, 1½miles). We do this as this is the way we percieve these distances- by the mile- and not by the inch, foot or even yard as by using these units we do not *grasp* the distance or the concept any better, as an inch is simply too small. Etc. However, Ralf and many metric folk find it desirable, for some reason, to know how many cm there are in so many kilometres. They believe, probably, that this contributes to our understanding of the problem of the greatness of the distance. The problem, however, is that it does not contribute to our understanding of the distance.

I really hope I am stating myself and my views clearly, but I genuinely think that Ralf may be incapable of understanding that for normal purposes it is entirely irrelevant how many inches there are in a mile.

That is, for science, engineering etc it may very well be desirable to have a bare bones and decimal system, but for everyday purposes, tasks and duties that require common sense, judgment, perception and so on, require units which are more suited to those tasks. You will not, in many everyday tasks, need to be able to see the "whole thing", as it were, but you will be required to see the "little things" and the individual parts, thus, fractional measures and other such things are desired.

I agree totally with both posts, Bryan. And the
other thing is that the 1760 question may just be
an ironical sneer. I suggested that to Ralf
back in the other thread right after his post.
There should be a special gothic font for
that kind of irony because on internet tones of
voice don't come through clearly enough.

But actually I am so delighted by the present
state of BSU!

Familiar ordinary miles are just 100 thousand bone
and dog unit mass is just 3 stone
and gallon is as always cubic bryan

so the traditional units seem to be in complete
harmony with the high-physics pizzazz-full units.
things could hardly be better
we should write Brian Kibble of NPL Teddington and
inform him of the great honor that has been done
to him by how we named the unit of force.

[Ralf was confused and responded, "well, your scales are presumably in pounds, so how do you know how many stones that is?". The answer is of course that our scales are scaled, as it were, in stone with the little pound divisions between the stone markers--this is how we know our weight in stone.]

Bryan you yourself suggested changing stone to 16 pounds and then dog = 3 stone, stone = 16 pound,
pound = 16 ounce. It brings traditional and bryan
units into a very nice agreement. But now in a discreet and offhand way you have gone and pointed out the main difficulty which we must overcome:

all the bathroom scales in Britain say stone is 14 not 16.

So I quote Chaucer to you:

FOR TREWELY, CONFORT NE MIRTHE IS NOON
TO RYDE BY THE WEYE DOUMB AS A STOON;
AND THEREFORE WOL I MAKEN YOW DISPORT,
AS I SEYDE ERST, AND DOON YOW SOM CONFORT.

I leave you now to think of what to doon
about discrepancy twixt stone and stoon.

Just out of curiosity, why are there 14 pounds to the stone?

The stone is never used in the US, so I have little knowlege as to it's origins.

(As an interesting aside, we tend to measure our weight exclusively in pounds. This is soemwhat analogous to measuring your height exclusively in inges, rather than in feet and inches. Perhaps using the stone would make it less complex to visualise weight.)

"(As an interesting aside, we tend to measure our weight exclusively in pounds. This is soemwhat analogous to measuring your height exclusively in inges, rather than in feet and inches. Perhaps using the stone would make it less complex to visualise weight.)"

I'ld say that I agree with this- the stone is a very good "break point" and also enables you, perhaps, to visualise and understand the weight more clearly. I agree, having no stone weight measure, is akin to having no foot measure.

Sorry, the above post was mine.

stone (st)
a traditional British unit of weight, rarely used in the U.S. Originally the stone varied in size, both from place to place and according to the nature of the item being weighed. A stone of sugar was traditionally 8 pounds, while a stone of wool could be as much as 24 pounds. Eventually the stone was standardized at 14 pounds avoirdupois or approximately 6.350 29 kilograms -- a convenient size because it makes the stone equal to exactly 1/2 quarter or 1/8 hundredweight. Today the stone is used mostly for stating the weight of persons or animals. No -s is added for the plural.

IM NOT SUGGESTING THAT THIS MAKES ANYTHING VERY CLEAR BUT ROWLETT'S IS GENERALLY A GOOD ONLINE DICTIONARY OF UNITS and this is what he has.

Rotclar asked about stone, why is it 14 pounds.

One time the BWMA webmaster here relayed something from another website to the effect that stone used to be 16 pounds but the king was petitioned to make it 14 for some reason and he did. It had to do with fishermen and I have never seen the story anywhere else. I am not even sure I remember what BWMA webmaster said.

Rowlett says stone is 14 because that makes it half a "quarter" but why is a "quarter" 28?

Has anyone else light to shed on Rotclar's question?

Bryan you suggested redefining stone to be 16 pounds
and that would really be nice in the context of
the units we were discussing.

But it also confronts us with the terrific conservatism we all have about units (no matter what
brand).

Try changing to see how it feels. I'm currently just two pounds short of 14 stone and if I changed to using this old-style larger stone I would be only 12 stone 2 (also 194 lb).

You for instance might be 12 stone 2 (170 lb) and if we changed over to the old-style stone your weight would be 10 stone 10 (also 170 lb).

It might not feel good for a while to change over.
I am calling it "old-style" stone because of that
story about the fishermen who got stone changed from 16 to 14 by a royal decree nobody remembers when.

If you want to try using old-style stone should we give it a distinctive name like stoon so as to avoid
confusion.

Canadians in Saskatoon call their city "stoon" the
way San Franciscans MAY at some point have called their city "frisco" but definitely don't any more
since tourists started doing it.

So then your weight is 10 stoon 10 and you buy a box
of sticky stars and stick them on the bathroom scales
at stoon points, to make it easy to read.

This then is an experiment to see how stoon works.
Or we can give up this line of development and retrench. I'm happy with whichever seems best to you.

BTW over in Traffic Signs SteveH and Ralf have taken up giving their heights in dual labeling Ralf is 1.95 (6 foot 5) or something and SteveH is 1.80 (5 foot 11) or something. I don't remember the actual numbers. This is very mellow of them and should be encouraged.
Pretty soon I will calculate their heights in bryans, or you can, but that will likely displease them some.

I looked back at the Transport Signs thread
and saw that according to Ralf the average
German adult male height is 1.81m(5'11"). So
then SteveH says "that makes me Mr. Average"
so I guess he is 181m(5'11").
I had misrembered, Ralf's height in meters is
1.85. So the two are only different by
something like 2-and-a-half bone.

The width of two or three littlefingers is all
they differ in height.

So the basic height of these guys is 11 bryan.
11 bryan 2, 11 bryan 4, whatever. a little over
11 bryan.

Seems like a couple of weeks ago you were experimenting with that width-of-palm-with-thumb-extended length.
Interesting because cubing it gives gallon and
tenthousand of it is mile. And now we have learned that the height of some guys is 11 bryan. Also going by what Ralf says the average height of male Germans is 11 bryan.

10 bryan is probably fairly typical of women
since it is around 5 feet 4. We could ask Sigga vala
if she is still around.

The process of getting used to new scales of measurement is slow.

I hope you have some small stickers or chalk marks
on the weight scale to show stoon. I'd hate to be
the only one doing it.

I am 11 bryan 3½ (6'1).

I will add the stickers to my scale this very minute!

Also, to note: Leonard, In this new system (BSU) we have bones and Bryans and so forth, but presumably inches are still in. I say this, as we would obviously wish to keep inches, feet and yards, however, we also have Bryans, bones and so forth. My thoughts on this are that Bryans will be made irrelevant and will become redundant if people continue to use feet, yards and inches, unless of course, the foot is changed to be, as it once was in the Germanic countries, two "Bryans".
I think that the whole point of this whole project, whether we are talking pound-inch-trice, BSU or not, is to also see how compatible the system would be if adapted for everyday life (that is why we are looking into these auxilliary units afterall, is it not?). Bearing this in mind, I find it desirable to retain feet and inches. I was just wondering, however, how this would impact on things if we made a foot (an auxiliary unit) to be two Bryans (twenty bones). As, afterall, the unit "Bryan" may well be very handy (no pun intended) but if it is not familiar to people, then it is no good as a non-scientific unit.

I'm not sure what the point of this post is, other than to say that we do not want to (at least, I don't) create a system of measures whereby the numbers are related by tens. Or more accurately, I would not wish a system like that, when it is meant to be used by ordinary people.

You do wish, do you not (just to clarify things in my mind), to have a mile as being defined as this planckian length, but to have it divided up into 1760 yards and so forth as we have today? I ask, as you are measuring people in Bryans, yet if we do not wish for this system to impinge on people's everyday lives (including it's decimal mentality), why measure people in Bryans? Why not just measure them in feet still, but one of these new feet (which are lsightly different in size). I am curious as to whether you wish for people to measure themselves in Bryans or to continue in feet. You see, this kind of dual system is all well and good and is similar to the Roman system in many respects, however, Bones, in everyday circles, would be competing with inches and bryans with feet, as far as I see it, with one or the other forcing through and ending up victorious.
Or not. Afterall, this "Bryan" unit was in use in England from Saxon times right up until 300 years after the new foot was introduced- the "bryan" AKA shaftment, was reinterpretted as 6 inches (and not the 6.soandso it was before hand). Now, considering this, I feel that bryans, feet, yards, inches and bones may all end up coexisting in peoples everyday lives, but I am just curious as to your thoughts on all of this (units eventually "triumphing" over others etc) and whether you wish to convert, eventually, non-scientists/mathemeticians/engineers to using a decimal system.

I am not criticising anything here, but am just curious as to your thoughts on certain things, and thought that I would expound on this a little peraps.

Anyway, hello and good luck,

Bryan.

yes it is good you reminded me what we are
supposed to be about
heights in bryans are irrelvant
(although the idea you mentioned of a two bryan
foot is intriguing)

but this kind of stone I was writing "stoon"
is relevant and needs to be tried out

I am heartened and reassured by your saying
you will put stickers or marks on your scale
and I hope it has a large dial, so that is easy

these sound like such little things
but there is always a first time something is tried

Our weight scale is a really proper one with a big dial
going from 0 to 300 lbs. and there is room out at the edge of the dial to put stickers.

So 160 lbs (where I put the first star, standing for 10 stoon) is near the top of the dial.

And then I put stars at 176, 192, 208, standing for 11,12,and 13. Now it is really easy to read off weights in stoon and pound.

There is another kind of scale where an internal wheel spins
when you stand on it and you look through a glass
window to see where the wheel comes to rest. No external dial.
I hope few people have that no-dial kind.

You are absolutely correct about what I want. The
technical mass unit I favor is DOG but for everyday
use I think stone (1/3 dog) and pound (1/16 stone)
very convenient and would like to try them out.

What people weigh in dogs does not matter except in technical contexts. Dog (48 pounds) is what you get if you set c, G, h-bar equal to billion millionth and some other power of thousand namely 10**-33.

Likewise about length units. the unit I favor is BONE and consequently a mile (half a percent longer than present, not very different). People can continue using all the usual fractions of mile they are used to. And so their heights stay in feet and inches.
But in technical contexts the base unit is bone
which (if an inch is 1/36 of 1/1760 of mile) is
exactly 0.6336 inch. Again bone is what you get when
you set the natural constants I mentioned equal to powers of thousand.

The complexity is a little terrifying (to me as
a person of simple decimalian instincts) but a bargain is a bargain. I want us to arrive at a package where the traditional units are clearly visible on one side and the flip side is extremely
inviting to scientists (because basic constants are powers of thousand). So in practical terms I want a
two-sided something that is satisfactory to both of us with our separate viewpoints.

>Now, considering this, I feel that bryans, feet, >yards, inches and bones may all end up coexisting in >peoples everyday lives,

I have reread your recent post. This idea stood out
and presented what was for me an exciting possibility.

I don't mind variety in units, in fact like it. If what
you describe could happen it would be fine with me.

I like the approach of being pragmatic and empirical
and trying out working and thinking in different units to see how it goes. But I failed to interest other people in trying out the 16 pound stone.

I personally have been trying out the 12 pound stone
(a kind of dozen, not that I want to impose 12 on
everything I just wanted to see how it would be in
this one case) and for me personally it seems to
work a bit better than either 16 or 14. Of course this
is academic in a way because there is no sign that
stone will become popular where I live, but it is
all part of finding out how units work.

BTW so you are 11 and half bryan tall (or something, I forget exactly, whatever 73 inches is. For some reason I thought your weight was around 170 pound which makes you something of a skinny beanpole. (this is all on the internet so need not coincide precisely with reality)

Leonard, in the "Save the Pint" thread, I suggested making a 24 fl oz pint (thus a gallon of 12 lbs) and making the stone also to be 12 pounds- it may work.

My build: "A skinny beanpole"- indeed. I do not have a stomach at all (in that way) but am far from being, as you so flatteringly describe me, a "skinny beanpole". Don't worry, you haven't offended me at all, just made me laugh. I am indeed slim, but am not a stick. My weight, however, over the last year or so, has dropped by about a stone, but my weight is still perfectly normal I assure you :-)

glad I did not offend with
exaggerated characterization of build!
today I shall peel off the markers at
...160, 176, 192,...
and stick on new marks at
...144, 156, 168, 180, 192,...
and try out those for a while
(I have already been testing
12pound stone as a unit to think in
sporadically and find it agreeable.
getting rid of a stone of weight
seems like a good idea, wouldn't
hurt for me to attempt either
and a reasonable size for a weightloss
target.

was obviously by Leonard and not me.

Oops, I must have confused
the "message title" blank with the
"name" blank when I typed that.
Apologies.

I've been looking for other people
willing to try out recording and thinking
of weight in dozenpound stone but without
success. Any ideas as to how to proceed
with that one?