changing my mind

[mellowtigger]

There has been some evidence in recent years that our language affects our thoughts.  I want to be pro-active in this matter, so I've decided to make a stronger push in my life to include 3 specific changes.

metrics:  As philbutrin pointed out recently, the USA looks rather silly as a holdout on officially adopting the metric system.  America has been in the process of converting since 1975.  I remember attending classrooms where we talked about the new system and our conversion to it.  I also remember 1982 when President Reagan defunded and closed the office that was supposed to be helping the nation make the conversion.  We got stuck with liter Coke bottles but gallons of milk and gasoline.

I've been in the habit of posting temperatures in both Fahrenheit and Celsius.  That practice ends now.  I will post only in Celsius.

I have an easier time (because of the aforementioned school classes) thinking of small units of distance in terms of meters and centimeters.  Harder, however, are long distances.  It doesn't help that roadway signs are no longer posted in dual metrics.  Thank you again, President Reagan.  It will be difficult to figure out my vehicle mileage.  I'll still call it "mileage" rather than "kilometerage".

history:  Calendars, in addition to helping us predict future events, are supposed to help us relate current events to past ones.  I've never been able fully to wrap my mind around our current year-counting system.  Enough of that silliness.  I've grown lax in adhering to my Recorded Human History timeline.  I'll work harder at posting dates in this RHH format.  Oversimplified, just add 4,000 to the current Gregorian year and you'll have your RHH date.  Welcome to the year 6010!  *cheer*

Signing/dating my checks will be confusing to me, since I'm guessing that banks would not appreciate or adopt the new and more sensible calendar.  I'll have to convert to Gregorian years when I pay debts.

gender:  I'm glad that English doesn't insist upon gender for every single noun.  Pronouns, however, are an obvious holdout to older ways of thinking.  I dislike "s/he" which is readable but unpronounceable.  I dislike "they" as a neutral singular.  I have not found a consistent usage among transgender folk yet, but I'm going to choose one now.  I'm selecting a modified Xe vocabulary.  This option probably feels more natural to me only because of prior exposure.  This language was proposed by Jim Sinclair (genderless autistic human), and I spent a few years reading xer email communications.

The letter "X" is pronounced like the letter "Z", as in the familiar corporate name "Xerox".

• xe (plural they); replaces he, she, and it
• xem (plural them); replaces him, her, and it
• xer (plural their); replaces his, her, and its

I am changing the official "xir" or "xyr" spelling into "xer" just to maintain vowel consistency.  I very much prefer that every vowel be either "e" or "i" instead of being mixed.

Comments

[pi3832.livejournal.com]

I've always found it odd that when I'm working as a chemist, much of what I do uses SI units, but I don't use them at all outside of work. And I can't really translate between the two. I know that you can't run a GC lower than about 35 C without some sort of coolant (CO2 or LN2), but if you tell me the current temperature outside in "C" I'll just give you a blank stare.

Besides, in general, units of measure are completely FUBAR. Yes, switching to SI would help, but it would hardly "make things easy." E.g., pipe "sizes" are determined by the inner diameter. Which is nice for being able to quickly estimate flow through a given piece of pipe, but it also means that the outer diameter for "half-inch pipe" varies quite a bit depending on the material of construction of the pipe. (Conversely, tubing--which is merely really tiny pipes--is named by the outer diameter.)

Then there's the land of IT, where one kilobyte is 1024 bits, and to convert from Mbps to KBps you multiple by 128 (or maybe 125, or perhaps 122--no, no, really, I've found references for all of those).

While I have always admired your will power to stand on principle, I don't think the SI thing is a great idea. The next time you walk into a hardware store, your head will explode. Hell, mine does, and I'm not trying the least bit to encourage SI usage.

PS: Weird trivia. The Fahrenheit scale makes more sense than it appears to at first. The freezing and boiling point of water are 180 degrees apart--which is reasonable, given clocks and degrees of angles, and other base-60 units. (<yakkowakkodot>Thank you Sumeria! (http://www.metafilter.com/65751/Why-did-Sumerians-use-base-60-mathematics)</yakkowakkodot>) And 100 F was originally set at normal body temperature. Unfortunately, everyone's normal body temperature isn't exactly the same, and the early thermometer technology wasn't very precise, so now it's around 98.6.

PPS: Indeed, C isn't that great either, since it has negative numbers. How can you have a negative temperature? If you're going to switch to SI, go for Kelvin temperatures. Then your calculations will always work out properly.

[mellowtigger]

Yeah, computer programmers really screwed themselves over by using decimal naming convention for a non-decimal computing system. *sigh*

Meh. When I walk into a hardware store, my head explodes anyway, what with that sudden testosterone surge. "Wait, what am I doing here? Oh yeah, just keep focused on the merchandise not the employees." *laugh*

I half-remember the base-60 connection to Fahrenheit, but I think that's the first I'd heard of the 100F temperature setting. That's a neat idea.

I thought of the Kelvin switch too. Yes, it makes much more sense. Up here at higher latitudes, however, much of the year is spent hovering around the freezing temperature of water. Scaling the temperature gauge for that significant point also makes sense.

Personally, I think it would be interesting to do the math and see what comes of a temperature scale based on the freezing point of water at zero and the warmth of the average human body at 100. This kind of scale would be quite useful in determining habitability grades as humanity goes interplanetary. They are both arbitrary numbers, but exceeding those bounds produces an immediate psychological impression of "stressful environment".

[bluebear2.livejournal.com]

To me it's funny reading this discussion. Who uses fahrenheit anymore?

The one neat thing about fahrenheit though is that you can use the pun "Life begins at 40". It's said by refrigerator people because below 40ºF is where food should be stored. Above that it can go bad.