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Considering I respect Orwell's insights about lot of things this passage is especially dim: "There is, for instance, effectively no unit between the metre, whi
by fsloth 11y ago
Considering I respect Orwell's insights about lot of things this passage is especially dim:
"There is, for instance, effectively no unit between the metre, which is more than a yard, and the centimetre, which is less than half an inch"
Between the metre (100 centimetres) and the centimetre there is the "ten centimetres" - which we use extensively.
Human hand is pretty good even in metric system. My thumb is 2 cm wide, and if I extend my hand the distance between the tops of my thumb and pinky is roughly 20 cm.
- mc32 11y agoThe imperial system is better positioned for those who are not exposed to maths. These systems developed before literacy and don't require literacy for its fundamentals. Of course it's a moot point these days, but this is why it's a more humanist system of weights and measures. The imperial system gives you more humanist whole units. Inches, yards, furlongs, miles, leagues, not to mention the less usual (today) digit, finger, palm, barleycorn, etc. Pounds, stone, hundredweight, woolsack, tonne, etc.
- tdsamardzhiev 11y agoThe 10cm unit actually even has a name - a decimetre :)
- fsloth 11y agoYes, but that's not what we use in vernacular (in finnish, that is) :)