Fahrenheit 65
That's the approximate temperature right now in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and it couldn't feel better. Overcast and 65 is about ideal for me. And though it would feel just as good to me if somebody told me it was 18 degress Celsius, I much prefer the Fahrenheit reading.
I am willing to concede that for the most part the metric system makes more sense than the English system. I am even willing to concede that the Celsius scale makes more sense for the purpose of scientific experiments, but I get really mad by people uncritically repeating the mantra that Celsius makes more sense than Fahrenheit for the purpose of everyday usage (I don't get mad about much, but for some reason this does the trick).
O.K., water freezes at 0 and boils at 100 rather than 32 and 212 respectively. I get that. But that doesn't automatically make it a better scale for everyday use. For the average person on the street, the Fahrenheit scale better represents what you are feeling. "0" means really cold, "30" means pretty cold, "50" means moderate, "70" means warm, and "100" means really hot. In more scientific terms, it has wider gradients which allow for better accuracy (Celsius has tried to compensate by using decimals. Nice try but it still sucks).
That felt better to get that off my chest. Perhaps in the future I'll write about my other pet peeves: people who call our president "George Bush" and people who believe that the word "their" is inadequate as a singular gender-neutral pronoun.
I am willing to concede that for the most part the metric system makes more sense than the English system. I am even willing to concede that the Celsius scale makes more sense for the purpose of scientific experiments, but I get really mad by people uncritically repeating the mantra that Celsius makes more sense than Fahrenheit for the purpose of everyday usage (I don't get mad about much, but for some reason this does the trick).
O.K., water freezes at 0 and boils at 100 rather than 32 and 212 respectively. I get that. But that doesn't automatically make it a better scale for everyday use. For the average person on the street, the Fahrenheit scale better represents what you are feeling. "0" means really cold, "30" means pretty cold, "50" means moderate, "70" means warm, and "100" means really hot. In more scientific terms, it has wider gradients which allow for better accuracy (Celsius has tried to compensate by using decimals. Nice try but it still sucks).
That felt better to get that off my chest. Perhaps in the future I'll write about my other pet peeves: people who call our president "George Bush" and people who believe that the word "their" is inadequate as a singular gender-neutral pronoun.
posted by Azor at 10:33 AM
7 Comments:
celcius is way better. your arguments are stupid and obviously your a stubborn cow.
i have a question. why would you get mad at people calling your president by his name? i didn't get that part.
maybe you should write a rant about miles vs. kilometres.
i don't agree with the fahrenheit thing, but whatever.
do you like green money or coloured money better?
Way to crusade for the Fahrenheit scale. You really know how to root for the underdog.
I like that Canadians have signs that show someone buckeling up with the word "compulsary." I don't think I've seen and/or heard the word "compulsary" anywhere except for Canada.
Anonymous, our president is George W. Bush. George Bush was his Dad. Subtle but real distinction.
Tim, I don't think popularity should be a factor when evaluating how righteous a cause is. However, there is small but powerful group of metric elitists who I am addressing with this post. A.J. Jacobs is one of them, for example.
Oh yeah, anonymous, about the money question...Don't care.
George Doubleya?
Right on! Fahrenheit is a much better scale, for no other reason than it's greater accuracy. There's just something wrong with a scale where the difference between cool (66) and warm (71) is less than 3 degrees (18.8 vs 21.6).
Also, after living in Hungary for a few months, I too noticed the use of "compulsary" in place of "required" or something similar. Turns out "compulsary" is the British equivilant to "required." I made a point of trying to Americanize the Hungarian's English while there.
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