Decimal Time

[Tom Biasi]

On 9/1/2017 1:57 PM, rickman wrote:

Here:

I will rephrase my statement.  The resistance to metric was less than the
resistance we have to our current President.

 

[Robert Roland]

On Thu, 31 Aug 2017 22:00:33 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

We presently have a large number of convenient time increments
which would not be so convenient in the new system.

The human animal has a very strong preference to continue to do what
it is used to. It probably has a psychological name and also an
evolutionary significance. In some cases, it may be a good thing, but
in other cases, it hampers our progress tremendously.

Your post demonstrates this perfectly. You are trying to invent
something new, but you keep getting stuck in your old ways, the ways
that you are so used to.

Here in Norway, we used to read numbers between 20 and 100 with the
tens before the ones, like the Danes and Germans still do. So, 24
would read as "four and twenty". 23,795 would read as "three and
twenty thousand seven hundred and five and ninety". Imagine the number
of mistakes that were made when trying to write down a number that
someone spoke. As the phone system made its introduction, the need to
write down long numbers increased, so the problem became more
apparent.

In 1951, the government decided that we would end the insanity and
convert to the system that the Swedes and English use, where the
digits are read in the same order they are written. Since then, the
school children have been thought the new system, and the state
broadcaster has used the new system exclusively (except quite a few
slip-ups, of course).

There is a clear trend, where the old method is more prevalent among
older people. Even still, people who were born twenty years after the
change was officially made, still often use the old way today.

As you can see, changes take huge amounts of time. Even a small,
simple change like that, after more than 60 years, we are probably not
even half way there.

One morning in the early fifties, a military officer spoke to his
battalion: "As of today, we no longer say four and twenty, but two and
forty". He was simply so set in his ways that he was unable to break
free of them, even when he tried.

As I mentioned in another post, we keep the second, the day and the
year. Hours, minutes weeks, months all get thrown away. We may need to
introduce a couple of new units, but that will work itself out
automatically.
--
RoRo

 

[Robert Roland]

On Fri, 1 Sep 2017 10:28:49 +0200, Look165 <look165@numericable.fr>
wrote:

>The animal bodies are regulated by the 24h system.

No animal has any concept of what an hour is. If we humans decide to
divide the day into 173 in stead of 24, the animals wouldn't even
notice any difference.

Of course, the cows expect to be milked at the same time every day,
but they don't care if the farmer calls it 6 o'clock or 32.4 o'didly.
--
RoRo

 

[Mike Coon]

In article <4ffjqc95c83i9np8982hqpff89cruj20v3@4ax.com>, fake@ddress.no
says...

Of course, the cows expect to be milked at the same time every day,
but they don't care if the farmer calls it 6 o'clock or 32.4 o'didly.

And probably on solar time, too. Except that cows get used to the drift
if the farmer insists on using clock time...

Mike.

 

[rickman]

Tom Biasi wrote on 9/1/2017 2:18 PM:

On 9/1/2017 1:57 PM, rickman wrote:

Here:
I will rephrase my statement. The resistance to metric was less than the
resistance we have to our current President.

Lol! Discussion ended and I didn't even have to mention Nazis.

--

Rick C

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms,
on the centerline of totality since 1998

 

[rickman]

Robert Roland wrote on 9/1/2017 4:06 PM:

On Thu, 31 Aug 2017 22:00:33 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

We presently have a large number of convenient time increments
which would not be so convenient in the new system.

The human animal has a very strong preference to continue to do what
it is used to. It probably has a psychological name and also an
evolutionary significance. In some cases, it may be a good thing, but
in other cases, it hampers our progress tremendously.

Your post demonstrates this perfectly. You are trying to invent
something new, but you keep getting stuck in your old ways, the ways
that you are so used to.

Here in Norway, we used to read numbers between 20 and 100 with the
tens before the ones, like the Danes and Germans still do. So, 24
would read as "four and twenty". 23,795 would read as "three and
twenty thousand seven hundred and five and ninety". Imagine the number
of mistakes that were made when trying to write down a number that
someone spoke. As the phone system made its introduction, the need to
write down long numbers increased, so the problem became more
apparent.

In 1951, the government decided that we would end the insanity and
convert to the system that the Swedes and English use, where the
digits are read in the same order they are written. Since then, the
school children have been thought the new system, and the state
broadcaster has used the new system exclusively (except quite a few
slip-ups, of course).

There is a clear trend, where the old method is more prevalent among
older people. Even still, people who were born twenty years after the
change was officially made, still often use the old way today.

As you can see, changes take huge amounts of time. Even a small,
simple change like that, after more than 60 years, we are probably not
even half way there.

One morning in the early fifties, a military officer spoke to his
battalion: "As of today, we no longer say four and twenty, but two and
forty". He was simply so set in his ways that he was unable to break
free of them, even when he tried.

As I mentioned in another post, we keep the second, the day and the
year. Hours, minutes weeks, months all get thrown away. We may need to
introduce a couple of new units, but that will work itself out
automatically.

You still haven't explained how any of this will be better than what we have
now.

--

Rick C

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms,
on the centerline of totality since 1998

 

[Look165]

The sun comes back nearly every 24h !

Animals , like us, live based on circadian rythm.


rickman a écrit :

Look165 wrote on 9/1/2017 4:28 AM:
It is worthless.

The animal bodies are regulated by the 24h system.

Not sure what you are talking about. Animal rhythms are related to a
daily cycle, it has nothing to do with "hours".


And it would be necessary to redefine the reference second which is now
related to the cesiuaam atom.It is the international reference like the
meter also related to this atom

The second is defined as vibrations of the cesium atom in the same way
the yard is defined in feet. If we wish to change the definition of the
yard to four feet we do that and are done. Likewise we can change the
definition of the second in the same way to a different number of
vibrations of the cesium atom.

Has anyone pointed out that top posting is hard to reply to?

 

[Look165]

Have you been thinking of the induced cost (around 1000 billion $)

Who would pay ?

And practically :

Clocks and watches replacement (What about Big Ben and others ? )

Reprogramming BIOS or human time clocking on PC.

TV and radio station should fix up the problem.

Redefine a reference second.

Enterprises should have to update their payment bulletin.

Redefine geographic meridians

And what about the travels (planes, boats... ? ).

....

rickman a écrit :

Someone was talking about decimal time where the second is shortened by
about 15% allowing 100 secs/minute, 100 minutes/hr, 10 hr/day.

 

[Mike Coon]

In article <oodonq$m0c$1@gioia.aioe.org>, look165@numericable.fr says...

Clocks and watches replacement (What about Big Ben and others ? )

Big Ben would be a deferred problem: it has just been stopped for 4
years for maintenance!

Mike.

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 01/09/17 22:55, Tim R wrote:

During the time of the pyramids and pharaohs, the Egyptian calendar had 5 days "out of time" at the beginning of the year, then 12 months of 30 days each.

That still makes more sense than what we do now.

5 day week, 7 week month, ten months in the year,
a week and a day (two on leap years) for New Year.
11% more free time, assuming we still have a 2 day
weekend. Or more, if the robots are doing all the
work anyhow.

Boom!

 

[rickman]

Look165 wrote on 9/2/2017 3:42 AM:

The sun comes back nearly every 24h !

Animals , like us, live based on circadian rythm.


rickman a écrit :
Look165 wrote on 9/1/2017 4:28 AM:
It is worthless.

The animal bodies are regulated by the 24h system.

Not sure what you are talking about. Animal rhythms are related to a
daily cycle, it has nothing to do with "hours".


And it would be necessary to redefine the reference second which is now
related to the cesiuaam atom.It is the international reference like the
meter also related to this atom

The second is defined as vibrations of the cesium atom in the same way
the yard is defined in feet. If we wish to change the definition of the
yard to four feet we do that and are done. Likewise we can change the
definition of the second in the same way to a different number of
vibrations of the cesium atom.

Has anyone pointed out that top posting is hard to reply to?

So what does that have to do with hours, minutes and seconds??? You do know
there are 24 hours in a day, right? Changing the length of the hour won't
change the length of the day.

--

Rick C

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms,
on the centerline of totality since 1998

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Thu, 31 Aug 2017 22:36:09 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't remember that "people just would not go for it". I don't recall
much resistance at all. I think the "resistance" was at other levels.

Yep. At the time (about 1975), I was working for a company that tried
to switch to metric. This was aided by having the drafting manager
and mechanical designer also serving on the metric conversion council
(or whatever it was called). At one point, we started sending metric
fabrication drawings to various vendors. They were immediately
returned. The problem wasn't understanding the new metric way of
doing things, it was that they would need to replace all their English
lead screws, measurement instruments, gauges blocks, programming, etc
before they could cut metal. They also claimed that they needed
considerable staff training to handle the change (because someone
tried to simultaneously switch to true position dimentioning). We
would need to wait until the shops converted before we could orders
parts in metric.

So, we went back to English units and waited for the "inevitable"
conversion that never happened. It seems that most of the other
customers followed the same pattern. They tried metric, failed, and
went back to English. So, we asked the various fab shops why the
delay? They answered that since everyone seemed to be going back to
using English measurements, they must have run into some problem with
metric. Therefore, the fab shop saw no reason to convert. After
getting approximately the same story from ALL our vendors, we gave up
in disgust.

"Why hasn't the U.S. adopted the metric system?"
<http://www.popsci.com/why-hasnt-us-adopted-metric-system>

The idea of decimal time has been around for centuries:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time>
The big problem is that time, astronomical, and navigational units
that are based on nautical miles, degrees, minutes, seconds, will end
up with some rather odd looking numbers. Right now, 1 degree is equal
to 60 nautical miles at the equator. It's too hot right now to think
about what decimal time would do to all those. Of course, we could
make things look better by switching from 360 degrees per circle, to
400 gradians per circle:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradian>
When in doubt, change everything.

Everything that deals with time will need to be tweaked. That's going
to be a problem since we have many ways to keep accurate time:
<http://leapsecond.com/java/gpsclock.htm>
Notice the difference in seconds. Some smartphone vendors are still
having problems keeping accurate time:
<http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/crud/GPS-vs-UTC.jpg>
More ways to keep time, all of which will need to be decimalized or
maybe decimated:
<http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/systime.html>

This is what happened when most everyone assumed that NASA was totally
metric, but wasn't:
<http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/>
I suspect that a decimal time change will have similar transition
problems.

Why don't you just declare that the ratio of the circumference to the
diameter of a circle is exactly 3.0 instead of 3.14159...? I think it
would be easier than changing to decimal time.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Robert Roland]

On Fri, 1 Sep 2017 11:10:38 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

he didn't believe you could buy anything in the US that *was*
metric!!!

The whole world measures car wheel diameter in inches. There is,
however, one country where you can (or at leasy could) buy car wheels
in millimeter sizes. Wanna guess which country?
--
RoRo

 

[Robert Roland]

On Sat, 2 Sep 2017 01:03:44 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

You still haven't explained how any of this will be better than what we have
now.

We are dividing and multiplying by 10, which is much easier to
understand and to do calculation with.
--
RoRo

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Fri, 1 Sep 2017 05:55:52 -0700 (PDT), Tim R <timothy42b@aol.com>
wrote:

During the time of the pyramids and pharaohs, the Egyptian calendar
had 5 days "out of time" at the beginning of the year, then 12 months
of 30 days each.

That still makes more sense than what we do now.

Then there is the Hebrew lunar calendar:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar>
which adds an extra leap month in 7 out of every 19 years (3, 6, 8,
11, 14, 17, and 19):
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar#Leap_months>
Being able to handle such an ugly calenadar might explain why Jews are
quite good at finance. Can you imagine what a loan amortization
schedule looks like under such a calendar?

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[rickman]

Jeff Liebermann wrote on 9/2/2017 3:03 PM:

Why don't you just declare that the ratio of the circumference to the
diameter of a circle is exactly 3.0 instead of 3.14159...? I think it
would be easier than changing to decimal time.

I'm for it. How will you get the circle to agree?

--

Rick C

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms,
on the centerline of totality since 1998

 

[rickman]

Robert Roland wrote on 9/2/2017 4:44 PM:

On Sat, 2 Sep 2017 01:03:44 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

You still haven't explained how any of this will be better than what we have
now.

We are dividing and multiplying by 10, which is much easier to
understand and to do calculation with.

You need to do a bit more than say, "it will all work out". Sounds like a
steaming pile of crap to me. The calendar will be crap no matter what you
do because there is no connection between the day and the year. We are
using a crap system because there is no such thing as a good one. Units
less than a day are invented and can be changed at will. But we don't have
the will.

--

Rick C

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms,
on the centerline of totality since 1998

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sat, 2 Sep 2017 18:10:00 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote on 9/2/2017 3:03 PM:

Why don't you just declare that the ratio of the circumference to the
diameter of a circle is exactly 3.0 instead of 3.14159...? I think it
would be easier than changing to decimal time.

I'm for it.

Excellent.

>How will you get the circle to agree?

Not a problem. Just put a flat spot (chord) somewhere on the
circumference. That will shorten the circumference sufficiently so
that the ratio equals exactly 3.0. Please feel free to name such a
flattened circle in my honor. The newly established Bureau of
Decimation should then declare that the official US circle will have a
flat spot.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 01/09/17 12:36, rickman wrote:

Tom Biasi wrote on 8/31/2017 10:16 PM:
On 8/31/2017 10:00 PM, rickman wrote:
Someone was talking about decimal time where the second is shortened by
about 15% allowing 100 secs/minute, 100 minutes/hr, 10 hr/day.

I think the utility of this is limited and it would cause a lot of
changes
in society. We presently have a large number of convenient time
increments which would not be so convenient in the new system.

First, the hour would be 2.4 times longer leaving us with no convenient
unit about the same length of time as the hour. The closest would be
the
quad-deci-hour which would be 0.96 old hours. The deci-hour would be
pretty convenient about 4% shorter than a quarter hour. The old half
hour
would now be about a fifth of a new hour, so we could call it a "fifth"
which might become confused with a non-metric liquor measure, a fifth
of a
gallon which has since become 750 ml in metric.

The inconvenience would come from the need to totally recalibrate every
type of measurement we use that considers time... speed limits, work
days,
time zones... Would we extend this change to measurements of angles
which
often are done in degrees, minutes, seconds?

How would we adjust the work day? Do we go to 3 hour work days which
would be about 7.2 old hours? Shift work would have to split hours
to get
three shifts while some businesses that use two 12 old hour shifts would
hum along just fine with 5 new hour shifts. Many businesses opening
at 9
AM would now open at 4:00 (I assume we would just count 0 to 9 hours
rather than the annoying AM/PM thing), folks would take a lunch break at
5:00 and banks would close around 6:00 while retail would remain open
until 9:00 or 9:50 (hmmm, that is still about the same).

The minutes gets pretty whacked gaining 26.4 old seconds. So "give me a
minute" becomes a quarter more weighty of a request. The original pulse
was conceived to match the human pulse so our normal pulse rate will
become 86 bpm instead of 60 bpm.

In science the changes would be enormous. With a redefinition of the
second every time related measurement would have to change including
many
in EE such as capacitance/charge/current, heck, the definition of the
gravitational constant and even the speed of light would have to change.
Every text book would change and every instrument. This would create so
much confusion that we really would need new names for the second,
minute
and hour.

This could go on all day (the one measurement that doesn't change)
with a
huge list of changes we will have to make and the many adaptations we
as a
society would need to accommodate. Then, in the end, we would still
have
leap years.

Anyone old enough may remember when the USA tried to go metric. The
people just would not go for it and it was abandoned.

I don't remember that "people just would not go for it". I don't recall
much resistance at all. I think the "resistance" was at other levels.

We had little resistance here in Australia too, and plenty of people
who would "not have gone with it". But it was mandated; all aspects of
industry and commerce were evaluated and placed on a time-line. By
a certain date, all green-grocers were required to display prices in
both pounds and kilograms. Some time later, prices had to be charged
by the kilogram. Some time after that, it became illegal to display
prices in pounds. Etc... and so for every part of life, on a schedule
that was planned ahead to assist people in learning the new system.
It was not just recommended as "a good idea".

My understanding is that "the land of the free"(*) failed because they
did not make it mandatory.

Clifford Heath

 

[Mike Coon]

In article <ku5mqctnoo5ofl9qt10ofo2dr6nd87lgl8@4ax.com>, fake@ddress.no
says...

We are dividing and multiplying by 10, which is much easier to
understand and to do calculation with.

Years ago I went down to the office post room to buy a few stamps. They
were, IIRC, 19 pence at the time. Thinking the young girl at the counter
would tear off a 3x3 block for me I asked for 9 stamps. Her face fell
with panic at the prospect of asking me for the money! So I took pity on
her and changed my request for ten stamps. That didn't help her...

Mike.