Carbs are great for metabolism! In fact high carb diets are about as good as a low carb diets for reversing metabolic issues. The real problem seems to be "balanced meals" that have moderate amounts of all macros.
We don’t really know the design process for QWERTY but it wasn’t about avoiding mechanical jams. Avoiding mechanical jams was the reason Dvorak was invented.
QWERTY if anything seems to be about being convenient for transcribing Morse code. Letters with a similar Morse code are grouped etc.
You're right about the first part (we don't really know why QWERTY was designed the way that it was), but as far as I understand it's pretty clear that Dvorak was created to enhance typing speed and comfort, based on ergonomic principles not related to mechanical details. For example, it is designed to alternate typing between the two hands for most common letter combinations, and to have most common letters on the home row.
That's not the case in the European and Southamerican countries I've visited or have acquaintances in. What countries do you have in mind? I'm quite interested.
Imperial units (specifically, feet) are dominant in aviation to measure flight altitude. Despite a recommendation of ICAO to use SI units since 1979, only China, Mongolia and a few former-USSR countries (not Russia) use metres to define flight levels. [0]
This leads to two interesting consequences for aircraft that perform international flights from/to China: [1]
- they need to be equipped with two altimetry systems;
- they need to perform small climbs or descents when entering or leaving Chinese airspace, as metric flight levels do not usually match Imperial ones (flight levels are defined by round numbers).
The main argument for imperial units in aviation I have seen relate to the fact that one nautical mile is almost exactly one minute of latitude on earth, and one knot is one nautical mile per hour, and therefore an aviator who may experience a total electrical failure and is left with his "six-pack" of unpowered, passive-only instruments could navigate with a wristwatch and paper chart relatively accurately.
I'm not saying I agree with it, but it is at least understandable!
The nautical mile is a sensible unit for anyone trying to navigate with charts (which, in the worst case, could happen to pilots). Feet, on the other hand, are nonsense.
> Imperial units (specifically, feet) are dominant in aviation to measure flight altitude. Despite a recommendation of ICAO to use SI units since 1979, only China, Mongolia and a few former-USSR countries (not Russia) use metres to define flight levels. [0]
You can find occasional uses in many countries. TV screens are advertised in inches here in Denmark, although I noticed the last one I bought was "34 inch, 86.00cm" in the detailed specification -- the inches were just marketing. Old water pipes have some sort of pre-metric size.
Several countries (e.g. France) use the word pound (livre) to mean 500g, which could confuse visitors into thinking something non-metric is being used. I noticed that in south America.
No one really does it any more, but "half-pound" (halvt pund) in Danish means 250g, which was the common way of ordering butter before the supermarkets took over (and why butter used[0] to come in packages of 250g). Similarly, in Sweden, one mile is 10 km.
[0] These days, and selling butter in 200g packages to keep the prices seemingly low.
>
[0] These days, and selling butter in 200g packages to keep the prices seemingly low.
And that's why i do my shopping now based on €/kg. There are some very telling differences between even the same manufacturer: last thing i was looking at was gin [the drink] € per litre. Just a visually minor difference in bottle size was a substantial difference in a) cost and perceived value and b) cost and actual value.
Most countries still use inches for wheel sizes, for example.
These are basically “sizes” that are imperial by tradition/accident more than people using them as measurement. If I wear size 32 waist jeans is that imperial? Maybe. I’m not measuring I’m just using it as a known size. Might be inches.
Same for wheels, rifle ammunition, …
I use inches for TVs/monitors and although I’m as metric as they get, I have a 55” TV and my car has 20” rims and so on. Everything has cm, kW instead of horsepower etc listed as well for a TV of course.
As far as I know only a few countries - presumably because of regulation - have switched for absolutely everything. Australia is an example of a country where you can get a 100cm TV.
"But being (as?) this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question ..."
(Which totally illustrates your point because it's not really 0.44 inches.)
I doubt 32" jeans are 32 inches either. It's just "a size formerly related to inches, now denoted 32 or 32" but not really inches". I think imperial remains for a lot of these "sizes" which aren't quite the same as "measuring". I call my TV 55 in, but if you were to ask me to measure it, I'd call it something in centimeters.
Yes. An extreme example: "Shoe size in the United Kingdom, Ireland, India, Pakistan and South Africa is based on the length of the last used to make the shoes, measured in barleycorns (1⁄3 inch) starting from the smallest size deemed practical, which is called size zero." (Wikipedia)
In Japan, the floor area of rooms are often measured in terms of Tatami mats (-Jo). You will see this on floor plans when looking at apartments, as well as when buying some items like lights or air purifiers that are advertised as being for certain sized rooms.
It's actually a pretty convenient unit, as long as you're familiar with how large tatami mats are.
Note that this unit isn't used for measuring an entire apartment's floor area though, that's done in meters.
Tatami mat size is basically a one-person bed - so you are measuring rooms in terms of how many people would be able to sleep on the floor if spaced evenly :)
Ask a German what their car's power is in kW. It's been more than forty years since PS (HP in German) has been relegated to merely tolerated, as long as the kW number is presented as the primary statement, but people still think in horse powers when talking about cars. Perhaps we are an outlier in the metrified countries, but I'm not convinced, I believe that gp is right.
Other examples are screen sizes: I have no intuition at all about how big 5.5" actually are, but I know where in the current phone market 5.5" would fall (awesomely non-huge!), whereas to my mind, the metric equivalent would carry no information at all ("bigger than a stamp, smaller than a TV"). And for sensor sizes you even have the situation where the imperial number is a "size class" with very little relation to actual size, whereas the metric number usually describes actual size. Completely different numbers. All countries use a combination of metric and some other system.
that's common, but not as units of measure, but as marketing.
Same as megapixels in photo cameras.
Nobody measure power in HP, we say "that car has 85 HP" only in speech, but when it matters (for example on car papers) power is express in KW and screens are measured in cm that are also written on the package, they are only marketed in inches.
You would be correct if people had an idea of how much power 1 HP is or the surface of 1 MP camera shot, but they don't know, they only know that 16 MP > 12 MP and 300 HP > 100 HP, they (we) ignore what it actually means.
It is also perceived completely differently depending on context.
A 120HP tractor is not the same thing than a 120HP car or a 120HP motorbike.
According to US measures I'm 5'11, which means nothing to me, while it's obvious to them, because they actually use foot and inches all the time and do math using them.
Beyond all edge cases mentioned by others (I add the bicycle frame size to the list) what is the most shocking for me having imperical units in international air traffic! Feets and pounds and gallons (as far as I know) mixed with SI units. One notable accident is the Gimli Glider where miscommunication occurred in fuel quantity calculations and the airplane took off with very little fuel running out mid air (excellent pilots and great story eventually).
Also naval folks are stubborn too. Own miles, knots as speed, craaazy! : )
Many/most items that were designed many years ago in imperial - tyres etc - are still described in imperial units.
But here in Finland (a completely metric country) things like televisions are still marketed/sold as 44" etc where the cm value could very easily be used.
A key distinction tends to be whether a value is mostly used for internal comparison.
E.g TV sizes are mainly compared with each other, and so the unit used doesn't really matter, and if you want to know the external dimensions it'll typically be given in metric in countries which uses it.
DPI is one of my pet peeves, together with points. Why not use mm for font size?
Instead of DPI, one could use µm per px, or px per (c)m if you want something easier to work with at very high DPI.
I know what DPI and points are, but just because I know a few values and can say "that one's large", "this one is small", with no idea how much they act iually measure. With other units I could approximate the viewing distance much better.
The only thing I can think of is that screen diagonals are still measured in inches. Ignoring that, a lot of countries are definitely fully metric with regards to the basic length/weight/time measures
I have a coffee table height desk integrated into my loft space where I'll often use my laptop while seated on the loft's floor.
It's actually more annoying than just having the laptop on the floor and leaning my chest forward against a bent up knee.
But it is a nice option for variety sake, and in my setup it's also the orientation required to enjoy the windowed view outside. In terms of pure ergonomics and computing comfort though, it's not as good as just the floor.
There's also the whole multihead display thing that the low desk provides, it's always a compromise.
