And I wouldn't blame you for being confused if I said "0.0625 gallons," because I'm violating the standard for what units to use for that order of magnitude.
The insight involved must actually be pretty sophisticated, because it's essentially what's necessary to stop using MCMLXVIII and go decimal, and some pretty smart guys went pretty far without ever figuring that one out.
(All this said, I still blame Verizon, for quoting the price per kilobyte instead of per megabyte. "Two dollars per Mb" makes everything perfectly clear.)
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winterfish
no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 05:49 am (UTC)If the length is 1.5m, I don't say "one meter, fifty centimeters," but if it's 1.5ft I do say "one foot six inches."
Similarly, "one hour, twelve minutes, fifteen seconds."
And I wouldn't blame you for being confused if I said "0.0625 gallons," because I'm violating the standard for what units to use for that order of magnitude.
The insight involved must actually be pretty sophisticated, because it's essentially what's necessary to stop using MCMLXVIII and go decimal, and some pretty smart guys went pretty far without ever figuring that one out.
(All this said, I still blame Verizon, for quoting the price per kilobyte instead of per megabyte. "Two dollars per Mb" makes everything perfectly clear.)