Re: [GZG] Pi Day

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http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lHudak, Michael
wrote:
> Sheesh, you guys have to do everything backwards.....  Drive on the
wrong side.....  Next thing you'll have us using metric....... :-)
>   
As usual, you Septics are the backward ones -- not only do you drive on 
the wrong side of the road (or from what I've heard, on any part of the 
road that doesn't have a bigger vehicle on it physically forcing you to 
not occupy that space... B-P) and have this atavistic need to ruin 
perfectly good words by leaving out letters (just what is a kidnaper 
anyway, and do I really want to know exactly how you nape kids?), but  
you also have weird units that no-one else on the planet uses (I have 
managed to establish, after nearly 20 years of research, that a US 
gallon is based on a thing called the Winchester wine gallon, but can I 
find a proper definition of a Winchester wine gallon? Can I heck!), and 
you still can't appreciate that the rest of the world uses *SI* units, 
not "metric", which is a much vaguer collection and includes a lot of 
stuff that has been thrown out by the BIPM. Dear, dear, dear... ;-)
> You probably won't celebrate mole day either then....
>
> http://www.moleday.org
Fun idea, but we'll have to wait 16 years and have Mole Month instead. 
An evil thought that comes to mind is the possibility of asking the 
organisers of Mole Day what they want to do about Kilogram-mole Day, 
which is 3 days later... <eg> I was rather surprised to find that the 
gram-mole is still the basic SI unit (according to BIPM); I would have 
expected the kilogram-mole to become the new standard since it fits 
better with the kilogram being the basic unit of mass. And there's a 
problem: we need a new name for the kilogram; it's crazy to have a basic

unit include a multiplier as part of its name. A kilogram is a thousand 
grams, fine, but these days a gram is defined as 1/1000 of a kilogram --

so it's like describing the number 1 as "1000 thousandths". Mad -- but 
not as mad as some Imperial/"US customary".units... <g>

Phil