Posted on 07/20/2008 9:15:56 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
The acre, one of Britain's historic imperial measurements, is to be banned from use under a new European directive.
The measurement, which will officially be replaced by the hectare, will no longer be allowed when land is being registered.
After being agreed last week, the new ruling will come into force in January 2010.
The Tories are angry that unlike some other EU countries, who sent Cabinet-level ministers to the meeting on 15 July, the Government only sent Jonathan Shaw, a junior minister at the Department for Environment Farming and Rural Affairs, to represent Britain's interests.
Mark Francois, the Shadow Europe Minister said: "It is this kind of pointless interference into the nooks and crannies of our national life that frustrates people about the EU. Whether we use hectares or acres should be a matter for Britain to decide, not the EU.
"Once again this weak Labour Government has meekly given up yet another of Britain's rights to Brussels. They need to think again and insist that we must keep our right to use our ancient traditional measure of land if we wish."
A hectare is the equivalent of 2.471 acres; the acre, one of Britain's most ancient units, measures 4,840 square yards.
The first law setting out the exact statutory size for the acre was passed in the early 14th century under Edward I. It is derived from an even older English word, related to the Latin "ager", from which words such as agriculture are derived.
Britain had, until now, an opt-out from the European Union's use of metric measurements which allowed the use of acres to continue.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Semi-metric. Acres are still in use. For example:
What about all the plumbing pipes and fixtures? should they all be converted too? Should we have to put in conversion fittings just so we can all use metric pipes? What about light bulbs? Should all the new lights be required to only fit metric threaded sockets? Should all light fixitures be required to be updated with new metric sockets? What about drill pipe? Should the oil and gas industry abolish the use of API standard pipes that are dimensioned in inches regardless of whether the pipe is made in the US, Japan, or China? Are you willing to pay $10 per gallon for gasoline in order to pay for a conversion to metric? Or should that be $2.64 per liter? Also, shouldn't the commodity markets abolish the barrel as the unit of measure for oil?
Is that wrong?!? Heck, it only felt like 85...
I'd be curious if Canadians build frame houses today using the Metric system.
BTW: My shoe measures 31 centimeters—or exactly one foot!
Depends on what you are doing, FRiend. It is certainly much more unwieldy for carpentry.
I don’t want to sound like a loon here, but Metric System have always seemed to me to be the perfect example of senseless government-knows-best meddling. It was developed by a bunch of eggheads and imposed on the people for no reason at all. It should be resisted for this reason alone.
As I remember from my days of education it all depends on what you are doing. If you are a scientist because metric units of weight and mass are the same and everything is decimal it is easier to use. If you are not a scientist and everything in your environment is inches and pounds it is a pain in the a$$.
Just try calculating a rafter angle with it some time!
The other difficulty with metrics is that feet and inches, being a sort of base 12, are easily divided in multiple ways. And the half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, 32nd, 64th progression is logical and easy to carry in your head. The decimals are too unwieldy for practical measurements.
- just a "rough carpenter" - as my dad says, "Good on rough work, and rough on good work!"
Ask a three-year-old to mark the middle of a line, and they will get it right to within 5% or so. Ask a thirty-year-old to mark 0.3 of a line, and he will be off by 10% or more.
The human mind naturally divides things into halves, quarters, eighths, etc. It also divides things into thirds fairly well. Thus the Base 12 system, not surprisingly, makes a lot of sense. I say “not surprisingly” because organically-derived systems often make a lot of sense.
Our numbering system is Base 10 because we happen, by evolutionary accident, to have five fingers on each hand. But 10 is a very unweildy number, factoring into 2 and the prime 5. Splitting it up quickly yields either indecipherable strings of digits, or meaningless decimal fractions. It just doesn’t match the way the human mind works.
Well said, wastoute. If the scientists want metric, let ‘em have it. Let THEM do all the recalculations.
Leave the rest of us alone.
Regards,
PS: Anyone remember back — geeze — to the mid-70s, I guess, when they went so far as to put metric measurements on the outfield walls of a lot of US baseball parks? THAT was the height of the metric craze.
The boffins and bureaucrats in the EU have probably never soiled their soft, white hands with a hammer and a bag of nails.
OK, but what do the little diamonds at 19 7/32” and 38 7/16”, etc on your tape measure mean? I have never been able to figure that one out.
I always work metric. I abandoned inches/feet several years ago. The guys in my shop resisted but once the began to use it, liked it.
When I sold them the shop, they reverted to anglo dimensions however.
That’s your off-center spacing for standard wall studs. It will give you five studs for every 8 feet (useful for plywood, sheetrock, etc.
Stop. You're making Madonna drool.
Guy gives a big grin and says, "I wanna be a stud!"
. . . so now he's a 2 by 4 in Kansas City . . . .
If I measure from the outside of one stud to the outside of the next stud, if they are 16” OC, it is 17 3/4” or so, not 19 7/32”.
(don't ask me how it works - I just know it does!)
I got ya. Five to eight instead of 6 to eight. Nice. If you are trying to go light on construction, but don’t want to go all the way up to 24” OC, you go to the diamonds and put the 8’ sheetrock sideways.
We're going to be building again soon, and I am totally spooked by the engineered-wood floor trusses. Are they stable? Do they work? Do they squeak?
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