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When I use degrees, I measure them in:
| 52% | 571 votes |
| 23% | 254 votes |
| 1% | 16 votes |
| 4% | 54 votes |
| 14% | 153 votes |
| 3% | 36 votes |
[ Voting Booth | Other Polls | Back Home ]
- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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When I use degrees, I measure them in:
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AWAKE! FEAR! FIRE! FOES! AWAKE!
FEAR! FIRE! FOES!
AWAKE! AWAKE!
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
(Score: 3, Informative) by mattie_p on Friday March 14 2014, @03:28AM
To everyone who was expecting the new poll to reflect the name, it isn't. There was some great discussion over the past two days regarding polls. The consensus seems to be that the current poll system won't work for something "official" like voting for a name. Problems with the current system include allowing anonymous voting (thus implicitly encouraging ballot-stuffing schemes and proxies), allowing voters to see the results in real time (perhaps influencing their vote decisions) and not permitting some type of multi-voting scheme (whether rank ordered or approval voting or some other type). We'd like to do this right.
So we're going to hold off on the name vote for now. I know everyone was eager to forge ahead, including myself and NCommander, but we'd rather not do this until we can do it right. We do still plan on holding the vote though, so put away the pitchforks and torches. But given a choice between half-assing something now or doing what is best for the community, we choose the community all the time. As always, thanks for reading! ~mattie_p
(Score: 4, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 14 2014, @03:33AM
Mod parent offtopic, as we're discussing units of measure for temperature.
Celsius will probably win. In my case it's used a lot for approximating and calculating the Speed of sound in seawater. [npl.co.uk]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by crutchy on Friday March 14 2014, @01:03PM
I vote none. 'Degrees' isn't a physical quantity that can be measured. It is simply a unit of measure for both temperature and angle.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by beckett on Friday March 14 2014, @03:35PM
i can't vote. 'none' is a non-physical concept that also cannot be measured. is it simply an absence of something, or is the 'none' statement coherentt and meaningful, therefore 'something'?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 15 2014, @11:24AM
Please Moderators make it happen: +5 offtopic and then funny.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @03:40PM
Actually, it says right below the poll:
(Score: 3, Funny) by linsane on Friday March 14 2014, @05:14PM
So should be OK then? :-)
(Score: 1) by Dogeball on Tuesday March 18 2014, @10:28AM
Hey, you can ballot-stuff just like I can. That makes it fair ;)
(Score: 1) by ancientt on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:42PM
I kind of agree. Not that I'd want things to actually run that way, but I like systems that allow passionate people to have stronger influence.
Granted that I think the most appropriate method is generally discussion, debate and straight up arguing, rather than ballot stuffing.
This post brought to you by Database Barbie
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Friday March 21 2014, @10:26PM
I previously argued [soylentnews.org] that we should have a discussion before the poll. The reply was "if there is some kind of overwhelming choice, and the same is reflected in comments and chatter, then that makes it a pretty easy decision. If it's all a mess and full of controversy then we have to go back to the drawing board." This was fine by me.
But if the decision now is that there should be a proper vote, I think that makes it even more important that we have are told the options and have a discussion about them a few days in advance. You could easily imagine that 20 hours into such a discussion, someone brings up a very important point that would legitimately sway lots of people for or against one of the options. But if most people had already voted by then, it would be too late.
P.S. Regarding voting technology, don't necessarily re-invent the wheel. You can outsource this kind of thing. The one such body I've heard of is ERS [electoralreform.co.uk] (but there will surely be others). They don't provide enough info on their website, but I could phone them up and ask them about prices, etc. if required. Or just something like https://www.surveymonkey.com/ [surveymonkey.com] Or just conduct the vote using people's verified email addresses, and count manually.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday March 14 2014, @03:32AM
Eh, actually I don't use them, but it's my understanding that the Army uses grads, which are 1/400th of a circle, so just under a degree. They use them for stuff like aiming artillery, so I'd beware of leaving it off a poll...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @11:30PM
That's angle not temperature. Unless you were trying to be funny? Anyway, we use mils [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by Foobar Bazbot on Saturday March 15 2014, @12:03AM
Did you even read the poll options? Specifically, you might want to look closely at the fifth one.
Yes, like the fifth poll option's conflation of temperature scales and angle scales, my riff on it was intended as a joke. Perhaps your trouble recognizing it as such is related to your apparent difficulties reading and/or comprehending the options and your difficulty constructing complete sentences?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday March 16 2014, @10:53AM
With computerization being what it is, I am surprised that the circle isn't commonly divided up into 256 parts, each part having 256 sub-parts so that the whole thing fits nicely with two's complement integer math.
I get the idea it would make driving stepper motors a lot more straightforward. I could understand the 360 thing given we have 365 days in a year, which means things will advance almost 1 degree per day... but 365 is a nasty number for division purposes... only good for 5 and 73... 360 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 45, 60, 72, 90, 120, and 180, which makes division into equal parts handy.
400? I wonder what the reasoning behind that is?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Foobar Bazbot on Sunday March 16 2014, @02:50PM
The choice of 360 degrees is, AIUI, as much from being a round number in the old sumerian/babylonian base-60 system (which is also why degrees are traditionally subdivided by 60 to form minutes and seconds), as from the convenient divisors bit. As for grads, it comes from powers-of-ten-are-awesome post-revolution France, and was created by dividing a right angle into 100ths -- while it was less successful than other metric units that made it into SI, it was at least more successful than the attempted metrification of calendar and clock.
Another commenter replied to the effect that grads have been obsoleted entirely in favor of "mils"; as the NATO mil is in fact derived from the grad, I'm not sure whether this is actually true. Milliradians are a convenient unit for small-angle trig, because the combination of radians and powers of ten. So given an object of 1 m diameter, which visually subtends an angle of 1 milliradian, is known to be at a range of 1 km. There are of course 2000π, or approximately 6283 milliradians in a circle, which is inconvenient. But subdividing grads into 16 divisions yields a total of 6400 divisions, which is close enough to be used as a milliradian (<2% error), while also being a convenient division of the circle; this approximation to the milliradian is the definition of the "mil" used by NATO.
(I do know that grads are one of the three trigonometric units available on current-production HP calculators, so somebody must still be using them...)
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday March 18 2014, @06:05PM
Thanks... I was wondering why someone would coin yet another standard that was so close to a degree.
Interesting about the Sumerians and the base-60 counting...Looks like I have yet another curiousity to satisfy... as to why the Sumerians were onto that particular base for counting? Seems awkward to me, but then when I finally understand why, I am often marveled at what I discover.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by PiMuNu on Wednesday March 19 2014, @07:19AM
Incidentally, I found out recently that the Sumerians probably used base 12 because they counted phalanges (three phalanges on 4 fingers on each hand), as they still do in some parts of China. Just random fact...
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Saturday March 22 2014, @08:13AM
Actually, they used base 60.
A number was shown using both hands - one hand showing a value between one and twelve, the other hand showing how many twelves had already been added.
This is also why there are 24 hours in the day, why each hour is made of 60 minutes and each minute is made of 60 seconds.
(Score: 1) by bigjimslade on Sunday March 23 2014, @03:45PM
mils ? really??
obviously created by theoretical math geeks.
everyone that has used a piece of machinery understands what a real 'mil' is....
Remember, Tuesday is Soylent Green Day
(Score: 1) by KiloByte on Thursday March 20 2014, @03:49PM
This was already done: before degrees, nautical directions were given in rhumbs, with 32 rhumbs making a full circle.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 5, Funny) by NezSez on Friday March 14 2014, @03:43AM
I multipy Celsius and Fahrenheit measurements, SHA the result, put a decimal in front of that and call it a coefficient, then dub the result a CelFahrfiGNUgen in honor of the old Volkswagen campaign and GNU at the same time. This allows anyone to collide my measurement, making it impossible to prove that anyone's interpretation of the actual temperature is proveably the correct original, which gets all weather prognosticators off the hook when they fail.
No Sig to see here, move along, move along...
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Friday March 14 2014, @08:04PM
Fahrvergnügen
ftfy
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Monday March 17 2014, @01:31AM
Spoken like a true weather prognosticator!
We are on to you......;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @03:09PM
U2OXGr http://www.qs3pe5zgdxc9iovktapt2dbyppkmkqfz.com/ [qs3pe5zgdx...kmkqfz.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by GungnirSniper on Friday March 14 2014, @08:27AM
It would help most USians translate into the more logical scale, if we post Celsius first and then Fahrenheit in parentheses.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by geb on Friday March 14 2014, @10:09AM
However, after looking through wikipedia's list of temperature scales, I think we should standardise on Gas Mark [wikipedia.org]. Nobody uses temperatures above 250C anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @10:10AM
They agreed to adopt SI units 140 years ago, they were one of the first countries in the world to do so. But failed. They recognised their failure early on, reinforcing their adoption with further laws, but still kept failing to actually do what they promised. Still crashing climate probes into alien planets in 1999 because of their stupidity.
Fuck 'em.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 15 2014, @05:48PM
I hate to sound brutal, but the best way to pull the yanks out of the dark ages is to just not pamper to their deficiencies.
I hate to sound stubborn, but the best way to pull the World out of the dark ages is to stand firm in our convictions. Each decade of Fahrenheit has an intuitive feel that Celcius can't match. Furthermore, much of either system is no less arbitrary than the other. If your system were based on Planck units, then maybe you'd have a stronger argument. If we ever do go back to the dark ages, it's also much easier to use the old system. Much of it is organized around even powers of two (16 ounces = lb., etc.). That makes it really easy to divide things in two with a simple lo-tech balance, recursively if necessary to get the proper number of ounces. The lb. was hexidecimal before anybody knew how important that base would become in modern society. Dark ages? I think not. Hi tech and retro at the same time.
(Score: 1) by velex on Monday March 17 2014, @11:57PM
oblig http://xkcd.com/526/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Non Sequor on Friday March 14 2014, @11:08AM
How is celsius more logical?
Regardless of which scale you use, you have to learn a lot of different data points (range of outsoor temperatures, body temperature, temperatures used in cooking, etc.).
Very little of what a temperature scale is used for involves boiling or freezing water. So why is being tied to those two points more logical?
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Friday March 14 2014, @12:02PM
It's not that those two points were logical, it's that they were consistently reproducible with eighteenth-century equipment. Fahrenheit [wikipedia.org] chose zero as the coolest temperature he could reproduce, and 100 as body temperature -- though the Fahrenheit scale was later recalibrated more precisely with reference to the freezing and boiling points of water, which is why 100 isn't quite body temperature any more.
And that, along with (maybe) how to solve a separable ordinary differential equation, is about all I remember from undergraduate thermodynamics.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Non Sequor on Friday March 14 2014, @12:34PM
I got that part. I was responding to the statement that celsius was a more logical scale.
At this point, cultural inertia is an entirely reasonable reason to keep using one rather than the other because there are no longer any convincing technical reasons to prefer one over the other. People should use the units that the data sets they commonly encounter are expressed in unless there is a strong rationale for making the effort to convert those data sets to other units.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 5, Funny) by NullPtr on Saturday March 15 2014, @12:00AM
Does this help?
http://apt46.net/wp-content/upload/ucOQh.jpg [apt46.net]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 15 2014, @07:42PM
You sir, win the Internets.
(Score: 1) by Nerdanel on Monday March 17 2014, @02:44PM
You aren't necessarily dead at 100 degrees Celsius. That's the temperature of a really very hot sauna.
(Score: 1) by zsau on Tuesday March 18 2014, @01:32AM
High thirties (100 F) isn't "really hot". It's hot, but it's not like it's 45 degrees.
On the other hand, it basically never gets below 0 Celsius, so to call that "fairly cold" would sound like a joking understatement.
So basically, which temperature scale makes sense depends on where you live. Where I live, cold winter nights approach 0 Celsius (but rarely reach), and hot summer days approach 50 (but don't reach) degrees, so the Celsius scale makes a lot of day-to-day sense.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday March 20 2014, @06:15AM
Do you live in California or something? I've lived in multiple places in the US where temperatures below 0C (32F) are quite common for at least a couple months of the year. Seems a bit generous, or maybe naive, to say it "basically never" happens.
That's not even considering the harsh, frozen north of Canada ;)
(Score: 1) by zsau on Thursday March 20 2014, @07:07AM
My point exactly. Did you see the image I replied to? The image presented one person's experience as if it was normal and would be shared by others, so I presented another experience in the same way. Then, I concluded that which one seems more natural will depend on where you live.
In reality, which one is natural will depend on which one you're used to, and the arguments used to justify that will be picked based on what regularities they've observed. If I was Russian, I might have observed that 0 degrees Celsius presents a very natural midpoint in the annual temperature variation, whereas the Fahrenheit scale is off -- despite having a similar variation as parts of America.
And no, I don't live in California; most of the world lives outside of the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Marand on Thursday March 20 2014, @08:45AM
I saw what you replied to, but the explanation you gave for your intent doesn't match how your initial response read, unfortunately. It looked more like cluelessness, in response to a silly little joke image, by someone that has little experience with cold temperatures to me. I get what your intent was now, though.
That would be why I added the "or something" at the end, implying the possibility of something other than California with a similar climate that doesn't generally experience extreme colds. It was just a good location to mention there, because it's a location fairly well known for its nice weather, even outside of the US.
--
Veering way off topic with this, but what is it about some people absolutely needing to remind everybody that they aren't in the US every chance they get? "Guys, guys, did you know I'm not in the US? I'm not! I just thought you should know."
It's like the guy that has to tell everyone how he doesn't watch TV [theonion.com] at every possible chance, or the people that make a huge issue out of telling you how they're female because you made the mistake of using a masculine pronoun in a case where you don't know the gender of the appropriate party (and thus are left with either "it" or "he" in English, and nobody likes being called an it).
In each example it's usually irrelevant, unnecessarily nitpicky, and the quality of discussion just gets lowered by it being forced into the conversation for no reason other than the person has some sort of personal crusade to let everybody know.
(Score: 1) by zsau on Thursday March 20 2014, @09:28AM
Pot, kettle, black. Or, what's with posting an "irrelevant", "way off topic" aside which you "forced into the conversation for no reason other than [that you have] some sort of personal crusade to let everybody know"?
Oh, right, it's not a "personal crusade", it's one you copied from a bunch of other people who pride themselves on their independence of thought.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday March 20 2014, @05:40PM
Illustrates my point perfectly. Your irrelevant "I'm not US and you must be told" crusade derailed this portion of the comments, because now it's turned into an argument about that, which has lowered the quality of the conversation.
Granted, I took the bait and complained about it, but it didn't start with me.
And now you've moved on to trying to insult me and insinuate that I'm too stupid too form my own opinions because you don't like what I said. I'm done here.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday March 17 2014, @10:47AM
On the other hand people should use a common scale across the entire world, or at least across the english-speaking portion of the world.
(Score: 2, Informative) by bart9h on Friday March 14 2014, @05:10PM
100 for body temperature is reasonable, but zero as the coolest he could reproduce? What that is?
It's better for the two points to relate to something we can comprehend, which is what Celsius does: everybody knows how cold freezing water is, and how hot boiling water is.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hankwang on Friday March 14 2014, @06:08PM
That's an ice-salt mixture and actually not so bad in terms of reproducibility: a mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride, a salt, at a 1:1:1 ratio. This is a frigorific mixture which stabilizes its temperature automatically: that stable temperature was defined as 0 deg F [wikipedia.org]
The second calibration point was 32 deg F, by definition the same as 0 deg C. It is kind of silly to only have two calibration points both for cold temperatures, which means that you will have to extrapolate your thermometer scale. The third one was not very reproducible (96 deg F = body temperature, not 100 deg F) and it would have been a great coincidence anyway if that third point happened to be at a nice round or divisible number.
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Friday March 14 2014, @06:35PM
Fahrenheit was the first guy ever to devise a quantitative measure of temperature, in 1724. Seventeen. Twenty-four. Cut him some slack. :-) According to Wikipedia, Fahrenheit set zero temperature as that of a mixture of ammonium chloride, water, and ice [wikipedia.org] is frigorific [wikipedia.org]. I just learned the word "frigorific" and think it is my new favorite! I don't know if he discovered those frigorific properties himself, or how much trial and error someone had to do to find something reproducibly that cold, but I bet it was a hell of a lot. I'm inclined to forgive him if he assumed that no one else would find a colder temperature that could be used as a better zero, and he did this work exactly 100 years before the idea of an absolute zero [wikipedia.org] was published.
In hindsight, Fahrenheit's choice of the zero point of his temperature scale doesn't correlate to anything we encounter in daily life, and it's also obsolete for laboratory purposes, so I agree with bart9h: it's past time to retire it. Use Celsius for the weather report and Kelvin for science & engineering. But Fahrenheit's temperature scale did make sense at the time he invented it, and I don't blame him for failing to see the future in terms of his zero not staying the coldest possible temperature reference.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by blackest_k on Saturday March 15 2014, @12:37PM
si units all seem to be water based e.g 1 metric ton of water is 1 meter cubed or a 1000 litres weighing 1 kg per litre temperature in c follows similarly.
On the other hand imperial measurements are pretty good for guestimates a foot pretty close to an actual foot an inch the width of your thumb a yard about the length of your arm to your nose.
temperature 60, 70, 80 degrees is bit chilly warm hot i'd probably want a coat at 60 and a t-shirt at 80. The corresponding temperatures in C I really don't know.
makes sense to use centigrade when you are wanting to be accurate. As for kelvin we know it starts 273 degrees below 0C living with km/h instead of mph here i approximate 100kmh to 60mph and 120 to about 75mph. Its close enough anyway.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 15 2014, @07:21PM
Not all. The meter was originally defined as the length of the meridian from the north pole through Paris to the equator. Which is why the earth circumference is to a good approximation 40000 kilometers. And of course the second is also completely unrelated to water.
However the kilogram was indeed originally defined as the weight of 1 liter of water.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday March 16 2014, @08:36PM
Err ... I just notice that I made a quite embarrassing error: The meter was of course based on, not defined as the length of the meridian. Indeed, it was defined as the ten millionth part of that.
Otherwise the earth circumference would be just four meters. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by blackest_k on Saturday March 22 2014, @04:05PM
lucky coincidence that 1000 litres = 1000kg of water and that happens to be pretty close to being 1 cubic meter at room temperature.
There's no real reason why they have to be so close, I guess gravity could be a part of it.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 22 2014, @04:15PM
No, as I wrote at the other post, it's not coincidence.
First, that 1000 liters are a cubic meter is no coincidence because that's exactly how the liter is defined.
Second, that a liter of water has the mass of 1 kilogram is no coincidence because that's how the kilogram was originally defined.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by blackest_k on Saturday March 22 2014, @06:21PM
yes your quite right i was thinking of it backwards the litre the kg are relatively arbitrary in that a kilogram and litre of water would be a bit bigger if the meter was.
but apart from the meter seems that water gets used for part of the definition a lot.
(Score: 1) by SleazyRidr on Tuesday March 18 2014, @04:01PM
0 degrees Fahrenheit was set to be colder than the coldest temperature you're likely to find in Denmark. The ammonium chloride mixture was worked out later to make it sound a little more sciency.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3146/did- cecil-err-in-explaining-the-significance-of-zero-f ahrenheit [straightdope.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16 2014, @11:45AM
The body temperature is "consistently reproducible"? I guess in the same way that the length of a foot is consistently reproducible - everyone can *try* to reproduce it, but inevitably got different results.
To start off, which part of the body do you measure your "body temperature"? Different part give different temperature. Then when? Woman, obviously, would give you slightly different body temperature at different day. Even man, would have slight variation during different body condition, e.g. just woke up, after some exercise, being tired, being excited.
Then there are variations between different people.
No, Fahrenheit is as "logical" a scale as using a foot as length measurement. The only reason it stuck around so long is because Americans refuse to learn anything different.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:15PM
It may be 'logical'. However, you are looking at it from a 'what I like' POV. For most people they do not care what the underlying base is. All they care about is how much of X do I need. My recipe calls for 3 cups. The speed limit is 35MPH. However when I drive I put the little needle next to 35 and put three of this cup in.
Sure I can retool everything I own. Are you going to pay for it? As from most normal sane people the effect is *exactly* the same. I put the needle on a number and drive or I use this measuring cup.
Also everything would have to be re-measured. Oh just convert you say. However my property is X feet from the post buried in the street. My deed says that. It is a legal document. Can you imagine the neighborhood disputes going on? Your fence is now 1.2 cm in my yard. Then I get to goto court because some shlub working a state job rounded wrong by .01?
For *anything* scientific we have already converted. For practical day to day things we didnt bother with the cost. The purpose of most temperature readings is to crow on the news should you bring an umbrella or coat or swimsuit. 60 down get a jacket, 50 down get a coat, 80 up you may be able to go swimming! If you look at an scientific journal it better be in C as that is what the audience there expects.
I have noticed in my state they have changed the signage. It no longer says MPH on it and is just a number. They are slowly replacing signs as they rust out. Then at some point they can switch and the cost is minimal and they can re-use. Instead of replacing millions of signs just so someone can get their OCD on.
(Score: 1) by urza9814 on Monday March 24 2014, @04:53PM
Except that when they switch I guarantee they're gonna have to have both MPH and KPH posted for several years for those people whose cars either don't have KPH or they don't know how to switch it. So they'll have to buy all new signage anyway...that's probably just an aesthetic decision.
(Score: 2) by hankwang on Friday March 14 2014, @10:18AM
Actually, I use kelvins and radians more than degrees in either meaning. But if I use degrees, it is usually for centigrades.
My present job involves optics to handle laser beams at small angles as well as kinetic gas theory.
But do you write 70° F or 70° F (20 °C or 20° C)?
(This should show up as 70o F, 70 oF, 20 oC, 20o C ...)
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 1) by babywombat on Tuesday March 18 2014, @05:43AM
20 °C. Here, °C is a single token which would fail to parse if separated ;-)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @10:55AM
flapping in the breeze
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @12:26PM
I don't even know what that is, but I voted for it because it looked so lonely sitting there with zero votes!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Jerry Smith on Friday March 14 2014, @05:22PM
Rankine has the starting point of Kelvin and the steps of Fahrenheit. 0 degrees Ra. = 0 Kelvin, difference of 1 degree Ra. = difference of 1 degree Fahrenheit.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
(Score: 1) by gishzida on Friday March 14 2014, @01:05PM
Their "Degrees" are always measured in Thirds...
(Score: 1) by CoolHand on Friday March 14 2014, @02:49PM
"giving someone the third degree" is actually a Masonic reference to the third degree of Master Masonry when the Fellowcraft candidate for Master Mason is symbolically slain as a proxy for grandmaster Hiram Abiff...
So, obviously, FreeMasons are controlling the NSA/CIA and setting all standards for temperature measurement also...
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by wjwlsn on Friday March 14 2014, @11:08PM
I thought it was the Stonecutters that controlled everything?
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 2) by Jaruzel on Saturday March 15 2014, @05:10PM
What? Like this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Degrees [wikipedia.org]
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday March 14 2014, @03:44PM
For some tasks, I use Degrees of Kevin Bacon [oracleofbacon.org].
Fun fact: One former coworkers is 3 degrees from Kevin Bacon due to a bit part in Cordova Nights. Before that film, he was 4 degrees away, due to a major role in the Troma film Killer Nerd (it's typical Troma trash, although my buddy's acting wasn't too terrible).
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday March 14 2014, @04:25PM
Degrees Gay-Lussac
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Jaruzel on Saturday March 15 2014, @05:14PM
My Bacon number is 4, via Alan Rickman's Niece.
Applying the logic that you have to have worked with someone, and not necessarily in a film. :)
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 5, Funny) by wjwlsn on Friday March 14 2014, @04:23PM
These are the degrees I use. This is by no means a complete listing, and additional modifiers can be added as needed.
Goddamn this shit is hot
Hot as hell
Damn hot
Hot
Warm
Nice
Fair to middlin'
Cool
Cold
Cold as a witch's titty
Freezing
Fuckin' cold
Absolute fuckin' zero
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 2, Funny) by cliffjumper222 on Monday March 17 2014, @05:47AM
In England, we also have "nippy" which can also be sub-divided into bits, as is "a bit nippy", and "chilly".
In Jamaica, they have only one word for cold, ENGLAND.
He who dares wins, Rodney
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 17 2014, @04:38PM
"In England, we also have "nippy" which can also be sub-divided into bits"
blondes brunettes and redheads.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @10:19AM
You've basically just described degF, the 0-100% scale of how hot it is outside today.
(Score: 2) by linsane on Friday March 14 2014, @05:08PM
Surely everyone knows there are only four degrees:
- Damien Hirst
- Attila the Hun
- Desmond Tutu
- Douglas Hurd
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/degree_classi fications [thestudentroom.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by randmcnatt on Friday March 14 2014, @06:08PM
The Wright brothers were not the first to fly: they were the first to land.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Friday March 14 2014, @08:32PM
I try not to use degrees at all because there is no degrees symbol on my keyboard, which is a pain in the ass. I guess I could spell out "degrees" but that is a pain in the ass, too. So I use radians and Kelvins as a work-around.
And if anybody tries to "correct" me to say "degrees Kelvin," I just smirk and say "look it up." ;-)
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 1) by unauthorized on Saturday March 15 2014, @09:51AM
You can always directly input unicode hexcodes. The code for Ëš is 2DA. On Windows you press "ALT +(hexcode)", on most GTK software it's "CTRL-ALT-U (hexcode)". Sadly X doesn't support global unicode input out of the box, but as all things Linux there are about 5+e9 different ways to do it. No idea for OSX through.
(Score: 1) by unauthorized on Saturday March 15 2014, @09:56AM
Well, you could do it, but only on sites which actually support UTF-8.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 15 2014, @07:27PM
Of course you can always do it as HTML entity: ˚ gives ˚
Of course if you use Unicode anyway, you can also use the full unit symbol for temperatures: ℃ gives ℃ and ℉ gives ℉
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by zsau on Tuesday March 18 2014, @04:21AM
Except that you shouldn't use the full unit symbols for temperatures; they're "compatibility characters" and exist only to support round-tripping with certain CJK encodings (that is to say, so you can convert a text from EUC-JP to Unicode and back to EUC-JP, and have the same text). When composing a text in Unicode which is not required to be compatible with a specific text encoded in a different character set, you should always use the two separate symbols.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday March 20 2014, @06:27AM
Best way to go about it with X is to replace a seldom-used key with the Compose key [wikipedia.org]. Degrees is, for example, a three key sequence: compose, o, o. It also gives easy access to accents and other symbols that one might need occasionally, such as foreign currencies. Euro is "compose, e, =" as another example.
You can also add custom ones in your own compose file, too. I added a couple shortcuts for things like an infinity symbol.
(Score: 1) by SockPuppet on Saturday March 15 2014, @07:58PM
Where do you buy keyboards with a Pi key?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16 2014, @10:30AM
Greece?
(Score: 1) by rudolph on Saturday March 15 2014, @12:13AM
If it's weather related I just go with "should I put on a hoodie?"
Otherwise it's TLAR.
(Score: 1) by siwelwerd on Saturday March 15 2014, @03:01PM
"Degree" to me most often means the degree of a polynomial, or sometimes a degree function on some other algebra.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 15 2014, @07:29PM
It could also be an academic degree.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 15 2014, @07:39PM
Where's the Réaumur? And the Rømer?
But the really missing option is the Delisle, where boiling water has a lower temperature than ice!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by FlatPepsi on Saturday March 15 2014, @08:15PM
I usually measure them in units of BA's and PHD's.
(Score: 2) by gallondr00nk on Sunday March 16 2014, @01:26AM
I use (Ayn) Randians, the trouble is they're always cold..
(Score: 3, Funny) by gringer on Sunday March 16 2014, @11:18AM
I measure my degrees in years, namely the amount of time it took me to get them.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Monday March 17 2014, @03:06PM
And did it take you about 9 months to get a degrees in Celsius and Fahrenheit?
(Score: 1) by mattwrock on Monday March 17 2014, @01:56PM
I measure degrees in Kevin Bacon.
Ones and zeros everywhere... I even saw a 2 - Bender
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @10:42PM
WGS84.
Hemisphere, Degrees, Decimal Minutes.
Sometimes NAD83 (for surveying).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @01:12AM
so there.
(Score: 1) by jabirali on Thursday March 20 2014, @12:35AM
For everyday purposes, I usually stick to degrees Celsius; partly because it's easy to relate to (water freezes at 0 °C and boils at 100 °C), and partly because it's what I'm used to. But fundamentally, temperature is just an energy measure: e.g. for a simple ideal gas, it's just the average kinetic energy of the particles. You can see that by noting that temperature only ever occurs in physical formulae in the form of a product kT, where k is Boltzmanns constant, which has dimensions of energy. Therefore, when I'm doing science, I prefer just measuring temperature in energy units instead, which basically get's rid of Boltzmanns constant in all physical formulae (it's equivalent to defining k=1).
(Score: 1) by coastal984 on Friday March 21 2014, @04:25PM
OK... that was dark. But it was only dark in the 2nd degree.
(Score: 1) by jummama on Tuesday March 25 2014, @04:50AM
Celsius for equipment, Fahrenheit for weather and cooking, since I'm in 'merica.