Laptop recomendations

[Thompson Freeman]

On 03/15/2007 05:03:47 PM, Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Thursday 15 March 2007, Les Mikesell wrote:
> > Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > > All American measurements are of these unusual division. The inch
> > > itself is 1/12 foot, which is 1/5280 of a mile. Maybe not
> arbitrary,
> > > but not very intuitive.
> >
> > Not to defend the US units, but hasn't the meter been redefined at
> least
> > 3 times?  Which of the choices was a unit that relates to something
> > intuitive to a human?
> >

None of the redefinitions of the meter relates to something intuitive  
to a human that I know of. The redefinitions were made to it easier to  
transmit/transfer/standardize the unit the world over. The length of a  
given number of cycles of a particular atomic transition's radiation is  
remarkably consistant, best anybody can tell. Not so for a  
irridium/<?something?> bar held in a vault somewhere. Same process  
happens with the second and hopefully soon (within the decade??) the  
kilogram. The second is defined by the time to make a certain number of  
cycles from some element's hyperfine splitting, not by a fraction of  
the rotation of the earth which wants to change by measurable amounts.  
We would like to get rid of the standard kilogram and replace it with a  
counted number of isotopically pure atoms, or a force, but that effort  
is still underway.

<<snip>>
> My daughter and I make the men in the family wince because we tend to
> take
> measurements like 'four inches and two millimetres' :-)  We're *very*
> 
> accurate ;-)

Probably correct common usage, but that makes me itch. Precise maybe,  
but "accurate" doesn't seem right to me. Mixing units like that would  
make me wince also.