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Showing posts from December, 2020

The absurdity of the use of kph

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  First and foremost I apologise (yet again) for such a long gap in between blog posts. The return of freedom over the past year has kept me away from screens. They say it takes 66 days to develop a new habit. Running is a habit I developed over lockdown, but the return to the office (and I intend to never work from home again) and frequenting the pub has reduced frequency of this.  It is, however, not completely bleak for my physical well-being. Cramming a number of social events in after work has led to me doing a lot more walking around central London. I don’t have an Apple Watch, (other brands of smart watch exist), but my iPhone records my steps and a lot of really interesting data on my walking and running. As would be no surprise, I’ve configured everything in metric units. Thankfully, gone are the days where Apple would dictate to you , based on your location, the units of measurement you use. You have a chose whether to specify distances in miles or kilometres. You al
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The complex relationship between aviation and measurement

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“It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s... more confusion”  The aviation industry is one which holds a special place in my heart, but I won’t bore you with this soppy nonsense. The measurement muddle is truly alive in this industry, so much so, that it makes measurements in Britain seem coherent. Yet still, one of the few global industries manages to work in the midst of a monstrous measurement muddle. Whilst the language of aviation is standardised to English, there is no such standardisation for units of measurement. Metres, geographical miles, nautical miles, inches of mercury, millibars, knots, metres per second are some of the measurements you are likely to come across if you’re ever in the cockpit.  Let’s start with distances. In the UK, as in much of the world, most distances on the ground e.g. runway lengths, are given in metres. Once you airborne, despite flying being a fairly modern feat of engineering, you go back to the dark ages of measurement. Distances now become nautical miles
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George Orwell and metric units

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When I first read Animal Farm, I was too young to understand what it was about. I was completely oblivious to the fact that the book (novella, if you must) was an anti-Stalinist satire. I took it at face value, and thought very little about the actual message — though it did leave me with a permanent craving for bacon. The only thing that really landed for me while still in primary school, was the single law which the seven commandments eventually became. "All Animals Are Equal / But Some Are More Equal Than Others." In addition to being totally unaware of the political context of one of Orwell's finest works, I was also completely unmindful of the units of measurement used. In fact, when I re-read it much later on, it was no surprise to me that all units of measurements were imperial. After all, it was published in 1945. Although metric units were first permitted for use in the UK in 1897, they didn't come into common use until around 70 years later. Four years after
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