Red Mars

Right now I'm reading Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson and I am really enjoying the book but all the Bloody Freakin' Metrics is really slowing me down since I'm reading the book with a pen & note pad by my side and writiing down all of the Metrics along with the page number they appear on and then going to Google to search them and writing in the margins of the pages the Imperial equivalent so I can imagine it's gonna take me awhile to finish the book. I also plan on doing the same thing for the sequels Green Mars & Blue Mars too. As well as John Varley's Gaean Trilogy:

Titan
Wizard
Demon

In the end it will be well worth it because the next time I go back and re-read these books I won't have to try & figure out
what the Imperial equivalent of 40,000 Kilometers Per Hour equals 24, 854, 877 MPH, 50 Meters long = 164.041995 feet,
ten meters in diameter= 33 feet in diameter; etc. It really irks the Hell out of me that Science Fiction books, movies & tv shows all use Metric terminology instead of the Imperial terminology like feet or miles when they're measuring the distance how fast an enemy Space Ship like the Klingons for instance from Star Trek was closing in on them.

Beatles1964

Don't be so selfish: people outside the US don't understand your strange units.

There's something wrong with your 40,000 kmh conversion. It should be about 24 thousand, not 24 million.

Perhaps SF-writers do this because from a scientific point of view it makes more sense to use a base 10 system? ;)

Where I live metrics are the norm but I have developed a feel for Imperial as well. The Fahrenheit scale is the one that always gets me tough. It makes no sense whatsoever.

It really irks the Hell out of me that Science Fiction books, movies & tv shows all use Metric terminology instead of the Imperial terminology like feet or miles when they're measuring the distance

this might be because SCIENCE actually uses the metric system.

I'm not convinced you need the 8 or 9 significant figures. To within 10% or so, a mile is a km and a half; a metre is a yard; a pound is half a kg; a ton is a tonne. That should cover it, shouldn't it?

Do you really have no exposure to the metric system over there? I'm British, and admittedly conflicted. I tend to estimate in imperial, but use metric when it matters, so I'll look at the width of something and think "about four feet", then get out the tape measure and measure it properly, i.e. in mm.

Ultimately though, metric makes so much more sense and is so much simpler! How much goes a gallon of water weigh again?

#2 Sorry about that my mistake. Why am I being selfish? I feel much more comfortable using the Imperial system because it's what they taught us in School in the 60s & 70s plus it's what I know too. I can understand if I had been born in a Foreign Country & had been raised on the Metric system than I would be saying the same exact same thing about how I love the
Metric system because it's what I know and feel comfortable with and would be complaining about the Imperial system. To me
it makes much more sense using the Imperial system because we as a Nation use it every day in Businesses & Professional Sports. I mean we use the Imperial system in weights of food and drinks like a gallon of milk, half-pint of milk in School Cafeterias, 8 oz. cans of String beans, 3/4 or 5/16 inch wrenches, In the NFL QB's throw for Yards, the measurement is yards 1st & 10; 2nd & 7, 53 Yard FG Attempt, RB's Rush for yadrage, we say a Baseball Player hit a 483 foot or 524 foot Home Run, also in the NFL they say it's 4th & inches. So you see the Imperial in every day use in this Country so to me it makes a Hell of a lot more sense to use the Imperial system in Science Fiction books, movies & tv shows. Just because the U.S. is one of the few Countries left in the World still using the Imperial system doesn't mean we should automatically jump on the Metric Band Wagon.

Beatles1964

I grew up under the U.S. system of measurement, and am not a scientist, and generally have trouble with metrics.

But in a novel set in the future...the metric system is what will be used. The U.S./Imperial/old system is on its way out, and I doubt that if we have colonies on other planets, they will use an old, outmoded, unscientific system of measurement. (Now, if there's a collapse, they may end up going to an entirely different system...but that's another type of genre.)

I've never lived in a country that doesn't use the SI system. I read US and older British books without complaining bitterly.

The Empire of "Imperial" is no longer such (and uses SI anyhow). When grade-school kids in the US learn their ounces and inches it's merely called "customary units of measurement" rather than the (curiously redundant) "metric units of measurement."

Why are you bothering with exact measurements?

Just go with 1 yard = 1 metre for the most part.

5 km = 3 miles (approx. You are 188 yards short).

So for 40,000 km per hour I would convert it to 24,000 miles per hour. KSR didn't use much precision for the velocity in the first place, I fail to see why it should be important to use a much greater degree of precision for your conversion.

Quick question - if (or when) you read a British book do you convert units such as pints and gallons? Our pints are much bigger - almost 25%.

#9 Thanks for enlightening me because I wasn't aware of this fact and never heard of the term SI regarding measurements before now. Like I said, I went to School in the 60s & 70s so the news about SI was in fact news to me. #8 like Steve Martin used to say on Saturday Night Live, Well Excuse Me. #10 because I want to know how fast the Space Ship is going or how many miles it is from their destination or how wide or long something is besides it will make me understand better what the Author is talking about.
I remember when I saw the movie Star Wars in the Movie Theater when it first came out in 1977 I was very impressed with the massive size of the Imperial Star Destroyer. I remember thinking at the time that it seemed to
go on for miles and miles. I wasn't thinking to myself Wow, this Imperial
Star Destroyer is really huge, it must go on for kilometers and kilometers.

Beatles1964

I'm fine with the metric system, but Celsius still gets my goat. There's nothing more metric about Celsius than there is Fahrenheit. Both are based on completely arbitrary points, and Celsius has actually had its 0/100 points fiddled with much after the fact to make it work with Kelvin (if you actually think any water you'll run into freezes at 0 C and boils at 100 C, you're mistaken - go Wikipedia Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water). The metric system is fantastic for modifiers like pico, nano, kilo, etc. - when's the last time you heard that being used with temperature?

Rankine was the Fahrenheit equivalent to Celsius. Had it been adopted, you'd be calling Fahrenheit the "metric" temperature scale. That's because once Kelvin was adopted, Celsius was reverse engineered to fit it, and all sorts of other units like calorie were defined on top of it. You could have done the exact same thing with Rankine.

And the big thing F has over C is that you don't have to get into decimals to express a greater amount of precision. Which is great for describing the weather, which to be honest is the primary use most people have for temperature to begin with. Being able to say if it feels like it's in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s outside is far more important to me than being able to tell at which point a special preparation of water freezes or boils. In C, the 10s are from 50 F to 68 F, the 20s from 68 F to 86 F and the 30s from 86 F to 104 F.

So metric - yay! Celsius - bah!

We use both metric and Imperial in the UK, and like andyl says, all you really need to know are approx conversions. But it is about time the US swapped over to the SI system, the one the rest of the world is using. I read somewhere that NASA plan to, but the last time they tried they calculated it would cost them too much money to do so. And this despite cock-ups in the past over the wrong units causing problems and costing billions of dollars...

>15 iansales: You're right, it's about time for the US to move to metric. I was taught some metric stuff in grade school (in the 60s) and the teachers would always say things like, 'in a few years everyone will be using metric.' I am still waiting.

The delay is probably because no one has figured out how to make a profit on the conversion in a way that private business = profit and taxpayers = costs. But then again I might be a little cynical.

Well Ray Bradbury's classic Sci-Fi novel is called Fahrenheit 451 not whatever the Freakin' Bloody Metric equivalent is for the temperature that paper burns. I can't imagine the book being called anything but Fahrenheit 451. Let me ask everyone here, How come Bradbury himself or his Publisher at the time Ballantine Books suggest using the Metric equivalent to Fahrenheit 451 and call the book by that name?

Beatles1964

Fahrenheit 451 was first published in 1953. Things were a bit different then. And paper doesn't ignite at that temperature anyway - the title is completely wrong.

1. the book was printed in 1951
2. The International System of Units was published in 1960 (yes metric was around for 150+ years before that)
3. Celcius 233 doesn't sound quite as hot.

> 5 How much goes a gallon of water weigh again? About 8 pounds. :-)

> 6 (Professional sports) I'm reminded of watching my kid's high school track meets . . . and contemplating the head-spinning incongruity of watching the pole-vaulters struggling to clear 14 feet (or whatever) while the sprinters lined up to run the 100 meters . . .

What's with the false precision? Just think "50 meters is about 50 yards" and leave it at that. There's only one or two significant figure theres, not ten! If you really need to convert to feet, then at least round it appropriately -- 160 feet.

It really irks the Hell out of me that Science Fiction books, movies & tv shows all use Metric terminology instead of the Imperial terminology like feet or miles

Scientists, as well as everyone in the world outside of the USA (and Liberia and Burma) use the metric system. Books that portray scientists -- like Robinson's -- and people from outside of the US would be unrealistic if they used feet and pounds.

It seems Bardbury may have been accurate according to the the information in PHYSICAL CONSTANTS FOR INVESTIGATORS on the T.C. Forensic website.

I recall the US reversing course on metric adoption during the 1980s. I think there was a sort of tribal-political component along the lines of "Carter and those pansy Democrats wanted us to use these foreign units. We have more guns and money than the rest of the world; they can damn well use our measures."

Michell's City of Revelation has a fair bit of wide-eyed hooey in it, but it does muster some evidence to give respectability to archaic metrological systems. There really are good reasons not to do everything in base-10. And I agree with #14 that the Celsius degree is too big to be useful. The Fahrenheit system bracketing the temperatures of most human habitation somewhere between zero and a hundred is a much more useful scale for daily communication.

24> And even more to the point, Celsius isn't any more base-10 than Fahrenheit. They're both completely arbitrary scales.

I've always had the same exact feelings along the line of "they can damn well use our measures". Why should we bother to be like the rest of the World? If the rest of the World wants to do business with us let them use our measures. Like I say, I'm real comfortable using the system I know and love and grew up learning and I feel uncomfortable around Metrics because I'm always trying to approximate it into feet, or miles. As you all know I hate change because I would rather have things remain the same for the things that I'm familiar with. I know some change is good for you but I also feel if it's worked in the past why bother changing to something different?

Beatles1964

#24 That is exactly how I remember it.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s but I really have no problems with SI, except I do refer to it as metric.

The temperature thing is an issue but I think if we just used centi-degrees Celsius the accuracy thing would work out. Water still freezes at 0 but it boils at 1000 and if you have a fever of 500 get to a hospital.

Water still freezes at 0 but it boils at 1000*

* Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water

You'd think that, given how math-phobic most Americans are, the idea of units where unit conversions within the system are utterly trivial would be appealing; but because they first learn conversions to and from imperial units (where the intra-system conversions are utterly flummoxing and inconsistent; my wife asks me all the time how many teaspoons to a tablespoon, or cups to a gallon, or whatever, when cooking) all they see is a long line of decimals marching off on their calculators. If they started teaching it with with "A centimeter is about the diameter of a dime. A tall man is about 2 meters tall" and so forth to get the intuition in place, and emphasized how easy math is within the system, I suspect there'd be a lot less resistance. Instead they focus on memorizing that an inch is 2.54 cm, and a kilogram is 2.2 pounds, and miss the entire point.

I do agree that the size of degrees C is inconvenient for discussing temperature ranges. (A friend of mine from Canada, who went to grad school in Arizona with me, once remarked that for weather up to 35 C he thought in Celsius, but above that he abruptly switched to the mid-90s F and went up from there in Fahrenheit, because he'd only encountered temperatures that high in the US. For science, of course, like all other scientists who prefer not to lithobrake their Mars rovers, he worked exclusively in sensible units.)

> 29

Actually, popular primary grades math and science programs produced for US markets in the 21st century do introduce metric units with real-world analogs as you suggest, rather than as conversions from customary units--a process explored later. (Having been an editor for a couple, I can attest.)

#6: beatles1964
I wrote in haste. I should have expressed myself more carefully. I'm sorry.

My suggestion of your selfishness, which wasn't meant to be taken very seriously, is based on most people in the world using metric, and as readafew said, metric is universal in science. With metric, the basic principle, powers of ten, is simple: you don't have to remember how many ounces make a pound or a pint, how many pounds a hundredweight (hint: not 100), etc. If your upbringing makes you more comfortable with non-metric, then as #5: mart1n said, just a few simple conversion factors will work for everyday purposes. Remember too, that to the extent that the UK still uses Imperial, it's not the same as US Imperial; for example, a British pint or gallon is bigger than a US one.

Back in the Mid 70's when I went through Primary School, they taught us Imperial and Metric. It's left me permanently confused. I still use a bit of both.

#19: readafew "3. Celcius 233 doesn't sound quite as hot."

600 Kelvin sounds good though: was that maybe the original idea for the title?

30> Well, Celsius is somewhat less arbitrary since the Fahrenheit scale was based on the coldest achievable temperature at the time (the freezing point of brine = 0 degrees) and the reasonably stable higher temperature, the body temperature of a horse (100 degrees). The Celsius scale, on the other hand, was originally fixed between two physically significant constant points, i.e., the freezing temperature of pure water (0 degrees) and the boiling point of water (100 degrees). Because of its high heat capacity, water has been somewhat more important in laying the foundations of physics than horses have (of course, some people still prefer horse powers over watts).

Bunk, I say! I really do not think that the freezing/melting point of Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water under one atmosphere is that relevant to the actual practice of science. Lay your foundations on those assumptions and you're soon going to be out of a house and shooting your horse for lack of food. In reality, you always have to compensate for the actual composition of the water and the actual pressure, and the significance of where you drew the 0 and 100 ticks on a scale suddenly become absolutely meaningless. In fact, you're more likely to screw yourself over when assuming that 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling, when it's actually going to be off a bit.

It's arbitrary, with a lot of handwaving to try to cover up the fact.

26> I'm sorry, I find that attitude really disheartening. If you refuse to ever countenance change, or learn anything new, then you must miss out on a lot of stuff in life.

#21

> 5 How much goes a gallon of water weigh again? About 8 pounds. :-)

Not in Britain. A pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter. So a gallon is 10 pounds. Approx.

> 26, 36

That's certainly a surprising perspective from a science fiction reader.

38> So, all the problems that you adhere to the Celsius scale also apply to the Fahrenheit scale

What you seem to be missing is that has been my entire point the whole time. They're both equally arbitrary. People just mistakenly keep thinking Celsius has some special claim to making sense, which is just bunk.

ETA: Kelvin, on the other hand, has a starting point that's anything but arbitrary. As did Rankine.

ETAA: Of course, it could be worse. At least Celsius realized that his original version that had 100 as the freezing point and 0 as the boiling one was just plain stupid. Glad we didn't get saddled with that one in the name of "metrification."

The Mile and the Kilometer are very close to the golden ratio (sqrt(5)+1)/2 kilometers to the mile. Thus 3/2, 5/3, 8/5, 13/8 etc are good approximations for conversion.

#41 Or as old duel scale analog speedometers in the US taught us 60 MPH is 90 KPH, or at least they are close enough.

43>
All measurement scales are arbitrary
Indeed, the original Celsius scale was, err, rather unscientific.

Glad I could finally talk you around. ;)

Expecting either scale's origins (whether they be related to horses or reversed scales or measuring the freezing/boiling point of a substance that was ill-defined) are laughable by today's standards. Yet metric fanboi's seem to think Celsius has some kind of special inherent rightness, when really one of the most compelling reasons the French chose it was because it was not invented by a German.

Thanks for enlightening me because I wasn't aware of this fact and never heard of the term SI regarding measurements before now. Like I said, I went to School in the 60s & 70s so the news about SI was in fact news to me.

The US has actually been using metric units for a long time; they just disguise it for some odd reason: US units of measure have been defined in terms of metric units since the late 1800s. andyl mentioned that British pints/gallons are bigger than the American units of the same name, but British feet and inches (defined by a yard standard) were (very slightly) shorter than American ones (defined in terms of the metric meter) until 1959, too (at which point both American and British inches changed length: prior to 1959 a US inch was 25.4000508 mm and a British inch was 25.3999166 mm. Today both are exactly 25.4 mm)

This is the first thing that came to mind after reading this thread - I am surprised it has not already been mentioned. A quote from the 1999 article:

"CNN NASA lost a 125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agencys team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday."

The probe smashed right into Mars instead of going into orbit. I am a little confused by this thread, even in the USA after a few science courses most everyone is comfortable with the metric system but as the article states screw ups happen. I remember the scientists trying to explain this one away by using a "budget cuts made it impossible to do the right number of checks" argument.

http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric.02_1_climate-orbiter...

46> Sometimes software I write crashes and it's not even because of imperial/metric conversions.

True story.

46> LOL. Lorax mentioned that in #29.

>46 DugsBooks: And I alluded to it in #15

#32 It's ok I wasn't really offended by your statement. Even when I start a new post on a subject like I did here and people will object to some of the things I say but in the end up learning a lot I didn't know before hand. There are so many really smart people here in LT I'm always learning something new all the time even when we're talking about Science Fiction books & movies. I don't really mean to be so controversial at times because I'm just stating my opinions, likes and dislikes here just like everyone else does in LT. Just like a lot of people here in LT don't like Fox News, The Tea Party or Sarah Palin I don't jump all over them because they don't happen to like or even feel the same way about things I do but there has been times in the past where I have felt ganged up on by people but fortunately that doesn't happen so much today. Even though I think that having a third Major Political here would be good for this Country because it would give the Voters another voice to hear from. And if The Tea Party ever does decide to become the third Politicial Party I would gladly sign up right away. As right now i'm a registered Republican who wants to see Obama become a one-term President but this LT group isn't the right time and place for Political discussions.

Beatles1964

beatles1964 wrote:
... but this LT group isn't the right time and place for Political discussions.

Then why did you even bring it up?

Any comments about Blue Mars and Green Mars?
Good, Bad, In between

52> All good imho, as long as you're up for an epic! Though maybe it helps if your politics are a bit closer to KSR's than beatles1964's...

Red Mars is good. Green Mars average. Blue Mars boring as hell.

Red Mars is the best of the three, if you treat them as standalone novels. But they're not. And you really need to read all three to get the full picture. Each one changes your viewpoint on the previous one(s), and all three together have something important to say.

I loved the epic scale of the Mars books, and the way he thought out the terraforming. I find that kind of thing fascinating.

>52 LamSon: I thought Red Mars was great. Green Mars started to get tedious. I finally decided I never was going to read Blue Mars after keeping it around for ages and gave it away.

I liked the many scifi concepts for terraforming introduced in the series as did #56, several were new to me. The pages & pages of pontificating on social & philosophical issues - especially the whether or not to terraform the planet, really turned my brain to molasses and taxed my ability to skim.

Wow, my reaction was almost diametrically opposite to DugsBooks.

The thing that I liked most about Red Mars was the political tension between the Reds (anti-terraforming) and the Greens (pro-terraforming). It was a realistic and interesting divide, rather than just the usual "We have the technology, so let's go!" attitude that permeates a lot of inferior SF. I think the Reds actually made a very good case, and I've lived long enough in the desert to appreciate the beauty of rock, to say nothing of their point about terraforming ending any chance of knowing whether Mars had ever had life of its own, replacing a unique planet with a second-rate ersatz Earth. I'd probably have been a moderate, in that world; give Mars just enough of an atmosphere to be breathable, survivable but never hospitable like the Tibetan plateau or McMurdo station on Earth.

Blue Mars was a disappointment, but both Red and Green were good.

#59, Yep you are right- if I remember correctly the conflict between the Reds & Greens drove most of the story but the continual rehash of the division of philosophies grew tiresome to me. I have seen many other posts who agree with you.

I

I must be odd. I read Blue Mars first (it took me a few chapters before realizing it was part 3) and it got me hooked.

Oddly I foud Green Mars to be the least good of the three, and I had red mars and blue mars as equal 4.5*.

For blue mars, my review opens "Exceptionally difficult to review. This is a thoroughly gripping book without any trace of a plot whatsoever. It covers and touches upon a huge range of themes and is perhaps a shining example of literary SF, the impact technology and science has on society, and how people within that society can react to that. It is highly focused to an individual level viewpoint, but at the same time widely viewing greater societal changes.
"

I can see how it wouldn't appeal to everyone, but I loved it.

Anyone else think the series should have been Red, Blue, green - going from desert, to water to life ? It confused me at the time.

The sequence makes sense in the context of the books. Lifeless (red), bio-engineered algae (green), sufficient air pressure for liquid water (blue).

Metric conversions can be odd at first but you get used to it with practice. Science as pointed out uses SI units which is basically metric so since you are reading Science Fiction you should make an attempt to get into the groove. Being Canadian we are basically metric as a country but older guys like myself grew up using British units so we have a curious mixture of English/Metric thinking. For example: gasoline is sold by the liter but most of us want to know how many miles/gallon we get from our cars as we watch our speed in KPH. I am 6'4" (not 193cm) but buy my soda in liter bottles or veg by the kilogram.

Here are some simple (though not totally accurate) conversions.

1 meter = 1 yard or 3 feet
1 kilometer = a little more than 1/2 mile
1 liter = a little less than a quart
2 kilograms = a little less than 5 pounds

to convert from Celsius (Centigrade) to Fahrenheit simply multiply by 2 and add 32
so 20 deg C = 20x2+32 = 72 deg F
0 deg C = 0x2+32 = 32 deg F

Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451 could be converted to Celsius 209 (rounded) :)

Lighten up on the units of measure in the story. You sound like you are whining. It is the author's choice what units he uses and metric makes sense when in a science (fiction) novel. NO SCIENTIST in the world uses anything else but metric units.

My only complaint about an author is usually the usage of modern slang in a historical piece. I am reading Simon Scarrow's series on the Roman legion which is set in 43 AD. He insists on using modern British slang in the conversations which ruins the feeling of the overall read. I don't expect to read Latin but then a I am sure Romans did not say "I don't give a toss" or in one memorable sentence that the "book should be thrown at him". Books were not around in 43 AD..."smack him with a scroll" or "wax him with a tablet" :) at least those things existed then.

But I digress........

Actually, a kilometre is 5/8 of a mile, so a bit more than half.

"A metre measures 3 foot 3,
It's longer than a yard, you see."

My youngest niece taught me that twenty years ago...

A kilogram is 2.2 lbs so 2 Kg is slightly less than 4.5 lbs and a lot less than 5.
A litre is just over a quart if you are in the US in the UK it is 1.76 pts which is why Brits can drink yanks under the table any day and Germans are just simply greedy.

66>

Well, yes, but if you're after order-of-magnitude approximations, 10% is usually good enough. I'd far rather have someone do a 1:1 conversion in their heads than whip out a calculator and decide that the "it was about ten meters away" estimate made by a character translates into "it was about 32.808 feet away".

the conversions I gave are very approximate but suitable as a quick guide for someone who is not metric savvy to understand the magnitude of any measurement when reading a novel.

And years of intimacy with jars of jam means that one pound = 454 grams is engraved on my memory!

I don't think this is an appropriate forum for your sexual peccadilloes.

#71 by iansales> And if there is one, please keep it to yourself.

Risking the wrath of Robert I must say I chuckled out loud at those jests. ;-)

The jam and I are just good friends.

Back to metric/customary for just a moment, I grew up in the U.S. in a period when only the "customary" (American version of Imperial measures) were taught in the lower grades. It was not until junior high school (about ages 12-15) that we were introduced to metric units.

I'm comfortable in both; although I grew up with customary measures, I have a sense of the sizes and scales of metric units. This comes from having spent a few years of my childhood living outside the U.S. as a "military brat", and a couple of subsequent visits in adulthood to metric-using countries, and experiencing directly the use of the metric system in daily life.

This is another good argument for Americans to not be so insular/isolationist and to visit other countries, experiencing the world as it really is, complete with SI measures.

Curiously, no one here has mentioned the parallel with the traditional British system of money, in which one pound equaled 20 shillings, 12 pence equaled one shilling, and coins came in odd quantities like threepence (one quarter of a shilling) sixpence (half), and ha'penny (half a penny). Even this system, which I experienced in the 1960s, was a simplification of the system during the Victorian era and well into the 20th century, which had additional eccentricities like the crown (1 pound plus 1 shilling), a groat (4 pence), and more. The British finally moved to a decimal currency in 1971, and I too have used that on later visits to Britain; the experience of having using both made for an interesting comparison. While many Britons moaned the loss of the historic currency system, few could honestly say that it wasn't easier to learn and use. I live in hope that some day the U.S. will finally recognize the utility and value of the SI system and convert, though it may not be in my lifetime.

>75 ThomasHarrington:
Re the British pre-decimal currency - yeah, that was bonkers too, but we had the gumption to sort it out! By the way, a crown was actually 5 shillings. I think there was a half crown coin, worth 2/6. A pound and a shilling was a guinea (and indeed still is if you're buying a racehorse for some reason). And don't forget the farthing - 1/4 of an old penny!

Jam ... sticky.

I wish radians were more popular for angular measurement.

the half crown coin was introduced in a earlier decimalisation project. strange though it was the coped with division by three a lot better than decimal coinage.

I just finished my first read of Red Mars, and I thought it was great. I've posted a review, but there's a topic I reference there I'd like to explore further if anyone here is interested.

"... Even without an imagination you can see what kind of power we have. Maybe that's why things are getting so strange these days, everyone talking about ownership or sovereignty, fighting, making claims. People squabbling like those old gods on Olympus, because nowadays we're just as powerful as they were."

"Or more," Nadia said. (323)

The "hardness" of Red Mars can make a reader overlook its intense metatextuality. In fact, I was about 80% of the way through my read of the book before I realized -- long after the telling quote reproduced above -- that the key members of the first hundred who serve as the book's protagonists correlate very closely to ancient Egyptian gods. Once discovered, I find the relationship so vivid that I'm surprised to see no discussion of it in a quick search of the 'net.

The opening story "The Festival" is nothing other than the murder of Osiris (John Boone) by Set (Frank Chalmers). Next we are supplied in "The Voyage Out" with their backstory conflict involving a contest for the affections of Nephthys (Maya Toitovna). Over the course of the whole book, we are introduced to Isis (Hiroko Ai) as the priestess of the gods who invents the areoaphany, and the mother by magical means with Boone/Osiris of young Horus (Kasei). She is assisted by Anubis (the stowaway "Coyote").

Ra is, I think, Arkady Bogdanov, with Nadia Chernyshevski as Bast/Sekhmet. (Her triggering the destruction of Phobos realizes the legend about Sekhmet/Hathor as the vengeful agent of Ra.) In more tentative correlations, I read Sax Russell as Ptah, Ann Clayborne as Maat, Vlad Taneev as Thoth, and Michel Duval as Besz.

Thanks for pointing that out Para., an interesting point. Did you find yourself trying to correlate recent discoveries/corroboration of facts that have come from the Mar's rovers with the generally acknowledged plethora of detailed information about Mars that KSR presents? Any congruities or inconsistencies?

I set my reading speed to max, near about scan, when reading a lot of the political intricacies. {probably normal reading speed for most ;-) } Those parts did not hold my interest as well, no judgement on the writing just commenting on my interests.

#79/80 from my review "Written in '93 we now know a lot more about Mars than we did, and some of the postulates - thick ice caps and under surface aquifers - seem a lot less likely. But as a metaphor for the Antarctic whose own Treaty is due for renewal in only a few more years - it has a lot to say. There are also wide ranging discussions over how society can and maybe should be shaped. Who makes the decisions that effect the lives of countless billions?

"

I don't know egyptology well enough to comment on your assignments of gods. But there are several meta-points in it as well as being a good story - which has always been the key point of SF in my mind, to comment on today's society by looking at possible the future consequences.

Hence the Antartic treaty - which KST more explicity refers to in a book on it's own. ANd immigration - another very hot topic especially in the UK at the moment.

I think Aquifers can pretty much be rules out these days, and while there is porbably ice at the poles how much and how thick - it being subsurface - is still waiting for a rover to get there and check.

Yeah, it seems that big Martian aquifers are the least likely part of the Red Mars scenario. Even within the story, the characters were surprised by them, although they couldn't be ruled impossible in 1993.

<79> Renacting Egyptian mythology would, of course, be a very Roger Zelazny idea (and he did do it, just not very well in Creatures of Light and Darkness), and it's an interesting idea.

However, in the little Robinson I've read -- his Mars books and Antarctica and some short stories -- I never got much of the sense of the mystical or mythology about his stuff other than some rather generic nature worship. He seems to take his metaphors from history and science.

Yes, if the mythic stratum I've noticed was an authorial device for KSR, he doesn't seem to have bragged on it, and criticism has overlooked it pretty much entirely.

But that book is as big as all outdoors and then some, so there's certainly room for it. Also, the notion that colonial Mars should have a kinship with Pharaohnic Egypt has a certain charm to it: the awesome exposure to the sky, with the habitable bit surrounded by desert.

When I was teaching middle school science, I found that it helped my kids to measure parts of their bodies - handspan, elbow to end of middle finger, height in metric and then use those amounts to make estimation of everyday things - it helped to make metric feel natural and associated it with something other than math.

Metric is the way of the world - might as well go along with it. I've never really understood why others in this country (USA) have such a problem with it. Flexibility should be one of our national qualities . . .

Dear Group, a fun thread!

I thought I would mention something the OP might relate to.

Well, my late Latvian Dad (born 1920) had a very old Uncle who talked in Russian Imperial units Dad said he was confused until he worked out a rough 'conversion' system in his head.

I grew up using Imperial measurements in Australia (and LSD currency - no, not the drug, but I don't remember the '60's too well) and all I remember of primary school was learning 'tricks' to manipulate it. After all, all we could ever expect to be were "Bank clerks or chashiers" :-)

I still remember my Mums 'joy' when Aussi changed from F to C. Although by then she was used to it. I still sometimes say 100 degress F. or 100 Mph for something hot/fast. But that has faded after 30+ years. We 'old farts' sometimes...err what was I saying...?

I guess it ALL depends on what you were brought up with at what age. :-)

Guido.

PS. I do rather like the Mars series. Blue least.

Helcura > 85, guido47 > 86,

I had a professor who had gathered measurements of his students' cubits - the span from elbow to fingertips, used in antiquity as a measure. He had found that, for college-age males, the variation in cubit size was fairly small, and argued that it really wasn't so bad as a unit of length.

Surely #87, It must be a ratio of some sort? I will test that soon. I will measure a friend who is 6' 2''
versus myself, at 5' 7''. Yeah, yeah, I know. Not scientific :-)

You could have a norm that really big or really small workers would need to use a medium-sized man's cubit, I guess. Prof was mechanical engineer, not biologist or anthropologist, outside his field.

Ah Ha. I'm guessing your prof was talking about an 'average' measure, which could then have been used as a primitive length standard. Depends on the sample size of course!

Hard to take an average if, like the Romans, you don't have the zero or positional notation. Long division was not easy then.

Now I think a bit more, maybe my prof's results depended more on the admissions practices of the college. I remember the newspaper, once, complaining that the freshmen class looked like a swim team. If everyone is tall...

#91, I'm not sure but I always though the Romans used an abacus for practical arithmetic.