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Re: A weighty subject



At 10:16 AM 10/13/99 -0400, Michael Edmiston <edmiston@BLUFFTON.EDU>
gives several vacuous arguments and then says --

I routinely switch one of them to ounces when I need to "weigh" a
letter or package that I intend to mail. (Why convert from grams to
ounces in my head, if the scale will do it for me.) Now suppose it
says that my envelope weighs 1.20 ounces. In my lab at Bluffton
College, that is probably pretty darn close. But if I take that same
envelope and same balance to the moon, it will still say that my
envelope weighs 1.20 ounces... and Jim, that is wrong.

Utter non-sense -- setting aside that mass/weight fog which we all
understand well enough, to say that _my_ use of the word "weight" is wrong
is just silly. Further, does anyone really think that the weight of an
object on Earth (measured by any means) is a Universal constant of some
import?

And we are not talking about accuracy here, but of definition.

Perhaps I should claim that _my_ definition of "weight" is correct and all
others are "wrong"

Yes, I declare that whatever my bathroom scale reads for weight is correct
anywhere I choose to perform the measurement and all other measurements are
"wrong". How would anyone prove me mistaken? Oh you want to use _your_
bathroom scale? You want to do some gymnastics with gravitational
fields? I will just say the _you_ are "wrong" and not let you publish in
_my_ journal -- besides, _I_ am on the promotion and tenure committee.

Jim Green
mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen