Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
femtofarad. With SI you have to learn a lot of arbitrary names
like "atto", unlike the old bad system where milli and micro were
pretty ambiguous and therefor to "be denegrated". Denigrate is a
favorite word to SI
^^^^^^^^^
followers.
Ummmm...... don't you mean "deprecate"? We do that all the time in
programming. Technical meaning: to declare something obsolete--
"stop using this because it might just go away in the future (with
possibly short notice), and there is a new and better replacement".
--ian
P.S. Surely they denigrate too...."
In the "SI Manifesto's" I've read the new (and supposedly
better) name is given followed by a statement that the use of the
old (familiar and perfectly useful) name "is denigrated". Don't
think these authors (some of whom must be young college students
who've gotten "the SI religion") have run across the word deprecate
yet. These are the same kind as those who write the editor of a
magazine pointing out errors in punctuating numbers in other than
the SI system, or who write that something was built out of "lumber
5.08 x 10.16 cm" instead of "2x4's", apparently ignorant of the
fact that it's been a long time, if ever, that finished lumber came
in dimensions of 2" x 4". Different isn't necessarily better!
Ed