Insufficient metrics
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Dec 30, 2015
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I've written before about temperature units. There are lots of them, and they're not based around a useful zero point. I hope one day we can come up with a better metric to quantify temperature. Not only because the units are dumb, but because equal temperatures don't always feel the same. Temps in the 80s (F) in a humid area feel much hotter than temps in the 80s (F) in a dry area. Cooking on a metal tray takes a different amount of time than cooking with stone. That has to do with thermal conductivity and other properties of materials, whereas meteorologists have a pseudo-hack called "feels like temperature". That's cool and all, but it would be nice if we could come up with a way to rise above these variations.
Same with Calories in food. A Calorie is the measure of energy in the food itself. But I think what would be more useful to know is the nutritional value. That's obviously a whole other can of worms, but it would still be helpful to have an established metric that showed why fast food calories are not equivalent to real food calories. (Update: I'm not alone.) #math
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