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Arbitrary... I've noticed many important things are designed around arbitrary facts and figures. Speed limits, for example are in increments of 5 miles per hour. I imagine some committee decided a school zone speed must have been a number closest to the reaction time and stopping distance for a typical vehicle... mostly arbitrary. Store operating hours... 10am until 9pm uh... Actually I'm waiting to see who is going to change that... my reasoning is all the other stores close at 9 and your store is open until 9:15, well I can figure the customers will all be shopping at your place when the other stores have closed. Vinyl long playing records turned at 33-1/3rpm and single playing records were at 45rpm. I'm not sure but I'd say there was a lot of arbitrary in that decision. We all know the measurement of a foot was based on the size of some king's foot... his younger brother's foot was less than a foot! The spacing of railroad tracks came into dispute a few times. The story I heard was it was the same spacing as stagecoach wheels because of the width needed to harness two side-by-side horses. I'm pretty sure it dates back to the early days of railroad when they hired companies from Europe to setup railroads in America... don't quote me on this, but I'm sure some arbitrary dimensions played a part of this. DOS... remember that? I believe the first version of this operating system used 64k and Microsoft did an arbitrary ten times limit to 640k totally underestimating the growth and future needs. Fuel tank capacity... oh, I wanna know. Was the weight of a full tank a factor or travel range or does it reach the limits of a fuel pump or did they have 1,000 left over from a previous model and management told engineering to use the same ones as before? Oh, I smell some arbitrary again. The perfect recipe with 2 cups of flower, 1 egg, one tablespoon of butter and one eye of newt. I'd again say arbitrary... Maybe someone knows if thee are recipes that calculate one and a half eggs? Thanks for reading my blog! |
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It's amazing that over the span of life, many things were tried, I think many things were not based on random choice, but upon variable sound reasoning. We may want many variables, but we often seek consistency. It may not be the ideal in some situations, but 'standardization has been a pursuit" in many things. Work hours, 7-3/ 8-4 / 9-5 / which changed when no more free lunch periods was introduced in the 1980's, it became 7-3:30 / 8-5 / 9-6 wheels distance, is about weight and distribution x length. this was probably more related to unit cost, than many other factors. Because Rail Roads had the land grants to have tracks 10' wide i they had wanted to build units of that size. Take the vehicles with short wheel spans and high center of gravity, they do not corner well and may be prone to flipping over. With ingredients in prepared foods, it takes a lot of trial and error to make food that is 'generally suitable for a wide range of taste preferences. Cost factor seem to become a widely focused upon variables. I just read an article, which noted that, "Printer Ink", based on the container size and cost, equates to $8.000.00 a gallon when equated as to the packaged volume cost to the consumer. We saw vehicles move up from 3,000 - $6,000 dollars ranges in the early 1970's, to a standard cost where there is very little that can be bought under $20K, and that means a model with lower rating and far less quality and amenities. Oil, it was selling for under $20 a bbl, in early 2000's, it spiked up to $147, and now hovers around $100 a bbl. There is little justification for a 400% increase, other than speculative greed. Buy the Pocket REF, it list thousands of 'standards for many many things". all calculated by a set of variables which pose its own set of justifications.
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