Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I've been hearing weather reports on the radio (WTOP), and hearing them give overnight temperature like "10 above". Someone else complained that "above" is a reminder that we're so close to "below". My problem with it is different. And probably a bit idiosyncratic, so it doesn't count as a complaint against the radio station (but I'll still count it as a complaint against this particular scale -- PBBBBBT!).

I hear "ten above", and my first thought is not, "above zero"; it's "above freezing". Similarly for "five below" -- I think "below freezing". And that's a Hell of a lot warmer that what these people are actually saying. Or what I'm feeling when I hear it. So I've got this moment of cognitive dissonance (which is much more pleasant when it's about buttered-popcorn-flavoured jelly beans than when it's about interpreting a weather report) as I sort it out in my head and remind myself that they mean relative-to-zero, not relative-to-freezing.

Besides, from a human-comfort standpoint, above or below freezing is more significant than above or below "already cold as Hell".

I don't have this problem with "ten" (assumed positive), or "negative ten" (clearly zero-relative). And I get the impression most of the DC area doesn't have my problem with "above" and "below" by themselves.

Obviously, the Celsius scale is one way around this cognitive dissonance: "zero" and "freezing" are the same number. And my preferred scale, Kelvin, fixes this by not having any temperatures below zero, ever. So my brain-glitch is specific to the Fahrenheit scale.

Fahrenheit is ever so much more familiar to me, being the scale I grew up with, the only temperature scale I knew existed until the abortive attempt to gradually nudge the US to the metric system, and still the scale I see on every bank time-and-temperature sign or television broadcast and hear on every radio report. It's on nearly every weather web site (many allow a choice of F, C, or both; I've found none that display K for me *pout*). Many bank signs display both C and F, but some only display F -- I don't remember seeing any in Maryland that display Centigrade only. So despite my possibly-annoying habit of saying the temperature in Kelvins, I know at a gut level what 15 F, 20 F, 32 F, 40 F, 55 F, 68 F, 75 F, 80 F, 90 F, and 110 F all feel like, what they mean in terms of clothing choices and health issues and equipment failure, and what they imply for oncoming weather. (I also know immediately what 263 K, 273 K, 280 K, and 300 K mean, but have to think about other temperatures in Kelvins. I make a show of using Kelvins partly to make other people more familiar with the concept, partly as a bit of personal silliness, and mostly in the hope that if I use it enough, it'll eventually be as familiar to me as Fahrenheit. Since I like Kelvin so much better, it'd be nice to be able to use it on a "don't have to think about it" level the way I've been able to use Fahrenheit, which I don't like anywhere near as much, most of my life.)

So there's one of my complaints about the Fahrenheit scale, or rather about the way people say temperatures in it. My mind keeps going to the wrong reference point for "above" and "below".