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How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System?
thesolo asks: "Despite past efforts of the 1970s and 1980s, the United States remains one of only three countries (others are Liberia and Myanmar) that does not use the metric system. Staying with imperial measurements has only served to handicap American industry and economy. Attempts to get Americans using the Celsius scale, or putting up speed limits in kilometers per hour have been squashed dead. Not only that, but some Americans actually see metrication efforts as an assault on 'our way' of measuring. I personally deal with European scientists on a daily basis, and find our lack of common measurement to be extremely frustrating. Are we so entrenched with imperial units that we cannot get our fellow citizens to simply learn something new? What are those of us who wish to finally see America catch up to the rest of the world supposed to do? Are there any organizations that we may back, or any pro-metric legislators who we can support?"
About 4 kilogulags worth of forced punishment for not using the metric system would do it!
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Looks like *somebody* is about to get a visit from Homeland Security...
Penis size is bigger in centimeters than in inches.
Read the good book. Did GOD tell Mosers to buld his arc 140 metears long? No HE did not, it was 300 cubics.
Keep the whitehouse white, vote Trump & Palin 2020.
Your penis may only be five and a half inches long but thats 13.9 centmeters!
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
No one will ever know.
"The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!"
Is Metric a Communist Plot?
CLASSIC American scare-mongering to any sort of change. I have bookmarked that site, and I will have to look at all those later. =) Thanks for the link.
how big is your dick ? bigger than yours how much beer do you need to get really drunk ? more than you
what's the speed limit ?
too low
All the really important stuff is in imperial.
Nope, relative.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Depends... if you're in Milton Keynes it's entirely possible to drive more than 800 miles.
Tomorrow, I may eat another house plant
I mean, we're inching towards it all the time!
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Shall we argue this over a quick pint?
A school district in Massachusetts today voted to remove all references to "imperial" and "metric" from their science and mathematics curricula, after complaints from a parent that 'cubits' were not receiving equal time in the classroom. A spokeswoman for the district board said today that if scientists themselves cannot agree on the matter...
A priceless statement from an admitted scientist.
My car gets forty rods to the hogshead
Typical American. Sir, ye need a Nipponese Prius! Ye should be able to journey a great many furlongs on but a small part of a hogshead.
In America even our meters are bigger.
Close enough for military work.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
But the more useful measure is for typical urban usage of hogsheads when cruising at 1500 furlongs per fortnight while carrying a balanced load of 12000 troy ounces.
I think you'll find that a tank capacity of 2 kilderkins won't last you too long in those circumstances.
Exactly. If I'm at the grocery store, and I need to integrate a trigonometric function in order to determine how much milk I should buy (seeing as how you can roughly approximate the demand during the day with a sine curve), and I'm stuck with degrees, it'll be hell to integrate, when compared to radians.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
The metric system is just a theory! It has no place in schools... It's a conspiracy I tell you. First they take away our origins with that Darwin's theory now they want to take away our measurements... May God bless you with a tinfoil hat.
I think, therefore you are.
I must agree, George Bush has a golden opportunity for a solid policy win, and a chance to get something other than Iraq and September 11 in the history books.
Switch to metric. There will be resistance from the populace that is satisfied with the status quo, but metric is more sensible from a design standpoint, it makes greater sense from an industry and economic standpoint, and really it won't be that hard. The best part is he might find some of his former detractors backing him on this one.
In France, home of the metric system you *have* to buy one gram, one kilo or one ton of anything because there aren't any units in between. There are gendarmes everywhere making sure nobody bends the rules. And the fines are very stiff (up to a ton of euros).
It's not always easy I tell you. Sitting at the terrace of a café, sipping at a one litre cup of expresso... metric has its drawbacks.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Adjustments can be made. There's a diamond rattail file kept in the same cabinet as the platinum 'standard kilogram' for that purpose.
The people have spoken! Viva La SI!
I'm guessing you're a norwegian. Am I correct?
I always thought that the only reason why the US didn't switched to metric
was this one: If God Wanted us to use the metric system, Jesus would
had only taken 10 apostles.
An alternative definition is 1/2,325th of the time it takes Windows Vista to finish booting up on a 2002-era PIII PC.
If you need to think about trigonometric functions to determine how much milk you're going to drink, maybe the problem is somewhere other than metric vs. imperial.
A cube-shaped box 10 cm on a side is 1 L.
If the box is 100 cm on a side, 10 times as much, it should be 10 L. Oops...
BTW, do you know the time in kiloseconds? Why not?
Normally a measurement systems popularity is proportional to it's ease of use, for example look at the Egyptian system of measure in base 60; it's devisable by 12 numbers and thereby avoiding those pesky irrationals that make doing math in your head rather difficult. I will admit that radians have a certain elegance, that's why the military came up with a where they have rounded off the milli-radian to 6400, it introduces a bit of error but it's still close enough for government work; it's not like your selling milk to 5 decimal places.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
And our kilometer is 1024 meters.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
Surely, everyone knows that the proper measure for fuel economy is the square millimetre (or millimeter for the other side of the pond). After all, we're dividing volume by distance here, so naturally we get an area. And this measure has an obvious geometric interpretation: Distribute the fuel needed to drive a certain distance as a very thin tube along that entire distance, and measure its cross section.
The US uses Queen Anne gallons. This is what Britian used to use. There was no real reason for Britian to change, but I guess the King wanted bigger jugs...
I'm sorry, but you didn't understand anything from all those units 'n numbers discussions. We need 16 fingers, not 12. Hex is the one true base.
Or cut your hands off, use your 2 arms and stick to binary.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Somebody, somewhere respects you for actually knowing this.... happy hunting!
190,080 inches of course.
It's really fairly simple to calculate. One mile is 1760 yards. Each yard has three feet and each foot has 12 inches, so that means each yard is 36 inches, and 1760*36=63,360. No more difficult than dealing with numbers like 256, 512, 1024... in computing.
It's even simpler if you remember the furlong. A mile has exactly 8 of them. Each furlong has 220 yards.
Am I the only one that sometimes suspects the SI system was invented solely as an excuse to avoid learning basic fractional arithematic?
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
You overclockers, always bragging.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
I don't know if he's joking or not yet, I'm still drawing that sine wave . . .
Godless heathen.
Yeah! Like Daylight Savings Time! It's traditional and should never be changed until it's pried from our cold dead hands.......
Software Tech: Oh, damn, i knew we shouldn't have rounded the nearest milli-radian to 6400
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
2.4 inches is hard? Maybe you need to pay attention to your spam.
I've heard the argument that the States won't change to the metric system because it gives their businesses an advantage in dealing with other American companies. A reasonable analogy is they speak a code language that others have to fight to understand but comes naturally to them. For companies outside the US, there is a cost associated to converting. It provides Americans with a way to impose a tariff to protect US business, but without actually doing something the WTO could complain over.
:)
And since we're at it - to all the Brits, Irish, Aussies, Japanese, etc. out there... When are you gonna learn to drive on the right side of the road? I'd argue that's at least as disruptive to a nice happy global family as Americans using an outdated measuring system. Surely driving on the left has caused MUCH more physical harm than the Imperial system ever has.
Oh yeah - UK, Denmark, Sweden - get the Euro.
And just to stir the pot a little more - English really has become the global language. Two years living in Holland and meeting less than 10 people who weren't completely fluent in English just sealed it for me. So can't we do away with those other funny languages? Or at least make English a national language of each country, much like India?
Bottom line - why can't we all be like me?
(Yes I realize I'm getting more and more self centred, but I was on a roll.)