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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?"
Got to disagree with that. There are a few hold-outs that have thus far resisted metrification - basically anything that involves old, miserable people - like speed limits, temperature, clothing and body weight. And there were some big arguments about weighing fruit (I'm still amazed that people can get so worked up about units). But everything else is pretty much metric: the plumbing in your house, screws in your electrical system, paper sizes, temperature of your oven, power of your lightbulbs (ergs/s anyone?), anything to do with engineering or science. Everybody who's serious is using metric.
Well, I am an American living in the UK. The UK officially uses metric but all the road signs and speedometers in cars use Miles per Hour, all distances on signs are also in miles, people still count their weight in Stones, and I can still buy pints at the pub. I wonder if we should still count the UK as a metric using nation.
Canada.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Kind of true... it's not that strict though. Yes, road signs here are in miles and mph, and many people use feet and inches, but metric is taught in school so most people under 30 generally use metres and centimetres.
It's also worth noting what happened a couple of years ago (most people blame the EU) - greengrocers had to start listing prices in pounds (the currency) per kilogramme rather than pounds per pound. There was a lashback at the time but most people seem to have accepted it (and most greengrocers list both now).
Having said that, if somebody asks my weight or height, I'd tell them in stones and feet, so we still have a way to go.
There is a drive to convert road signs to metric - again, partly because of our EU membership - but there's no easy, straightforward way to do it. One interesting idea, coupling with the concept of reducing our speed limits in general, is to leave the speed limit signs as they are but tell everyone that they now refer to KPH rather than MPH (ie. a 30 MPH limit becomes a 30 KPH limit). But of course, the number of people who want our speed limits reduced is relatively small, and that would be a much harder change to propose than metric!
This isn't really true. Britons uses imperial measurements a lot for day to day use, but you'll find that anywhere something needs to be done precisely, it's done in metric.
For example, the hardware store will sell the same standardised pieces that have been around for years, and these will be in imperial. But I doubt you'll find a building site in the country which is working in anything apart from metric. Any architecht would make plans in metric, as would any engineer.
General rule of thumb would be imperial for casual stuff, metric for work - although there are going to be a few exceptions to this ;)
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Actually it's a mix. People talk in miles, stones, pints and inches (for certain body parts). But then they'll happily talk centimetres, metres, kilograms or litres for other things. As for hardware stores, it is almost entirely metric with just vestiges of imperial here and there. Everything from screws, nails, flooring, tiles, boards is all measured in metric. A short trip to an online DIY site such as www.screwfix.com would confirm that.
Certainly it's less metric than the rest of Europe, but not massively so. Anyway, Ireland demonstrates that the UK could convert to KM for road distances and speed without the collapse of civilization - the changeover happened virtually over night.
It's actually 40 inches (1016 mm) long.
The SI unit for time is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Cs-133 atom.
If you can't remember this simple fact, you are not worthy.
Seriously, it is scary that it is possible for someone to reason so badly.
Firstly, he claims conversion is implicit and universal despite mars probes crashing because obviously people DO forget to do it sometimes. Then he throws up some rhetoric involving binary and hexadecimal, number systems which are only used in low level computing because of their affinity with hardware with having two general purpose unit systems used in parallel. Then he brings up seconds, minutes, hours and days when anyone who knows anything about metric knows that only seconds are part of SI, the rest should never be used in calculations. Then he claims that points are somehow better than millimeters because he likes his fonts at exactly 12pt and is not willing to have his fonts 5% smaller to make them 4mm but instead NEEDS that extra .233 millimeters to make his fonts JUST RIGHT but doesn't want to be bothered typing it in. Of course if someone wanted 4mm fonts they would need to type in 11.3394pt in the current system, but of course we all know that fonts are especially right when they are at even numbers of points rather than millimeters. What the hell is a point anyway? Millimeters are used in carpentry, particle physics and trade, points are just another unit made up for one purpose that doesn't really need its own system of measurement.
He summarizes in extolling the virtues of diversity. Diversity is great, don't you just love the Gnome and KDE flamewars on slashdot because any given application only really works properly and looks right with one desktop. And how you can't run OSX applications on your linux box. And how there are more BSDs that you can name but only one of them has proper SMP support but it is neither the one that is portable nor the one which is secure nor the one that is modular. You've gotta love the web pages designed around IE's quirks that don't quite look right under firefox. Oh, and how IPSEC has two types of header which can be used with either of the two modes and how nobody quite supports it because it's too "diverse". I can't begin to explain how having two types of high density optical disk has helped me enjoy high definition video so much quicker. Ever tried to hook up the tail lights of a friends trailer to your car and found out the plug is different? Ever bought some electric guismo from overseas but the plug doesn't fit without an ugly adapter?
In art, food and society you have diversity, in science and technology you have incompatibility.
Nobody could be dumb enough to truly think what the OP thinks, though I live in Australia where we switched to metrics in the 60s to the 80s and cannot imagine anyone having any trouble. That is why I think the OP is a troll or just having a little sarcastic joke that nobody got.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
> With SI, on the other hand, many divisors are problematic. What's a third of a metre? [...] What's a twelfth of a litre?
Those are extremely popular and somewhat contrived examples to prove the superiority of the imperial system. Yet what's so special about easy division by three or by 12? When you happen to need it, that's fine, but more often than not you will find yourself having to divide by four instead: estimating the amount of material needed for the circumference of a rectangle (amount of fencing, sheetrock, etc). For division by four neither system is vastly superior.
Where the imperial system is mind-numbingly and idiotically inadequate is in day-to-day length measurements. If you have have ever done any carpentry work and encountered the endless fractional "standard" sizes such as thicknesses of 5/8" or 31/32", and then tried to add those together while holding a bunch of nails between your lips, a 2x4 in one hand and a hammer in the other, you know what I'm talking about. Yes, it is a contrived example, but not by much. Addition of lengths with fractions of differing denominators is so common in everyday life that the imperial system is pretty much untenable for that reason alone. And please spare me any erudite counter examples showing how some sophisticated fractional magic actually makes it EASIER, because no carpenter or contractor I've ever met knows and uses those--they all fudge the fractions by "gut feeling" and consider accuracy to half an inch or so "good enough".
Metric makes the life of a carpenter infinitely easier. Except for fine woodwork the millimeter is the highest accuracy you need on a construction site, and you can measure and add together lengths of centimeters and millimeters all day long in your head without any loss of accuracy or confusion. Try it sometime. Incidentally, you don't really need a unit between the meter and the centimeter. While the decimeter is not explicitly used much, implicitly people have a good feel for it. Seeing a measurement of 0.3m you don't have to perform mental gymnastics to know that it's 30cm, and people intuitively have a very good feel for the length of 10cm (about the width of a hand), so they can easily visualize fractions of a meter.
My generation was taught both systems and taught in school that the metric system was superior and used by the rest of the world. My generation is between 25-30 now. That means we will start to gain power is about 10 years and will be the driving force running the nation in 20 years. With Gen X taking over the nation, and the baby boomers out, you will see quite a shift in US policy. The metric system will be part of that.
Unfortunately, Gen X is actually rather cold, logical, understands technology and does not share all the romantic notions of previous generations. This means that the romantic notions that most individual rights are based upon will likely be ignored in policy decisions. Our understanding of technology means that law enforcement will probably be much more effective. In short, life is not going to be much fun under gen x. I predict that we will sell out even worse than the baby boomers ever dreamed of. And the baby boomers are fairy serious sell outs. They went from being hippies protesting the man and the war to putting us into an even worse war and moving the nation to the closest it has even been to a dictatorship.