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Petition For Metric In US Halfway To Requiring Response From the White House
fsterman writes "Without any prompting from the U.S. Metric Association, a We The People petition to standardize the U.S. on the metric system has received 13,000 signatures in six days. That's half the number needed for an official response from the White House. It looks like ending the U.S.'s anti-metric alliance with Liberia and Burma (the only other countries NOT on the metric system) might rank up there with building a death star."
"Liberia and Burma (the only other countries NOT on the US metric system)"
Right. And now the Metric system itself is from the US? Who writes this stuff.
I don't see how a country that drives in miles, weighs in stones (pounds for other things), and sells things by the gallon counts as metric.
I can not believe that the metric system was invented by the US. I guess you meant IS metric system.
-- Cheers!
For this to even remotely succeed, at least two generations of kids need to grow up with the metric system (or at least have it along side imperial). Then, when they enter the workforce, metric will seep into common usage.
Meanwhile, what of the generations of existing trades that rely on imperial? I.E. Carpentry, plumbing etc... It isn't just a simple matter of teaching metric either. All these industries and their supporting industries must switch or provide parallel measures (of course, the old timers will stick to imperial in that case, since it's there too). That's very, very, very expensive both in material and time.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
13,000 American signed? That's like 20,000 in metric! (or airplane seats)
People do a couple calculations in college and then they think they know something. It's not simple like multiplying by 25.4. Start with a quarter inch bolt of which there are several thousand on an airplane. Then consider the hole for that bolt. Then consider the drill bit for that hole. Then think about the washer and the thickness of the sheet metal used to make the washer. Work your way back to the rollers that press out the sheets. Think about all the mistakes that are not made due to well understood measurement systems. There is so much to change.
Metric is nice. No doubt about that. Changing over is a gargantuan undertaking. Don't underestimate the difficulty.
Adopting the metric system will eliminate a lot of confusion and ease standardization of container sizes and other such things, which in the long run will save a lot of money. Indeed, the Death Star will be cheaper to design and build, and more likely to work, if all of the work is done in metric.
I would hate to see the other units disappear as well but, as far as I'm concerned, someone should always be able to order a pint of ale. Any metric twaddle that threatens that should be thrown out with the other trash.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I don't have much of a problem with metric, but I don't think in metric. My children might be young enough to make the transition to metric thinking but this isn't going to happen in their lifetime because...
1. Baby boomers are the biggest demographic group and they will reject a metric transition.
2. If we have to wait for the baby boomers to die off, Gen X and Gen Y will be too entrenched in imperial thinking to make the transition.
3. When the baby boomers die off Gen X and Gen Y will be the demographic groups driving elections and when we're in our 50s, there's no fucking way we'll go along with a metric transition.
4. A lot of Americans like to keep doing things our way precisely because the rest of the world doesn't.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Governments impose standards all the time, because it is necessary. Entities like the FCC exist in great part to do this. Imagine for example what would happen if every US city had a different measure system. Nothing would match. Ever. Gee, you can break it down even more, imagine if everybody had his own measure system.
Keeping using one badly designed measure system while the whole world use another clearly superior is not only stubbornness but stupidity.
Too late, we're already on the metric system. The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 and designated the metric system as the "preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce."
If we are going to adopt a decimal system of weights and measures at least we should go with an American one.
From your link:
"Jefferson proposed to divide the foot into 10 inches, 100 lines, and 1000 points"
This is exactly how land surveying is done today in the US. Steel and fiberglass land surveyor's tapes and leveling rods are graduated in 10'ths and 100'ths of a foot as the standard. It has carried over from the land surveying electronics revolution in the 80s to be incorporated into total stations.
On a total station, you can switch between metric and English at the press of a button, but since land surveying is "1/3rd measurement and 2/3rds law" as one former boss put it, doing measurements in metric when a deed calls out English is just nuts.
--
BMO
hell, it probably won't happen in my lifetime bar a major change in our political zeitgeist that will put "American Exceptionalism" to bed for good.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
And this is the death knell of US Metrification as a likely future event: The irrational bigotry and hatred of the French exhibited by so many Americans, solely because when the US waged an illegal war based on false premises and deliberate lies, the French decided not to participate based on their own interests and their own democratic system.
Anything French must seemingly be spat upon the moment it is mentioned. Anything French must be inferior, cowardly, belittled etc, simply because its French, and they didn't want to come play in the first Gulf War when the US told them to. Its sad.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
> every US city had a different measure system.
It used to be that way. That's why the Constitution has this thing about Congress establishing standard units.
Fast forward 240 years and now the time to go from one continent to the next is shorter than the time it used to take to travel between cities.
So guess what. If you want to sell your stuff outside your village (the US) you have a problem.
1) the White House never responds substantively to any of these stupid petitions. They are to convince the gullible about "change".
2) everyone that needs metric uses it already.
3) 14,000 300 million. Like, by a lot. Like, not EVEN a drop-in-the-bucket amount.
-Styopa
Uhh, the government just has to mandate use within it's own sectors and for contracts. Everyone will switch over very quickly and the only choice you will have to make is how much more you want to spend on an imperial unit version of a given tool.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
Why even have stories about these petitions anymore? The government has proven repeatedly they don't give a shit about them and they will NOT give a meaningful response. In theory they're a great idea but in practice they are a complete waste of time.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Every time I read one of these articles, I sense this bizarre attitude that getting 25,000 signatures somehow means that a law will be passed or that something meaningful has been accomplished or that it's important to sign/not sign whatever bit of garbage is being bandied about at the moment. The "We The People" site is about as important, useful, or relevant as a pop-up poll promising you a free iPad for responding. The "response" from the White House is virtually always "We've read your stupid petition. Here's your response: It's stupid.". Laws are not passed in America by direct democracy, and, even if they were, you'd need about a hundred million votes, give or take, not 25,000. 25,000 signatures -- in a population of 300+ million -- are nothing. You can get 25,000 people to sign virtually anything. To get a law to the President's desk, you need to convince 50% of Congress to do something -- actually, more than 50%, given the many procedural obstructions that exist. Absolutely NO MEANINGFUL, CONCRETE, OR SIGNIFICANT ACTION WILL EVER BE TAKEN SOLELY AS A RESULT OF A PETITION ON THAT WEB SITE. Every time a web site or news service acts as if signing a petition on "We The People" is somehow different from writing "I wish the magic fairies would give me a pony!" on a scrap of paper and then keeping it under your pillow, it adds to the "slacktivism" of the American people and undermines any actual progress towards any desired goal, regardless of your political leanings. THE SITE IS A JOKE. It means NOTHING. It will not influence a single vote in Congress. It will not cause the President to take any action he was otherwise not going to take. Every moment wasted signing a petition, asking someone else to sign a petition, asking someone NOT to sign a petition, etc, is a moment wasted from your life (yes, like the moments I wasted writing this). You would accomplish more for yourself watching "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo", because at least you'd be entertained. (I assume, I've never actually watched it. If I want to see drunken redneck idiots, I can drive a mile to my local Wal Mart.)
Suppose the death star gets about halfway done, and the requirement to convert to metric kicks in. All those parts machined to imperial units will have to be scrapped and the whole thing rebuilt.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Europe is 5.9 times larger than Alaska.
Europe has an area of 3,930,000 sq miles.
Alaska has an area of 663,268 sq miles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska
We were mocking the French long before the Gulf war.
FOR SALE: Used French rifle, only dropped once.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Have gnu, will travel.
Metric is better not because of some terribly intrinsic quality but because it's everyone else uses it. That's the whole point of a standard--cnce a unit system becomes standard, it is no longer arbitrary. Metric was invented by scientists to do physical calculations more easily, and everyone else changed to match them because there wasn't any point in maintaining separate standards for science or engineering or everyday life.
There are benefits for the engineers and technicians who design and build machinery. Not having to convert units every time you get a drawing from a supplier overseas. Not having to re-train employees to work on a foreign-market version of your product. Not having to plan ahead to make sure your domestic foreign suppliers are using the same units, or pay extra for one of them to use one system or the other. Not having to stock your machine shop with two complete sets of tools, and waste mental effort switching back and forth, because half the stuff you do is in metric anyways.
Then there are the ancillary benefits, like not having our citizens look like complete idiots when they try to read roadsigns in kilometers in Europe. Or the ridiculousness of having to divide by 5,280 feet to get miles, or how our roadsigns say "1/2 mile" and then "1500 feet" (0.284 miles).
Since the simplest answer to every question is "It was God's will.", Occam's Razor says, yes. It was God that crashed the craft into Mars.
In a coherent system, the mass-energy system is just E = m. There is no c.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units
If we're going to change, we ought to change to something fundamentally correct. We could be the first nation using Plank units.
This isn't to say I'm for or against metric. I really don't care. The only point I'm making is that its a unit of measure and the system you use for measuring units doesn't make you more or less advanced.
The US designs autonomous space probes in imperial units that are superior to anything any other country could produce in metric.
I have nothing against metric. It's fine. But neither do I have a problem with pounds, inches, horsepower, or fahrenheit. It's just units of measure and one is generally as good as another so long as they communicate the needed information.
I had a room mate once ask if I had a tape measure. He needed to know if something was roughly the same size as something else. I handed him a bit of string. He didn't understand. I put the string against one side of the first object and then measured it against with that same piece of string against the second object. How big was each object? I'm not exactly sure but it didn't matter. What mattered was their relation. And that bit of string showed us exactly how the two items related to each other.
You have to understand that that is all units of measure are really. It's not important where you divide them into units. How big an inch or how heavy the pound. How they divide or how many makes another. It's just not important. You can make it simpler but it's not better if it isn't actually more useful. And it isn't. It's the same.
As someone that deals with metric and imperial units all the time... let me tell you... I don't care. I've got it down. You could honestly add a dozen more measurement systems and it still wouldn't matter to me. Get a conversion table and use it. It's not a big deal. No one is suffering technologically or scientifically for lack of a conversion table.
If THAT is what is holding you back you're either stupid or lazy.... and you'd fail in science and engineering regardless.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It's convenient for political organizations to pretend everyone agrees with them.
As of this writing (January 2013) the United Kingdom still uses MILES to measure distance, MILES PER HOUR to measure speed, STONES and POUNDS and OUNCES to measure weight, and FLUID OUNCES to measure volume.
Certainly not true. I've not seen stones, pounds and fluid ounces used in years. I guess people born before the mid-60s might still use them in conversation, but younger generations don't and you won't find them being used in any kind of technical or commercial setting.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
The whole point of metric is that your mileage does not vary.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
I'm not entirely sure what it is you are trying to prove here.
You are supposing that an arbitrary unit based on the stamina of an ox is a better basis for area calculations than the meter?
Without knowing it, Americans are already on the metric system, albeit indirectly, as the US customary units are defined in terms of metric units. The inch is formally defined as being exactly equal to 25.4 mm. There is no "standard inch" or an independent definition in terms of so many wavelengths of light or something like that. Same for the pound, which is defined as 453.59237 g.
But I would say that the main problem with units like foot and inches is not the base per se, but the inconsistent bases across the spectrum.
I agree that is a very real problem. Base 2 or Base 16 or Base 8 is not inherently less logical than Base 10. But that is not the main problem with using feet and inches. The main problem is that it simply is not the same units used anywhere else in the world. This means there is a very real and significant cost to maintaining the tooling, signage, engineering time, documentation, conversions, mistakes etc between the two systems. It is a completely unnecessary and pointless cost. It means that we have to buy unnecessary tools, have engineers spend time on pointless unit conversions and rounding problems, we have to worry about unit conversion mistakes, we have to make extra gauges to measure the second measurement system. The real problem is needless cost, wasted labor, mistakes and confusion.
Now this could be solved by the rest of the world converting to the units used in the US but it makes a LOT more sense for those of us in the US to stop being a bunch of arrogant dickheads and switch to match the other 95% of the world population.