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White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care
Earlier this year we discussed a petition on the White House's 'We The People' site asking the administration to adopt the metric system as the standard system of measurement in the U.S. Today, the administration issued a disappointing response. Simply put: they're not going to do anything about it. They frame their response as a matter of preserving a citizen's choice to adopt whatever measurement system he wants. Quoting Patrick D. Gallagher of the National Institute of Standards and Technology:
"... contrary to what many people may think, the U.S. uses the metric system now to define all basic units used in commerce and trade. At the same time, if the metric system and U.S. customary system are languages of measurement, then the United States is truly a bilingual nation. ... Ultimately, the use of metric in this country is a choice and we would encourage Americans to continue to make the best choice for themselves and for the purpose at hand and to continue to learn how to move seamlessly between both systems. In our voluntary system, it is the consumers who have the power to make this choice. So if you like, "speak" metric at home by setting your digital scales to kilograms and your thermometers to Celsius. Cook in metric with liters and grams and set your GPS to kilometers. ... So choose to live your life in metric if you want, and thank you for signing on."
A good place to start would be on all of the federal highway signs.
How can you fight this idea, if it's all about multiculturalism in a bilingual country without receiving a negative label?
So basically: use what works best instead of us forcing a one-size fits all approach on you. If Obama followed that philosophy more often he might find being President to be a little easier.
You can't put XBMC to Celsius unless you tell it you don't live in the US.
Did you expect that the White House administration was going to somehow force businesses and residents of the US to start using metric? I don't really get what the point of this petition was. Was it just to point out to everyone that it's dumb that we don't natively use metric in our households and businesses? I think most people are already starting to believe that, as indicated by the presence of the petition itself.
The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.
----
The Simpsons, Abraham Simpson
more than one kilogram of weed.
The petition site isn't a method for legislative fiat. If you want the metric system adopted talk to your Congress person. The president can't force adoption of the metric system. Jesus, people, the president can't even enter bills into Congress and you want him to just pass the fucking law personally? You have representatives for that.
Wasn't one of the most famous NASA blunders caused because two parties couldn't agree on a single standard?
The country doesn't have a national language, despite the fact that the majority speak English... so why do we think the Federal government could just mandate metric? Hell, even if they tried, a bunch of angry southern congressman would probably cry 'states rights'. Thanks Obama.
The cooking channel, the car dealers, gas stations and everyone reading this response could start speaking metric tomorrow if they wanted too... about the only thing that would seem awkward on the green highway mile markers and speed limit signs... and we already largely ignore those...
If you think you care so much about metric, why can't you tell me how many liters per 100 km your car takes? Its *your* car... no one is stopping you.
'Zero' is still 'zero' whether measured in metric or standard. Why does that matter? Because that's exactly how much I care about how the White House feels about this.
We have so many more important things to concern ourselves with than what unit of measure we're using. The most important unit of measure, lives, doesn't seem to measure up to what the government thinks the most important unit of measure is: dollars.
Not yielding an inch, are they? Imagine the impact it would have on Subway.
Every time I see someone write decimal feet and fractional meters I must conclude that point is mostly lost.
THL phish sticks
Be we decided that provinciality was a smaller sacrifice than the cost of the paint.
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The Omnibus Foreign Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 amended the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 and stated the metric system was "the Preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce". Also said the federal government has a responsibility to assist industry and especially small business, as it voluntarily converts to the metric system .
Metric system is of course taught in U.S. schools, even since the early 70s (yes, I was there)
One advantage of a common system is uniform communication. While I'm sure we'd all love to "speak metric at home," it wouldn't help us explain what we need when we go to the grocery store for 2 kilos of flour.
No no no, I'm in Canada and love metric, but you don't use it for cooking.. use cups and tablespoons and shit.
It's almost like choosing between roman numerals and the decimal system. There's a slight learning curve, but the metric system is far superior for math and doesn't really have any drawbacks. Forcing people to make the smart long term choice is not the American way, though, so the US will be stuck in with two systems for a very long time.
It is rare for me to agree with the present administration but they got this one exactly right. In the UK merchants were punished for still using old weights and measures. I would really hate to see that here. Not our way.
first
That must be a imperial first, not a metric first.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
are unknown in the US.
All your database are belong to U.S.
Do we really need the administration wasting time on this?
Yeah, the main thing to start with is driving mileage. They aren't doing much with metric if that (ie public facing) is still English, and only internal govt stuff is metric.
They complain that the government spends too much money on dumb things. Then they want the government to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars so that the road signs are all in km instead of miles...
The government is letting people make their own decisions? So it ain't so!
BTW, the English system works very nicely for cooking, making it easy to halve or double recipes (e.g., 4 tablespoons in a 1/4 cup). Metric is not good for that at all, although it's marginally easier for determining ratios of ingredients.
Hospitals aren't going to turn away critically ill people. And more importantly, the insurance companies need to make sure they get their dough.
So you always want to buy 2 sets of wrenches?
...is there're so many to choose from.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
I almost never agree with anything the Obama admin. does but when I do, I'm happy to give kudos.
Zero Celsius is 32F. But other than that I agree with you. Temperature should be measured in Kelvin anyways.
The White House respecting the First Amendment is not disappointing. Unexpected, maybe.
+0 Meh
I convert stuff to imperial all the time, so far I've not been imprisoned for it. We still drink pints, buy eggs by the dozen and talk about fuel efficiency in miles per gallon. Older people routinely convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, measuring jugs come with both fl oz and ml markings... no prison time.
I agree that no laws should be passed that force e.g. a supermarket to use specific weights or measures. If people are annoyed by the choice of a supermarket they can bring their business elsewhere.
However, the "free choice" argument does not work for monopoly players, especially the government itself. The last time I was in the US, miles were used in the interstate system to indicate both distances/exit numbers and maximum speeds. You can't choose to pick the other road that goes the same place but uses metric, because there is no real competition in the road network.
I don't know whether other official communication of the state(s) uses metric or not, I could imagine many laws and forms that refer to land area, volumes of water, weight (e.g. of cars) that could use either non-metric or metric. They can't hide behind a "free choice" argument there, and a real "bimetric" system requires the government to provide information, like speed limits, in both systems, just like a blingual government publishes laws etc. in two languages.
Maybe before we rush to adopt the Metric system, we should stop to consider the consequences of blithely giving this measurement system such a central position in our lives.
We measure distance in miles, but fiber optic cable diameter in millimeters. We weigh deli products in pounds, but medicine in milligrams. We buy gasoline by the gallon, but soda comes in liter-size bottles. We parcel property in acres, but remote sensing satellites map the Earth in square meters.
While many countries mandate the use of the metric system by law, the U.S. Congress has repeatedly passed laws that encourage voluntary adoption of the metric system. We use a mixture of metric and customary units depending on the context. We also have a long tradition of voluntary standards and our bilingual system of measurement is part of that tradition.
I may be prejudiced by my upbringing, but I always broke it down to metric being the most scientific measurement system, while imperial is the most human, very much in the Spock vs Kirk kind of way.
Fahrenheit? 0 = friggin' cold, 100 = friggin' hot.
How long is a foot? Approximately the size of your foot.
You walked a kilometer? Big whoop. You walked a mile? That's a workout.
A gallon of milk will last you the week, a gallon of gas will get you home.
Putting up a wall? We're gonna need some 2x4s and 4x8s
Even the concept of converting grandma's recipe for chocolate cake to metric give me hives.
Now fixing my car? Measuring out the baby's medicine? Sending a probe to Mars? Hells yes, use metric, are you kidding? But for day to day stuff, mine's a pint.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I think that this is a perfectly adequate solution.
I'm a scientist and use metric for everything at work, but I can drive in miles and get groceries by the pound, too. It's really not that hard to effectively use both systems, and given time we can slowly move to using metric all of the time if we want. The most effective change happens so slowly that you can't pinpoint when exactly it happened. Since there's no urgency here, it will be fine if it takes another generation or so to fully transition.
Look at the progress we've made since the seventies. Today, anyone in science, engineering, medicine, the military, and many other fields are already proficient with both systems. There's no rush, so why not let it happen organically?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
They've left it up to us and are uninterested in obeying the fascists that want to use government violence to force you to obey their will.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I actually think the English system is better for daily use, the measurement units seem more natural to me than the metric ones.
O_o
Natural for what? The only advantage the English system has is that lots of lazy-brained people are accustomed to it.
The UK mandates that things being sold have to provide metric units - they can provide other units as well if they wish. This actually makes a lot of sense, as it protects customers from misleading labelling. I could create my own units that at a glance will look similar and use those instead, giving customers less product for their money.
I mean, if it's really supposed to be entirely voluntary.... isn't that what that means?
Of course, conversely, they could rip down any metric signage that they see and replace them with imperial too...
I'm seeing a rather glaring problem with this notion of "voluntary" as it applies to what kinds of units the country uses.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What are unknown in the US? The first part of your sentence got cut off for some reason.
Real Americans grew up using base 3, base 12, and base 60. Pushing decimal points is for sissies.
Why is everyone so bent on this metric system?
I'm from a country that changed to metric decades before I even started school. I now live in the US, honestly I dont have a problem with the imperial system, I learned all the useful conversions with-in a few months, now I just know what the commonly used imperial units represent with out having to do conversions. If anything the units of measurement are easier to deal with. Gee 55 litreeees of fuel or 14.5 gallons.. 14.5 gallons sounds more practical to me.
If you want to use the metric system exclusively, go and live in a country that enforces it.
I'm British. Metric system feels unnatural to me. I see the world in feet and inches, and fractions of inches. Kilometres seem useless when miles do the job fine. I bake with pounds and ounces (ok, usually I bake by volume - I haven't got the patience for anything else), and weigh myself in stone. If I was doing science, I would use the metric system, but for daily life - why bother? If you have a system that works fine, use it.
I was born and raised in metric land. I am now doing everything in "imperial" measurements, because using foreign units to do daily tasks is just about as productive as speaking cantonese to order food at your local burger drive-in. It doesn't work without excruciating efforts.
Go to a shop, buy food produces, everything is labeled in oz and other random nonsensical units. Still, converting everything doesn't make it easier. Cooking is their example, so lets try it! You'd thought that using your imported cookbook, you'd be able to cook all in metric. Not so quickly. First cookware are not in metric, but I also had imported metric measuring bowls, haha ! Then I discovered that the amount of fat in butter, milk, etc is not the same as in Europe (it is standardized, but standardized differently). So all recipe made with an european cookbook fail miserably, the cake falls, it looks dry, or wet, but never quite right. Good luck then finding a US cookbook using metric measurements. Then, what is the point exactly of using an imperial cookbook, convert all units to metric, use metric tool and result in failure because you made conversion errors ?
I also find the English miles unit size to be more natural, it may be because the English system developed out of practical use in daily applications
Like the Tudor money system?
That's why every time someone wanna to check the "mileage" of my car, i have to explicitly tell him that it is KM, not MILE, and then again, and then again, and god help me if i forget to do it, you could not imagine the paperwork that i have to go after that, because the stupid b**** could not read english, which says KM, not MILE.
brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
When I was in graduate school, we made our experimental apparatus in metric units on tools, like a milling machine, calibrated in english units. I'm nearly finished building an aircraft that uses metric units, except for hardware, which is in english units. I think you need to be able to use either, and switch back and forth wihtout difficulty. If you can't, you don't really understand either measurement system all that well. But that gets back to the lack of measurement ability that emerges from our schools.
I can see no reason for spending tax dollars to change exisiting things, like road signs, from english to metric. Replace them as they wear out, if this really needs to be done. But then, I can't see any good reason to spend tax dollars on bilingual signs, regardless of the language. And no, English is not the only language I try to speak.
The EU single market mandates that you must be able to buy and sell in metric, which is logical since you can't really have a common market without common units. You can also use whatever other units you like and as such many places use imperial units in preference to metric units, reverting to them only when necessary.
Road signs are still mph, horse races are still miles and furlongs and beer is sold by the pint so I think we're happily confused on matters of units this side of the pond.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
I'm completely OK with this, personally. However, I was taught metric in US elementary school and don't GAF about your kids. Sorry 'bout that.
I don't have kids, but if I did I'd make sure they knew metric by the time they learned a conversational language and basic algebra. So, by age 12.
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I did see an awesome comment here on /. on an earlier story on the topic. It was something like:
"Fahrenheit is a wonderfully human temperature scale: 0 degrees is too damn cold, and 100 degrees is too damn hot."
I actually pretty much agree with this; Fahrenheit much more nicely covers the range of temperatures that a lot of places experience than does Celsius. The much-vaunted pegging of the Celcius scale at the melting and boiling points of water doesn't really matter one iota in day-to-day life; when I want to make pasta, I don't put a thermometer in the pot of water and say "yup, it's at 100 degC now, must be boiling; I just wait until it's bubbly."
I agree with you to the extent of 5/32 - 85/544 inches. That old folksy fraction-and-non-base-10 system makes everything easier, except for that nerdy science stuff. It's all cosmetic, because manipulating numbers in metric isn't any easier... right?
The point of a system of measurement is to relate dimensions which are not directly perceivable to those which are. Thus, while you can't "see" a mile, you know that it's 5280 feet, the "foot" being related to some portion of the body (or some particular person's body). Likewise the inch, the yard, the fathom, etc. Using metric, while perhaps more "scientifically" determined, replaces one non-human, non-perceivable value with another. Instead of an imperceptible distance being some large multiple of an average person's foot size, it becomes some multiple of wavelengths of light, another imperceptible value.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I approve and actually cringe a little each day when I think about the dangers we as a nation, and the dangers congress are facing each and everyday. With inflation and cost of healthcare as well as employment opportunities. Funny thing, it isn't everyday the industrial average falls less than 2.0 points. -Jason
I also find the English miles unit size to be more natural, it may be because the English system developed out of practical use in daily applications
I like the English Miles for entertainment: Horrible Histories - The English Mile
We'll adopt the metric system if the world adopts the English language.
Seems fair to me.
I guess the signatories never realized that the inch is DEFINED in terms of the millimeter.
Our national standards are metric. What else is Obama supposed to do? If he was powerful enough to force the country to use metric in their daily lives, he should use that power to get everybody jobs.
Actually, if any individual was that powerful, I would be terrified....but that is a different rant.
How does it feel to be wasting your life?
You tell me, you're the one replying.
Isn't that how the use of the metric system was enforced in Great Britain?
No. There was a grocer who cried oppression in my home town, but that was just a publicity stunt.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Which, incidentally, don't seem use American Customary units of length for those dimensions, but whacky industry units where 1" (board measure other than length) is approximately equal to 7/8" (US customary).
Even worse, you guys still use stones as a measurement of weight!
The US is converting gradually to the metric system, and NIST towards that for decades. The definitions of official US units in metric terms was one of those steps.
A lot of things sold in the US are sold in metric containers, for example 2L soft drink containers, many food packages and so on.
The US has also been signatory to every metric measurement treaty.
The petition is really rather silly. Changing the measurement system of a nation is a long and slow process. Even the French had to put it aside for a while (Napolean discontinued the process for a while).
The real shame is the US didn't start this process sooner. Thomas Jefferson actually advocated a decimal system of measures well before the French adopted the metric system but Congress (setting an alarming precedent) failed to act on the proposal. Later Jefferson was successful in getting the US to use a decimal currency, which was the first of it's type in the world.
Is it in contemplation with the House of Representatives to arrange our measures and weights [the same as the coinage] in a decimal ratio? The facility which this would introduce into the vulgar arithmetic would, unquestionably, be soon and sensibly felt by the whole mass of the people, who would thereby be enabled to compute for themselves whatever they should have occasion to buy, to sell, or to measure, which the present complicated and difficult ratios place beyond their computation for the most part
--Thomas Jefferson
1.5 gallons per hour works out to 4 milli-furkins per micro-fortnight.
Amazing to see how many people are all "yeah, the metric system isn't a big deal."
If it were a Republican saying we're using the English system and we're going to learn to like it we'd hear cries of how metric is the only reasonable choice in the matter and that using any other system is short sighted.
Fucking goose stepping bitches.
I am european mechanical engineer who worked and lived on 3 continents. The metric system is way superior than the imperial system in many ways but the most important is that it is used everywhere and it is a consistent system*. A lot of companies here in the US have switched to metric (at least for this reason), but soon when asian industrial power will swamp the US market with metric product and parts (in the same way that IKEA did) a lot people in this forum will be lost and realize that a dual system is completly stupid.
* if your not convince ask yourself why in a imperial system electrical power unit is Watt and but heat power it is in Btu/h....
Kind of like official language of the USA. There isn't one. Just like customary units, there are customary languages.
Metrification is already happening. Executive order http://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/otm_x/otm_x_1.html. The Federal government has a preference, but it is only that.
The CIA World factbook has a snarky "At this time, only three countries - Burma, Liberia, and the US - have not adopted the International System of Units (SI, or metric system) as their official system of weights and measures. Although use of the metric system has been sanctioned by law in the US since 1866, it has been slow in displacing the American adaptation of the British Imperial System known as the US Customary System. The US is the only industrialized nation that does not mainly use the metric system in its commercial and standards activities, but there is increasing acceptance in science, medicine, government, and many sectors of industry."
Don't worry though, moving 300 million takes a hell of a long time - measured in generations. If you go to the store you will see lots of metric rounded numbers (drinks in 500 mls). Dates on the immigration forms have moved to ISO DD-MM-YYYY. Give it another 50 years, globalisation will take care of it.
First up, let me say, "I AM... CANADIAN!!!"
Metric/Imperial wise though, I'm a mess.
My speed/(long) distance is measured in kilometres.
Short distances are still inches/feet/yards. (xbox size, height of a person, size of my property, etc...)
Construction... definitely feet/inches (16 on centre, 2x4's, etc... Not 406.4mm, 60.54cm or 50.8x101.6mm's)
Weight? Depends... people: pounds, trucks: pounds, gold: ounces, big weight (ie: 100+ tons: metric)
Fuel economy: MPG (45 MPG just sounds better than 5.23L/100km)
Temperature: completely fluent! This is Canada. -40C is -40F. Summer is a myth (this year at least)
Yeah I'm the son of a "transition generation" and my measurement use is confused.
Things I'm certain of though:
It's neighbour, not neighbor
colour, not color
centre, not center,
fibre, not fibre
a mickey, not a fifth
Poutine, not poo-teen
Etc,.. etc.. etc...
Anyhow... I am... Canadian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRI-A3vakVg
Or for the French Canadians (ouin, J'en suis un):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TncdhLGjFTE
"So choose to live your life in metric if you want, and thank you for signing on."
Great. So you won't mind if I paint over the local road signs with "100" instead of "60"? :-)
So how much of Obama's dick is up your ass? If this was Bush saying the same thing you'd be flipping your fucking lid.
One of the problems of trying to convert to metric is the entire postal address layout system is based on it in all grid based cities.
One block = 1 furlong = 100 address numbers
One mile = 8 blocks = 800 address numbers
Changing that would break a system that has been in place since mail was delivered via horseback. Yes, the horse and buggy is long gone, but the subdivisions created while they were used are.
i'll be chugging my 2 liter bottle of soda
Isn't that how the use of the metric system was enforced in Great Britain? Good to know there are so many people that want to use the force of government to get their way on such piddling matters.
You know who's put in jail for measurement? People who give shortweight on measurements. That's called fraud.
Most companies already label their products with both systems which is just fine.
Sure. I don't have a problem with seeing both units. But why not mandate metric be on there? The benefits are clear. What is the harm?
As for roadsigns, the cost would be far too great, and it wouldnt be worth it for what is basically a cosmetic change, and I think would actually make things worse,
It doesn't have to happen overnight. Start with the major highways, and do both units. Gradually filter it down to the other stuff, and in two generations its done. 4 generations down we can remove the mph if we want, or not.
I do not think metric is a better system in daily use.
The goal isn't to utterly eradicate the English system.
I also find the English miles unit size to be more natural, it may be because the English system developed out of practical use in daily applications
As a Canadian, I don't see this at all. The km vs the mile makes no 'natural' difference whatsoever.
I see pounds, feet, and inches being more natural, but not miles.
We are all very used the English system
You get used to whatever you live with. We order deli meat in 100gram increments, we buy milk by the liter, and a good size jar of peanut butter is a kilgram. We know -4 is just below freezing, and that 35 is hot. Its not difficult.
I still think of my own weight in pounds because all the media (TV, magazines, etc) all refer to weight still in pounds. But I know a few nurses etc and they have no trouble thinking in kilograms.
Recipes go either way; because a lot of them are old or from american sources english units are still common. My wife is pretty comfortable in cups or mL.
The only english units that I really think are more natural are feet and inches. But my brother in law works with CAD drawings all day and metal forming, and he can eyeball something in mm or m just fine; and finds it easier than inches or feet.
So my 'intuition' that its more natural is suspect. Its what I grew up with, and its what I'm more used to, but my pre-teen kids have barely been exposed to english units at all, and they live just fine.
If you live with it, you get used to it.
Is it worth converting a population over to metric? No, definitely not. They are used to it, and it works fine for them.
But is it worth gradually shifting a population to metric so that future generations are using metric natively, yes, I think so.
(Distance in one unit) cubed over (distance in a completely different unit)? Come on, do the simple unit analysis and just give fuel efficiency in square meters.
Think of the economic stimulus which would result from a forced changeover. Every machinist in the country would be able to retire rich on the income from drilling out every hole in every piece of equipment which is tapped with the evil fractional inch threading and tapping it for the ever-so-pleasant and convenient integer millimeter metric Heli-Coil inserts. Metric screw and bolt makes rejoice!
BBQ promotes Global Warming
No, zero Celsius is "too damn cold", zero Fahrenheit is HOLY SHIT HOW CAN A HUMAN BEING LIVE HERE.
Circumcision is child abuse.
It would a frivolous waste of money we dont have to fix something thats not broken.
Ah but it is broken. For a start there is no agreed upon standard for several of the units e.g. fluid ounce for which the Imperial unit is not the same as the US unit which is then further compounded by the fact that there are 20 fluid ounces in a UK pint and only 16 in a US pint. As such it is a completely broken unit system you not only have to memorize an insane number of relationships between units you even have to remember whose imperial-based unit scheme you are using.
However, what makes it s truly broken unit system is that it uses the unit pound for both mass and weight. Yes there have been "hacks" of the system to bring them inline with physical reality so you have the "avoirdupois pound" meaning a mass and the "pound" meaning force. However this means that the units are not clear: when you say "pound" do you mean force or mass? If you need to tweak your unit system to make it consistent with physics that's not really a good sign is it?
If that's still not enough to convince you that there is a problem then consider that there are only three countries in the world still using the old imperial-based system: Liberia, Burma and the USA. There are not many things that practically the entire planet agree upon but apparent metric units is one of them and it is not without good reason!
...as much as the intelligentsia want to whine about it, the bulk of the US uses imperial systems in their daily lives.
There is NO compelling need to mandate a switch. None. The bulk of the people in the US who need metric, or need to convert units, or deal with the rest of the world can use either one without an issue (and already do).
For you true utilitarians out there, then, who firmly believe that we should switch to metric because it would simplify massive world systems immeasurably if everyone was simply on the same standard...I'll switch to officially metric the moment you all switch officially to English. Because the benefits of monolingualism are PRECISELY the same (or greater) as the stridently-cried reasons for Metrification.
-Styopa
would had made the problem worst. The maneuver was calling for an adjustment of course .... which was going to be TOTALLY WRONG because of the mix-up in units. A mix-up that wasn't discovered until AFTER the catastrophic failure.
my clock. It's a pain when I watch the international news to always have to
get my iPhone conversion app to figure out what time it is in, say, London or Moscow.
Why the U.S. is lagging behind in the world's metric clock standard is a broken Obama //
campaign promise. It's downright embarrassing. But, you say, can't you buy one? Ha!
Obama has this so tightly wound up that if you go into a reputable clock store and ask
politely to view their metric clocks (that you know) they have in the back-room, the police
will probably be called. Go ahead, try it. Uh Huh. See what I mean. Conspiracy.
Listen, it's simple why the U.S. hasn't gone on to the metric system. Remember that
British probe set to Mars that burnt up/crash landed? Yupper.
But seriously, all jokes aside, it's because of military hardware (which is odd since bores
are metric - krazy) like subs, carriers, etc. The cost of converting things to "metric" is
too much, and there really is no direct replacement (in terms of metric) for, say, a 2"-8 bolt.
You'd essentially have to start completely from scratch to build a ship. But it's more than that;
all of the tooling your vendors use are now scrap, and they'd have to re-tool everything, and
so on.
As far as I can tell, it'll never happen in the US.
CAPTCHA = 'armament' - very funny, /.
http://xkcd.com/1215/
I'm biased because of my location (Wisconsin), but part of the reason that I like that quote is because it matches my own temperature opinions so closely. By my scale, down to about 10F it's really easy to dress appropriately and be reasonably comfortable, and single digits Fahrenheit is where I really start wishing it was warmer. On the other end of the spectrum, I can deal reasonably well up to mid-80s, and 90 is where I really start wishing it was cooler. And ~60 is about perfect. :-)
Really though, places that regularly see 100 F, I have the same reaction to your reaction to 0 F. I really don't understand how someone would voluntarily live in Texas or Arizona or whatever. (And if you say "it's a dry heat" I hope to god someone mods you down as literally flamebait. :-))
and drug users are capable of using the metric system and converting between ounces/pounds and grams.
If you know something is 3 miles away that is usually good enough for most people. Most folks are not going to convert into liters of water at sea level. The argument is academic.
I am a mechanical engineer and I think in the American system but often use metric. In all cad systems all you have to do is enter "in" or "mm" and it will convert on the fly. Heck, I have come to see all the dimensions as ratios to the other dimensions instead of US or metric.
Has anyone seen the specs for standard computer hardware? It is not uncommon to see metric and american on the same spec. I am not talking about a metric along with ameican dimensions, I am talking some dimensions in american and some in metric!
If you wonder why Americans don't care to switch to metric, ask yourself whether you'd like to switch to a decimal time notation. Then little pause in your mind, right before you came to a decision and generated a rationalization for one or the other... that's why American's haven't changed yet. That little pause is "WTF? Why would I want do that?"
Given that relativity is well established, those signs should be unitless. Instead of 55 mph, just have them say 0.000000082.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Natural for what? The only advantage the English system has is that lots of lazy-brained people are accustomed to it.
When dividing by even numbers, english units are a lot easier to deal with: 1 inch, 1/2 inch, 1/4inch, 1/8inch, 1/16inch, 1/32inch, 1/64inch etc. .5cm, .25cm, .125cm .0625cm, .03125cm, .015625cm
Metric units are generally not marked off in fractions like that, so you quickly end up with unruly decimals: 1cm,
And in response to the people who are currently reading this and thinking "But you could just say 1/16cm!": When is the last time you've seen a metric measuring device marked off in fractions? English measuring devices take to fractions like that naturally. The only reason you don't like it is because you're accustomed to base10.
Metric does make a ton of sense for anything scientific (1ml of water = 1cc of water = 1g of water is massivly convinient), but the decision for the average person (let alone someone doing carpentry where things are frequently cut by 2's and 4s) to use metric units over english units isn't the massive no-brainer that all of you guys keep making it out to be
I'm a scientist and use metric for everything at work, but I can drive in miles and get groceries by the pound, too. It's really not that hard to effectively use both systems, and given time we can slowly move to using metric all of the time if we want.
Apparently not ALL scientists can keep their metric straight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
the spacecraft was lost as the spacecraft went into orbital insertion, due to ground based computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound-seconds (lbf×s) instead of the metric units of newton-seconds (N×s) specified in the contract between NASA and Lockheed
You guys are ridiculous. Lovable, but really, fucking, dumb.
Extracting 0.453592 kilograms of flesh just doesn't have the same ring to it.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Road signs are still mph, horse races are still miles and furlongs and beer is sold by the pint so I think we're happily confused on matters of units this side of the pond.
Only in the UK, as far as I'm aware. The rest of Europe has far fewer imperial relics in everyday life (maybe because they were never part of the British Empire in the first place). But even on the continent you'll buy your Subways by the inch, and you could buy "5-1/4 Zoll" and "3-1/2 Zoll" floppy disks. Our yard sticks tend to be a bit longer and marked in both inches and cm. Almost every (physical) thermometer I've seen has Celsius and Fahrenheit scales. The pound as a weight unit is still informally used in parts of Germany, but it's getting rarer now.
I feel for the people in the US who understand how much more practical the metric system is, but I also know how hard it can be to convince a majority in a democratic country to do the right thing. Maybe you need a dictator? Europe can help with that, too.
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
The USA and Liberia are the only remaining countries without metric as an official standard.
For example, every rice cooker. All those "6 cup" rice cookers on Amazon have their own "cup" which is about 2/3 of a regular, 8 fl. oz. cup.
.: Semper Absurda
If you wonder why Americans don't care to switch to metric, ask yourself whether you'd like to switch to a decimal time notation. Then little pause in your mind, right before you came to a decision and generated a rationalization for one or the other... that's why American's haven't changed yet. That little pause is "WTF? Why would I want do that?"
If you have to deal with all the stupid conversion from second to minutes to hours to days to months to years, then you would ask "WTF? Why aren't the world in decimal time already?!"
Quick, you have a transaction that uses 3 CPU-seconds, you have to do 5 million such transactions per day, how many CPU do you need? Have fun calculating 24x60x60 in your head. Now, instead, there are 5M per month, have more fun multiplying by 30, er... no, 31, er... no! 28 so your system won't fall over in Feb. But then you are calculating storage requirements, remember to multiply by 31 this time so your storage can hold in Jan/Mar/May/etc. Do you get a WTF yet?
Oh, BTW, how many days are there between 4th August and 3rd November (3 months), and how about 4th June to 3rd Sept (another 3 months)? Notice that the answers are different? How many days are there in 1st/2nd/3rd/4th quarters of a year? Notice the day counts are different, but businesses still report financials on quarterly basis, thus creating seasonal fluctuations even when there is none in the underlying business? WTF?
Every science and engineering related discipline uses metric already, even in case where some discipline used a more convenient non-metric system, it is usually trivial to convert back to metric, and people in that discipline would know to convert back when talking to a wider audience. So knowing metric makes it easy for everyone to understand each others' measurements.
Metric is the English language in science and engineering, if would be the choice of measurement if your population needs to work with any modern science or technology on a daily basis. So Americans would.... er... um... Yeah, maybe that's why Americans never moved to metric yet, like the other two in the world.
I have a machine shop in my garage, which includes a large mill and a lathe. Both have lead screws set to work in thousands of an inch, so one revolution of a handle is a certain subset of inches (.05) with individual tick marks at .001. It is essentially baked into the hardware, and you have to replace the feed wheel dials and lead screws to change it, among other things.
I purchase metal stock that comes in US units as well (1/2" bar stock for example) which corresponds to stock needed for drawings that give all their dimensions in inches. There is a cascading chain of things, all of which need to change.
You will not see me switching my shop to metric in my lifetime most likely.
Converting a large industrial economy over to metric has a lot of hidden costs that make it very difficult to do, because all valves, pipes, fittings, metal stock, screws etc. offerings have to be changed, and imperial parts need to be offered for many decades to come to service older equipment.
The idea itself is a good one as ultimately metric is a more scientifically advanced and clear set of standards than imperial. It's nice to work in a consistently matched base-10 for all scales.
In the case of smaller economies, it is easier to support the change due to much smaller scale and very small industrial base. New Zealand as a country switched over to metric in a single day, after much preparation.
Although the US auto industry has largely gone over to metric, I do not think that the rest of the US is currently in a position to swallow that pill easily. I believe that no matter how much ideologically it makes sense, that it is still political dynamite.
It would be nice if everyone taking up this topic had machine shop and fabrication experience so they would understand just how much it impacts the pipeline from raw stock to finished product. Politicians tend to think in abstracts and statistics and do not always consider all of the consequences. Most of the rest of the population is so far removed from it that they A. don't understand the entirety of the impact and B. as others have said would not benefit significantly from the change.
-PH
Look at all the pathetic citizens begging government for permission to use a different ruler.
How's closing down Gitmo working out for you? Or keeping the Executive Branch accountable for drone assassinations? Or ending the war on some drugs?
I'm sure another petition on the White House website will keep the rulers in check.
Not enough people know just how well the metric system is tied together, even with the posts on this article... but with a little common knowledge about the system and it becomes amazing.
How does it relate?... not only does everything use the same base 10 for counting, but it ACTUALLY all relates to itself.
1cm x 1cm x 1cm is a milliliter
1 liter of pure water is a cube of 10cm x 10cm x 10cm... and, how about this, this amount of water weighs 1 kilogram.
1 metric tonne is 1m x 1m x 1m... how 'bout that shit huh? nothing in the US system is this well related.
So, not only is it superior because all the counting is the same, with this you can start to have pretty accurate guesses at sizes and volumes. If you want to know the rough weight of how much water will weigh in your fancy new fish tank so you can test a base for it?... just a few measurements of the tank and this basic knowledge above, will get you more than close enough. It's easier to remember, easier to calculate, easier to get everything to relate. Heck, people can now have a rough stab at the weight or volume of their swimming pool they want to set up on a deck... to do the same with the US system takes a lot more totally inconsistent and forgettable details.
The US measurement system isn't just inferior, it's totally retarded. The system itself is retarded, but people staying with the harder system to work with is nothing short of astounding.
The metric system is actually thought out. Take a general test of people familiar with the metric system versus the US system and see how well each can convert their weights and measures without a reference.
I lived in Canada before, during and after the transition.
Over 30 years later we're all wondering why you're all still whining like little bitches. We'd tell you but you might decide to invade our socialist paradise.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Add coffee makers and pots to the list. A coffee "cup" is 6oz.
I am all in favor of a non-linear time scale.
Some hours (i.e. lunch hour) should be longer. Some hours should be shorter. Oh, and it shouldn't be up to Management.
I'd like a car with a metric speedometer/odometer. The only version of the model I want equipped this way is the Euro spec one. The White House says I can have it. NHTSA, the EPA and my state's DOL can go f*ck themselves.
Have gnu, will travel.
Surely they should've put the markers at every 1/8th of a mile, one furlong.
Then they could stay there and they could just say they're every 200 metres.
The metricising of miles only makes it harder to convince people to switch.
The WH response was correct. It has nothing at all to do with them. Amerikins need to read their konstitoooshun and stop bothering the WH with nonsense.
"Learn how to move seamlessly between both systems" (?) if it is possible to "move seamlessly between both systems" then it would be called - one system. ... Evenmore, he non-chalantly calls The People - consumers. Whatta guy! Or maybe It is me? With this obsolete idea that people are people.... Still...
The problem is, the only reason you would need to divide an inch by 64 anyway, is because you don't have a smaller unit than an inch to use instead. That's the reason metric measuring devices don't measure 1/64 of a cm - it's generally not needed. If we need to have something in that tiny scale, we'll use a suitable size in mm or m. (By the way, 0.015625 cm = 0.15625 mm = 156.25 m so it's not THAT unruly. Also, that is extremely tiny.). Unless I for some reason REALLY need to have exactly 1/8 of a cm, I'll just take 1 or 2 mm instead.
Can we now do the same exersice and divide a yard or inch into 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000? That will yield in pretty much equally unruly decimals and/or problems with measuing devices, but worse, because you can't easily convert from different scales by just shifting the comma. And if you count how often these two cases (1/2^n vs 1/10^n) occur in real life - excluding those that only occurs because there happens to be measuring devices that can measure them - I think 1/100 (%...) and 1/1000 is a quite a lot more common than 1/32 and 1/64.
As a 90's kid i was almost taught exclusively in metric. I can think in nearly every unit. Only standout issues being my height and weight.
I got through school with minimal customary unit knowledge. I still have to go look things up when i need to convert them.
It is mandated if it's a food or drug. Do you have something that is not labeled in metric?
I haven't seen a thermometer with fahrenheit scales for at least 20 years. Pound I have seen never. Some rulers do have inches, but not all. I do not know about Subways, I never go there.
But I live in Scandinavia and we have always been more metric.
The melting point matters to people who live in regions of the Earth where temperatures goes below 0C.
I leave it as on excercise to the reader why +1C is hugely different compared to -1C when going out. I am not claiming either is "better" weather, they are just very different. No matter whether there is snow on the gound or not.
What the metri-nazis seem to forget is that the English or Imperial system was in use for hundreds of years simply because it was convenient for the day-to-day measurements people needed to make. Most people never need to do unit conversions. They want their cup of coffee, their pound of sugar, their so many yards of cloth. They measure their waist and inseam in inches, They don't want 250ml of coffee, they want a cup of soffee. They don't want a half kilo of coffee beans; they want a pound of coffee.
You can bastardize the metric system by adding a "metric cup" (250ml) or a "metric pound" (half a kilo) but woe be to them that use a metric cup in a recipe that calls for a cup (English) of some ingredient. They aren't the same.
That being said, I need a pint of ale to get the metric taste out of my mouth.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
It is mandated if it's a food or drug. Do you have something that is not labeled in metric?
Yes. Everything.
http://www.samsclub.com/sams/shop/product/templates/samsShop_productTypeIndex.jsp?altQuery=&searchTerm=&rootDimension=1430221+4294952644&brand=&searchCategoryId=430221
Yes, its on the physical package, but its not in the advertising, on the flyers, the website, the coupons...
Putting it on the package is the first step, but its not enough to make it actually useful.
The White House Succulent Underlings seem to be near an End to this "Petition Madness" and for good reason.
Why not have a length standard defined on the length of the President's penis ! or the width of his asshole !
Should we ever, meaning never, have a real bitch like HillBIlly for a President then we have a volume standard
based on HillBilly's tits !
Ha ha.
Quick, you have a transaction that uses 3 CPU-seconds, you have to do 5 million such transactions per day, how many CPU do you need? Have fun calculating 24x60x60 in your head. Now, instead, there are 5M per month, have more fun multiplying by 30, er... no, 31, er... no! 28 so your system won't fall over in Feb. But then you are calculating storage requirements, remember to multiply by 31 this time so your storage can hold in Jan/Mar/May/etc. Do you get a WTF yet?
This is why this is such a contentious issue -- people *this bad* at math have an opinion about units. You should not be frightened by simple problems!
Oh, BTW, how many days are there between 4th August and 3rd November (3 months), and how about 4th June to 3rd Sept (another 3 months)? Notice that the answers are different? How many days are there in 1st/2nd/3rd/4th quarters of a year? Notice the day counts are different, but businesses still report financials on quarterly basis, thus creating seasonal fluctuations even when there is none in the underlying business? WTF?
A business quarter is 13 weeks so that the number of days is the same in each quarter.
Incidentally, you can't have a metric calendar because the year isn't easily divisible. Hell, you can't have an integral calendar. (Hence leap objects.) Welcome to the level of calendar complexity that the Romans figured out. (You could have a calendar with 13 4-week months. We don't.)
Untrue. It's 15 and 30 cm at least in Netherlands and Germany.
I don't need big government in my measurement system. It's worked just fine for several hundred years, and arguably is useless with the advent of calculators. It doesn't have any real advantage now for quick conversions between scales. Leave it be, long live the Imperial Units, far superior to those socialist European metric units!
WIth food inflation, the producers have been downsizing for quite some time in attempt to mask inflation. For example, coffee, chocolate and ice cream used to be sold by the pound. No longer - now it is something like 12 oz. Same with many cereals.
My modest proposal: switch all food to metric. The consumer confusion will mask the gigantic rip-off. But, we'll finally be on metric!
Correction: I fail base 12 forever. Le derp.
And base 60 would actually be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60.
You must mean Empirical? If you would mean English, you wouldn't have the same weights as you have now in the USA. Imagine the confusion you could prevent by teaching every American decimal counting and simple calculations. On the other hand, the 12 fingered citizens would disapprove....
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Your post is true and I agree with it, with the amendment that there are times in which the president does have power, but it's unpredictable and contextual. Sometimes he has administrative power given to him by a previous Congress, and a current Congress would be too deadlocked to change his decision, or that it isn't worth the political capital used. In other situations, he may make compromises with Congress tit for tat which allows him discretion and power.
Some powers are available at some times in some situations.
Some businesses might be, but the people are not. In the US I had to constantly convert for the Americans, they'd ask for it. I, the European was the bilingual in fact...
The last time the feds tried to push us to metric it was a political shitstorm. Leave it alone. We have bigger problems at the moment without worrying about this stuff.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
LOL!
But when I was a surveyor's assistant we usually tried to close surveys to less than an inch. We were really, really, precise about locations. Maybe that was just a weird firm, but I suspect not, I think that's SOP. Given that we placed markers that precise, it is hard to imagine that the physical structures, items, etc got placed more than a couple inches off.
I can't imagine roadways would be much different.
So ya, as you say, these things are known pretty precisely. Turns out that even pre-GPS you could get really good measurements, if you did it right.
Also having done that, it makes me think all the metric stuff is a little silly. It really isn't that hard to go back and forth. Most contracts were in US units, however some government contracts were in metric. So what did we do? Switched the digital theodolite and computer to metric and worked with that.
Really metric only shines when you talk science or engineering, when you are doing more advanced things like inter-unit conversion. There the standardization is so damn useful, hence why science, including in the US, is done and taught in metric (or at least it was when I went to school).
For every day use though? It doesn't really matter. All that matters is you have a feel for the units, and you can have that for both no problem. I really can't see what the compelling reason to convert to metric for everyday use is. Even in countries that have converted, you find plenty of unit mixture. In Canada you will see things at grocers sold in pounds, gallons, etc. It is amusing that in the same grocer you can see meats side by side, some priced by pound, some by 100 grams.
Then all over you find some units that defy either system. Like ever buy a home AC? They are sized in "tons" however if you've had a look at the unit you realize that it is far lighter than the figure. So what the hell does that mean? It means how many tons of ice per day you'd need to equal the cooling capacity. Seriously. It started way back in the day when it was a new concept, and that was a comparable method of measure.
I really think people make a bigger deal of this than is warranted. I certainly don't think there should be any resistance to using the metric system, it is great, but in terms of forcing a conversion, I fail to see what that gains you.
Just use augmented reality to translate every unit you come across to something that you can relate to ;)
10 is only divisible by 2 and 5. Everything should be like time, divided into 60. 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30. That is why feet and inches are superior to meters and centimeters. Dividing a foot by 2, 3, 4, and 6 inches is much better than 2 and 5.
i don't think many people actually have an idea how much a pint is. it's... a beer in uk :)
it's a bit bigger than oh-five, so not much to complain about that. some pubs "on the continent" also do "british pint" drinks, but again - everybody just knows "it's a bit more than standard beer".
and, as a supporter of the metric system, i'm totally fine with pint staying as a curiosity historical unit, only applicable to that single thing ;)
Rich
Natural for people who do math without sliding a decimal point.
That's your damned answer.
Or do you have trouble reading a clock? Yeah... based off of the babylonian numeric system.
Have trouble with other units? Guess what -- they tend to be powers of 2, capping out at about 60.
Which conveniently subdivides into factors 2,2, 3, 5.
And will express other common fractions fairly reliably 1/2 1/4 1/3 1/5, 4/5... .
Yes, you can find an infinity of decimal values it can't express.
(And that you can is totally irrelevant). It's a good enough system for people who understand that measurement can often be safely approximated, and that the easiest way to do this is to keep eyballing 'halfway' as far as you're comfortable. Of course, it's sometimes acceptable to slice into thirds or fifths...
The mile, as has already been pointed out was about a thousand paces. That my pace is different from your pace is totally fucking irrelevant. That it is /no longer/ a thousand paces because of a longer average gait is far more relevant.
Measurement needs to be precise for physics and zoning (and machining and ...). For humans it needs to be in useful intuitive units.
These two purposes need not overlap.
Don't talk to me about a thousand roughly arm length meters for a kilometer -- nobody's going to fucking understand it in that context because you *WALK* a kilometer as a human, not roll your damned arm over it.
If you want SI, go ahead and use it for astronomical units, measurements, machining, whatever.
With something like the pound you'd have a useful argument -- the origin dating back to the weight of a specific quantity of minted silver pennies, something that is just... no longer in common human experience.
The foot, the inch, the hogshead...
They aren't less applicable just because you like to work in multiples of ten. They aren't arbitrary because of variance.
They're intuition.
Something all the SI in the world can't fix with anything other than temperature. And even that needs to assume STP.
SI crowd needs to learn -- you can't replace intuition with mere science. It's not valuable or helpful. That you recognize it is arbitrary doesn't help the people who think through analogy. It doesn't add value.
You need different things in a measurement than others. So use a different thing already.
As someone who is very familiar with such weather, I don't think I agree. For instance, take perhaps the most important reason that freezing/not freezing makes a difference, at least IMO: you're driving, and want to know how much you have to worry about ice. If it was the case that, for instance, at +1C you knew you wouldn't have to deal with ice on the roads or something like that vs -1C you do, I would. But it's already so fuzzy already: hyper-local air temperatures, amount of sun, ground temperatures, etc. already mean that 0C doesn't actually tell you a ton. You have to be worried about ice potentially even several degrees warmer than freezing, and you may not have to deal with it (even if there's water) several degrees below. It makes the nice round number 0C way less useful.
The problem is, the only reason you would need to divide an inch by 64 anyway, is because you don't have a smaller unit than an inch to use instead.
Nope. Thousandths of an inch are frequently used in the machining world to measure tolerances. And while you don't usually ever divide anything by 64, it's very common to divide something by 2, then by 2 again, and then cut those things up into fourths, etc. Especially when working from a common stock material (e.g. a 2x4) and trying to maximize the usage for something in which the exact dimensions don't matter a lot as long as they're all equal.
By the way, 0.015625 cm = 0.15625 mm = 156.25 m so it's not THAT unruly.
It's still unruly no matter where the decimal point is. Unless you're honestly claiming that you can mentally divide 15625/2 faster than you can divide 64/2
Can we now do the same exersice and divide a yard or inch into 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000? That will yield in pretty much equally unruly decimals and/or problems with measuing devices, but worse, because you can't easily convert from different scales by just shifting the comma.
And this is what my point was. Both systems have different strengths. As far as everyday sort of uses for the common person, english makes a ton of sense due to relateable units and ease of dividing by even numbers. It rapidly loses its appeal when attempting to scale things or do scientific calculations, which is where metric really shines.
France tried decimal time after the French revolution (each day had 10 hours, 100 minutes/hour, 100 seconds/minute)...
They also tried a wacky calendar: 12-month year, 30 days/month each consisting of 10-day "weeks".
Perhaps the whole thing failed because their scheme only suggested 1/10 days of rest instead of 1/7 (because 2/10 was too much historically). Given the current French employment situation, perhaps 3/10 days off is better than 2/7?
The Congress shall have Power...To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.
So the White House's response should've been "Not our realm, go petition your congressperson."
Funny that the republicans don't advocate the usage of the republican (=metric) system.
And of course, the current government seems to be rather fond of imperialism, so I'm not astonished that they don't push for the republican system..
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Because that's what having a standard means, right? When everyone just chooses their own?
m/s would be a slightly more convenient unit at the speeds a car normally travel. It would even work at well at 5 m/s-intervals: 10,15,20,25,30,35 m/s for 36,54,72,90,108,126 km/h or 22,33,45,56,67,78 mph.
Road signs are still mph, horse races are still miles and furlongs and beer is sold by the pint so I think we're happily confused on matters of units this side of the pond.
Almost all bottled beer is sold in 500ml quantities, with 330ml and 250ml also occurring, if fairly rarely. A few premium beers are in pint bottles, but I'm guessing that they'll convert eventually (when their bottle supplier decides to call it a day). Canned beer is virtually all in 330ml quantities. Only beer sold for immediate consumption in bars is in pint-denominated quantities (mostly because we've got very strict laws on that which would have to be altered) and since our pint is actually now defined in terms of metric units anyway, that's not a big problem.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Imagine the republican attack ads if this White House decided to switch over:
"Obama wants to force your kids to use metric...just like those socialists in [ominous musical stab] LIBERAL ENGLAND."
That's incorrect: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html (read it; it's very informative!)
:-)
1 A0 sheet of paper has an area of 1 m^2, so if it is "normal" paper of 80 g / m^2 then the A0 sheet weighs 80g and the 8 A3 sheets you can cut from that without any paper loss weigh 10 g each, and each of the 16 "standard" A4 sheets you can cut from it again, without any paper loss weighs 5 g.
It's so perfect that probably aliens use the same ratio 1 : sqrt(2) on their paper
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I guess the French and Italians get up at a different time, because their words for noon don't resemble their words for nine. Same for the Dutch and Germans too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I simply refuse to purchase any goods from the USA, not because I believe I will be purchasing an inferior product , quite the opposite. It is because I know they will use imperial threads / spanner sizes on their bolts and I *hate* the hassles this creates..
I am sure the rest of the world who are mostly on metric think the same. Imagine what could happen to the manufacturing industry if they began to use metric measurements?
What is the purpose of highway signage? 1) Establishing speed limits and 2) Allowing you to estimate how long your trip will take. Purpose 1 is easily fulfilled if speedometers use the same units as road signage and purpose 2 is easily fulfilled if road distances are measured in the same units as velocities. Therefore there is virtually nothing to be gained in converting highway signage to metric.
On the other hand volume measures are utterly confusing in imperial units. How about changing those instead? The only question remaining would probably be whether to give car efficiencies in miles per gallon, miles per liter, liters per kilometer or some other hybrid, as this is the main point of contact between the different systems of measurement.
Seriously this gets over 700 responses? What is wrong with the system the way it is? I was a machinist working from German blueprints, you either use the standard system or you metric it is not like industry forces you to have one choice, and then use a calculator to fill in the blanks. Just about any weighing system or measurement system is standard and metric.
Unreal!! Out of all the thing people could bitch and moan over this is somehow the only thing people are up in arms over....
It would be a pain to make the switch right now. Imagine all the mistakes and problems that would be made during the transition of miscalculating literally billions of physical and digital hand-drawn or scanned in documents.This would in turn delay production and significantly increase costs of doing business. The only practical way I see a transition to metric actually happening is when the majority of our documents and drawings are completely digital using open file formats designed to be able to switch to metric at a future date. The bottom line is people need to be comfortable with the meter. Solution: Put meters next to feet on height strips at gas stations.
I think the biggest issue with adopting the metric system in the USA is the HUGE cost of conversion of home appliances to metric to measure volume in millimeters, weight in grams, and temperature in degrees Celsius. And changing food packaging specifically to be metric oriented. We're talking costs that could eventually run in the hundreds of billions of US dollars to complete if done over a ten-year period.
I said this in a post like a year ago, but now apparently obama agrees with me. go metric if you want, but don't try to force your world view on others.
Seems like only yesterday it was cso93veo.
How the world has changed since then!
wait, the US still uses inches, feet, pounds, acres, square miles? wtf? get with the rest of the world! no one else uses 12 inches to a foot
don't get me started with Fahrenheit.
I don't think you get to make the argument that Imperial units are for lazy brained people if the whole reason you're pushing metric is because it's easier and simpler.
ISO8601 is YYYY-MM-DD.... and it is the only thing I use.
"Nope. Thousandths of an inch are frequently used in the machining world to measure tolerances"
Are you saying that you measure things in 1/1024 and 1/2048 of an inch? How is that better to work with than 1 um and 0.5 um? (In my previous post the "mu" character designating micro = 1*10^-6 seems to have been lost)
Or are you saying that you measure things in 1/1000 and 2/1000 or 0.001 and 0.002 inch? In that case... same question again, how is that better to work with than 1 um and 2 um?
"relateable units"
They are only relatable because you're used to them. Live with metric and a cm is just as relatable as an inch.
doing it slowly might be good ... otoh, Sweden moved from driving on the left to driving on the right overnight! People just drove cautiously for awhile, knowing full-well that lots of others were even more uncertain than they themselves!
If you want us in the USA to convert, teach our kids metric. Metric system is the 'official standard' of the USA for some time now. Gulf Petroleum converted all their gas pumps to Liters many years ago, and it drove customers away. Gulf as a independent petroleum company retail presence doesn't exist now. Even in woodworking 6MM is not really 1/4 inch, but it is used. 3MM is not 1/8 inch, a 100x150 board 3 meters long is not a 2x4 12' long but the conversion is used. Even 2x4's are really 1.5x3.5 inches anyway. My Nissan car made in the USA displays Metric OR Imperial units, but not both. If we want to get folks to convert, display Metric units more prominently and in smaller type the Imperial. Folks in the USA will like most, go with the easiest thing. But if we have our auto's converted, we do need all traffic signs and maps display BOTH also. Will the USA convert totally to metric? Yep. When it makes ECONOMIC -AND- POLITICAL sense. As crazy as BO is, that is one sacred cow even he isn't willing to tip... yet. And my Gas Sucking Nissan gets between 13 and 27 mpg. Now how many K/L is that? :)
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
...the "£3.30 0.3 Meterlong" sub never took off.
And if you say "it's a dry heat" I hope to god someone mods you down as literally flamebait. :-)
I live in Houston, so I'll say "it's a wet heat".
Has the 21st century brought us techies so dependent on calculators they don't remember the fundamentals of octal and hex, or that those are non-decimal-metric base eight and base sixteen systems? Metric's base ten is as unnatural to a computer as it is to a U.S. carpenter. Bases two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two and sixty-four (halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths,thirty-seconds and sixty-fourths) are natural bases. Base ten is for people who have to use their fingers.
100 C being the boiling point doesn't really matter much, but having the freezing point at 0 is very convenient, at least in climates where you actually do get snow and ice in winter.
The ISO-8601 Standard is "yyyy-mm-dd" and computer geeks use it. I sorts!
When the Brits went to Celsius, they had a poster with a girl in various costumes next to 10-degree steps, something like Parka = -10, heavy coat = 0, .. bikini =30, .. HazMat suit = 50. and they had a poem which I cannot remember. But it was very simple.
The hardest part will be getting Sammy Haggar back in the studio to re-record.
gosgog:
Post both, no worse than English and Spanish, on other stuff (40% of the legal population are from Spanish Speaking places...& knowing two languages is better than one anyway). Now you assholes who think 55mph is good, not on a FREEWAY DUMBASS...all you do is end up causing accidents. Go buy a bicycle and stay in your neigborhood!
In case if Fahrenheit it's true.
10s and 20s - damn cold
30s - freezing
40s - cold
50s - chilly
60s - cool
70s - room temp, t-shirt time
80s - warm
90s - hot
100s - very hot
Take Celsius is 26C warm or hot about about 31C? How about 17C is it too cold or only chilly?
And I'm saying as somebody who lived most of my life in a country with a metric system. Somehow I got used to Fahrenheit and I find it easier to follow for day to day things. I prefer metric for all the other stuff though.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
Agreed.
Moreover, the 180 degrees between freezing and boiling were selected to match a human's ability to differentiate temperature by touch --- if one can make two items 0.5 degrees Celsius apart, while they're the same temperature reading (disregarding the decimal), one will seem warmer than the other --- but things need to be a full degree different in Farenheit for the difference to be perceptible.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I bicycle during winter. -1 is very different from +1, not only because it means how I need to dress (raining v.s. snowing). Supercooled rain happens maybe once a winter, so it is not important.
Besides, if the road is on snow and temperature is below zero you know it won't be very slippery, just "normal". But if the temperature is above, you know it is melting & icing and will be slippery. If there is no snow, then +1 means there can be some places with black ice, but overall it won't be that bad. If temperature is below zero moisture will freeze to the road and it can be very slippery. Zero does not tell me everything, but it does tell me a ton.
I should add that zero tells me more than any other temperature. It tells more than few next most important ones added together.
Using the CIA World Factbook, less then 400 million people don't use the metric system, out of a population of over 7,000 million.
"Lots of people"?
No, not by any definition of "lots" that I've ever read.
Unless you're an international traveler or are importing some substance measured by volume, why the heck would you care how they measure in the UK?
We live in a world of global trade and information exchange. If you look up fuel consumption figures online UK cars will appear far more fuel efficient that US cars because the gallon in "mpg" is significantly larger. Nobody lives in isolation from the rest of the planet anymore even if you never leave the US you are likely to use non-US products and look at non-US webpages for information.
There are STRONG arguments why science and engineering people...benefit from metric... However, 99% of Americans don't need to do these things in everyday life, so why should they care?
Any American should care. How much time is wasted in the US converting between metric and imperial units? How much do conversion mistakes cost both tax payers and companies (who will pass those costs on to the consumer)? Having two different unit systems costs time and money and can lead to some very expensive mistakes - remember that multi-million dollar NASA probe?
Switching to metric will certainly be a pain and irritating for those used to the imperial system. However if you start teaching your kids the metric system and start using both when selling things it will make the switchover relatively painless. It will also save money and remove a trade obstacle between the US and the rest of the world - which is not something you want to have given the rapidly eroding dominance of US trade.
Sure, ml is silly, until your wife asks you how many teaspoons in a quarter cup (as she's trying to upsize a recipe). Then ml are wonderful, and I thank god the measuring devices are marked in ml too. (teaspoon = 5ml, quarter cup = 60 ml).
'Avoirdupois' has nothing to do with mass...
Au contraire it has everything to do with mass because it is defined as a mass.
You are thinking of that bastard unit the pound-mass
Indeed I am: the avoirdupois pound IS the pound-mass. If you as (I assume) an avid imperialist are confused by your own units don't expect to be able to convince anyone that your unit system is a good idea!
And don't forget the metric system's own bastard unit: the kilogram-force. Which, I might add, is far more commonly used than pound-mass, unless all of the metric world's cheap bathroom scales are really sophisticated mass-balances in disguise.
A mass-balance measures mass via its weight just like a bathroom scale. If you know the gravitational field strength then there is no problem whatsoever in measuring a mass using its weight. Indeed you need an inertial balance to measure mass without gravity. As such the "kilogram-force" is almost never used unlike pounds which are used both for mass and force e.g. pressure has units of pounds per square foot/inch/furlong/... but I have never seen kg/m^2 used for pressure you use newtons per square metre (N/m^2).
You're doing it wrong.
The only unambiguous date format is YYYY-MM-DD: it's wholly artificial (divorced from language or culture) and it also has the bonus of sorting properly when alphabetized.
http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/inches.html
But if the system the Americans use is more complex and they can handle it, and the metric system is easier....Who is the lazy-brain?
when their bottle supplier decides to call it a day
Unlikely to change for that reason. Cheap beers might come in standard bottles but premium beers tend to have custom bottles anyway with brand names and logos in the glass. As long as they see a benefit in branded bottles they can have them made any size they like at no change in the cost.
Canned beer is virtually all in 330ml quantities
I assume you're Australian then? In the UK canned beer is 440 ml or 500 ml. Only soft drinks tend to come in 330 ml cans. 250 ml bottles are very rare here but 330 ml is common for many imported beers.