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."

Comments

Start here

[GeoSanDiego]

A good place to start would be on all of the federal highway signs.

Re:Start here

[UltraZelda64]

"55 MPH" seems fine to me. I don't have a problem with adding KPH readings to the signs, but if they want to claim that they are truly "bilingual" with measurements, then having both MPH and KPH would make the most sense...

Re:Start here

[CohibaVancouver]

Take your awkward, unnatural metric system back to europe where it belongs

I agree this is nothing the USA can afford to do right now. After all, you need that money to fight the drug war and build more aircraft carriers.

However, while the metric system is many things, 'awkward and unnatural' isn't one of them. You look up 'awkward' in the dictionary and there's the Imperial system. 5280 feet in a mile? 16 ounces in a pound? Water freezes at 32 degrees?

What the hell? It's like if my toddler invented a system of weights and measures.

Re:Start here

[msauve]

It's not a waste of money if the Feds simply say that any new signs paid for with Federal highway funds must have SI units as their primary measure. They should also require auto manufacturers to mark speedometers with km/h (although most already do).

The SI has officially been""the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce" since 1975, so it's well past time to make that mean something.

No sympathy for innumerates who find it difficult, because it is in fact much simpler.

Re:Start here

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya' know, they have a system where they put two rows of numbers on a dial to tell how fast the vehicle is going. One of the rows can be MPH and the other km/h.

Re: Start here

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that the imperial system is also from europe :)

Re:Start here

[glassware]

Part of the problem is that our imperial metrics are rounded to "convenient multiples of 5" in some cases, and "significant fractions of one" in other cases.

When you see 1 1/4 cups, or 55 mph, or 3 1/2 miles to the exit - there's a good chance that the measurement is inexact or unnecessary. Nobody actually paced out exactly 18,480 feet and placed the "3.5 mile" sign at exactly that spot. They placed the sign and filled in the best available number in the most convenient unit.

We get in trouble when somebody gets assigned the job of adding "km" to all the road signs. The person looks at the text on the sign, plugs it into google, and changes the "3.5 miles" sign to "5.6327 km". That's not helpful! It's no surprise people get upset by that.

If you actually re-measured the road, or simply rounded to a reasonable level, you could replace "3.5 miles" with "5.5 km" and be fine.

Re:Start here

[istartedi]

5280 feet in a mile

Care to foot the bill (no pun intended) for all the land records that would have to change? Aside from the problem of changing, that 5280 feet is very convenient. How?

A square mile is a "section", which is 640 acres. Now 640 acres ought to be enough for anybody (heheh). You could be the "section boss"--a familiar phrase from the Old West. Take that section and cut it into 16 equal squares. You get 16 40-acre plots. You could have "40 acres and a mule" if you bought one--another familiar phrase with deep meaning to African-Americans. The 40 acres are conveniently divided again into 10 acres plots, then in half for a five acre lot. Five acre lots were common mini-estate sizes where I grew up for this reason.

OK fine, by all means define the foot in terms of metric; but remove it from all records and from the culture? No. Just. No.

Aside from that, the Metric system is no less arbitrary than our customary units. The only reason 10 matters is because we have 10 digits on our hands. An alien race might not. If you want something truly universal, consider Planck units. Otherwise, all the metric arguments just boil down to "my arbitrary system is better than yours".

If anything, a system where things are commonly divided into two is more "ready for the digital age" than one that uses base-10 everywhere.

All that aside, I've gotten used to some metric units over the years. Liters are nice enough; but Celcius? Fuggedaboutit. Each decade of the Fahrenheit scale has a readily associated "feel" that Celcius can't match. They're both arbitrary systems, so it's really just one person's preferance vs. another.

Re:Start here

[AuMatar]

Except nobody's feet are exactly 1 foot. Nor is anyone's 1000 paces exactly 1 mile. If those were truly universal measurements, you'd have some point. As they're not, you don't. And in the long term we'd save money by being on the same system as literally every other country in the world by removing the possibility of tooling mistakes, idiocies like NASA Orbiter problem, and additional cost to companies trying to sell in the US of having to have both measurements in their workflows and computer systems.

Re:Start here

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I really don't think measurements are a political party thing. There's no major religious argument in favor of it (keword: major) akin to say evolution vs creationism, and there's no party line that we have to use X system. It's just that average joe's prefer things a certain way.

Ever since I was in the Army, I've always written my dates as 12-FEB-09, and sometimes when I do so, somebody gives me shit because I don't use the same date format that "everybody else" uses, and it is never a conservative or liberal thing. I could see maybe if I wrote 12/02/09, which would easily be interpreted as either december 9th or february 12th, but I like that date format for the same reason that the Army uses it as standard: There is no ambiguity. No matter what day of the month it is, the date/month is obvious, but people still complain to me about it anyways.

Likewise, I could see why they'd complain even more about measurements. It's hard to mentally picture units that you aren't used to thinking in without doing a manual conversion.

And FFS I'm sick of this constant political divisiveness just for the sake of political divisiveness. Stop pointing fingers at the "other side" just because something doesn't go your way. If you stop to look for a second, you'll often find that members of the "other side" agree with you on more things than you realize.

Re: Start here

[Will.Woodhull]

As parent said, lots of different speed limits. Also in rural areas there are road signs like

"Last gas for 75 miles"

"Next rest area 43 miles"

"Road work begins in 33 miles. Trucks and cars with trailers must use alternate route 10 miles ahead. No gas stations on alternate route for 76 miles"

These are particularly meaningful in parts of Eastern Oregon, Idaho, Montana, etc, where there is nothing between gas stations and rest areas but sage brush, a few jack rabbits, and even fewer coyotes.

I heard tell of a billboard in the Mojave Desert that has an arrow pointing at the dirt under it and reads "Last shade for 150 miles." But that might be just crazy California talk.

Re:Start here

[vux984]

A square mile is a "section", which is 640 acres. Now 640 acres...

Canada managed to cope just fine. I used to live in a rural area where the road network was pretty much a grid, divided into square miles. Converting things to metric didn't bring about the end of the world. People still talk about acreage since the historic size of the plots were even acres - I lived on a 5 acre plot which as you noted were quite common, and since the intersections are a mile apart we'll still use miles when giving directions. And there is no reason to eradicate that.

But the speed limit is 90km/h, farmers know how much property they have in hectares, and the measurements for all the properties in meters is available for legal property descriptions.

OK fine, by all means define the foot in terms of metric; but remove it from all records and from the culture? No. Just. No.

I don't think we need to actively eradicate it. But if we stop using it officially, it will gradually fade into the background. I doubt anyone in rural manitoba is ever going to completely stop using miles given the physical layout of the rural road network. But that's fine.

Aside from that, the Metric system is no less arbitrary than our customary units. The only reason 10 matters is because we have 10 digits on our hands. An alien race might not.

That is the opposite of arbitrary. Yes, we surely use base 10 due to the number of digits on our hands, but metric was designed to fit into base 10. That was not an arbitrary decision. We are not an alien race. Base 10 is natural for us; not arbitrary.

Otherwise, all the metric arguments just boil down to "my arbitrary system is better than yours".

The precise length of a meter is arbitrary; and we both use the same somewhat arbitrary unit of time (seconds) but pretty much everything else derives from that in a natural and logical way. Volume, mass, energy, speed, temperature, force. English units are not linked the same way. There is no defined relationship betwen a gallon and a foot the way there is between a meter and a liter. Or between a pound and a foot the way there is between a kilogram and a meter. A 4 liter jug of milk has a mass of 4 kilograms (for all practical purposes). To equate the arbitrariness of metric and imperial is just delusional.

but Celcius? Fuggedaboutit. Each decade of the Fahrenheit scale has a readily associated "feel" that Celcius can't match.

I've got no issues whatsoever with celsius. Instead of 10 degree feels, its more increments of 5. Its what you grow up with.

They're both arbitrary systems, so it's really just one person's preferance vs. another.

Metric is far less internally arbitrary, and pretty much all the rest of world uses it. Personal preference in my opinion seems to come down to what you grew up with; so raising the next generation in metric will take care of that. There's no real reason for -you- to change though.

Re:Start here

[arth1]

Time is just made-up numbers on a made-up scale. Use GMT if you want. The rest of the world won't, because I like lunch at noon and dinner in the afternoon, not lunch at 7am and dinner at noon.

So if you like to eat lunch at noon, I take it you eat it at 1 PM when DST is in effect?

Re: Start here

[Cimexus]

It's not that the US system is hard to use, it's that you're the last outliers (among major developed countries at least) not to switch. It's for the sake of consistency rather than anything else. No more having to program two separate measurement systems into every bit of software. No more wondering WTF 'letter' size paper is anymore when your printer demands it for some reason (i.e. someone in the US has emailed you a document that wants to print on that size paper). Etc.

It'd be no different if everyone ELSE used the US system, and the US were the only people using metric - it would make sense to change. It's not about which system is better, it's about being consistent.

If there were several major countries not using metric yet, then I don't think there'd be the same 'annoyance' with the Americans. But you guys are literally the ... last ... ones. Cmon! :)

Re:Start here

[VGPowerlord]

As I recall, it was required nation-wide during the late 70s. Then Reagan happened.

Re:Start here

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since I was in the Army, I've always written my dates as 12-FEB-09, and sometimes when I do so, somebody gives me shit because I don't use the same date format that "everybody else" uses, and it is never a conservative or liberal thing. I could see maybe if I wrote 12/02/09, which would easily be interpreted as either december 9th or february 12th, but I like that date format for the same reason that the Army uses it as standard: There is no ambiguity

So is that 12th Feb 2009, or 9th Feb 2012?

Re:Start here

[Darinbob]

Reagan said it was a waste of money, so the government spent a lot of money to take the signs down again.

Re:Start here

[dskoll]

Fahrenheit is quite useful when you are thinking in terms of human comfort and safety.

Really? Maybe it's because I grew up with only the metric system, but I have absolutely no feeling for fahrenheit. I know that 20 Celsius is a nice summer day, 15 is cool, and -30 is about as cold as it gets where I live. I wouldn't have a clue what "80" or "60" or "20" means in Fahrenheit.

It's all a matter of what you're used to. The US is one of the most conservative and reactionary societies on earth, so I expect it'll still be using Imperial units 50 years from now and probably still retain the penny when you need ten thousand of them to buy a loaf of bread.

The Spin was Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you fight this idea, if it's all about multiculturalism in a bilingual country without receiving a negative label?

Re:The Spin was Awesome!

[peragrin]

I see your problem you think the president of the USA is actually a useful position. The president of the USA is actually the least powerful, least effective job in the USA.

The president doesn't make laws congress does, the president doesn't decide which laws are fair or balanced the judicial system does. The president doesn't even decide details of policy only vague generalities.

The president( i don't care which ones you like they all fall into this) can't make decisions. he can only choose between choices others make for him. he has three basic tools Force(military or civilian), Legal(lawyers), or Diplomatic(Negotations, etc) However he can't use force for anything but quick attacks or else congress must intervene. He can use legal but lawyers aren't useful for much. Diplomatic only works when the other party actually is willing to change.(that's why you can't negotiate with palenstine/isreal or the tea party, neither side can look at things from anyone else's view)

There is a reason why Presidents go into office looking healthy and come out Physically healthy but looking like they went through a meet grinder. Because they get all the blame, very little of the credit, and can actually change very little.

The president controls the price of oil about as much I do. The president controls the budget of the country about as much I do.

If your curious look up what the president is actually allowed to do in most cases all he can do is advise someone else to look into the problem and report back. Take the IRS scandal. I would be willing to bet the president knew about it a while ago. however he couldn't actually change the policies or punish people because congress ultimately controls those positions.

This true of every president they can at best suggest. whether or not they get listened to is another story.

So for once they gave a sane answer

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

WTF is the administration supposed to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Makes perfect sense to me

[bokmann]

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.

Re:Makes perfect sense to me

[Chuckstar]

Agreed. Why is this response considered so "disappointing"?

Zero is Still Zero

[Anonymous Coward]

'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.

We used to have those.

[Molochi]

Be we decided that provinciality was a smaller sacrifice than the cost of the paint.

Re:both are bastardized.

[ShieldW0lf]

Frankly, decimal is kind of a cruddy system. It was a bad call in the first place to use base 10. Yeah, it's good for counting on your fingers, but it's only cleanly divisible by 1, 2, 5 and 10. Base 12 would have been a much better choice, it's cleanly divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12.

I say we ditch metric, imperial and the decimal system as well.

Good

[chihowa]

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?

Re:English system is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:both are bastardized.

[stud9920]

well, if it had been base twelve, it would have been divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 10

2x4

[DragonWriter]

Putting up a wall? We're gonna need some 2x4s and 4x8s

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).

Re:What were you expecting?

[Stormwatch]

Did you expect that the White House administration was going to somehow force businesses and residents of the US to start using metric?

Why not? With three exceptions, EVERY country in the world did it at some point.

Re:English system is fine

[vux984]

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.

It is a broken system

[Roger W Moore]

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!

Re:It is a broken system

[AthanasiusKircher]

I say the following as someone who really loves the metric system.

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.

This only matters when one has to do conversion between these units. For most people in their everyday lives, this is completely IRRELEVANT. 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?

However this means that the units are not clear: when you say "pound" do you mean force or mass?

99.9% of Americans have absolutely no use for this distinction in their daily lives.

And I say this as someone who took a lot of engineering courses where we were required to understand and make use of imperial units, if nothing else other than to make use of old books and tables -- complaining about minor differences like ounces in a pint or the difference between lb-force and lb-mass is nothing compared to doing fluid dynamics, mechanics courses, and chemistry courses using imperial units (atm-cu.ft./lb.-mol-degreeR anyone?).

There are STRONG arguments why science and engineering people -- who deal with unit conversions everyday -- benefit from metric, and almost all of them do use metric already. However, 99% of Americans don't need to do these things in everyday life, so why should they care? To them, the system is NOT broken.

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.

I think that's a great argument, and the best one you've given for the everyday person who might consider traveling internationally. For Americans who don't, though, it's not actually a "broken" system for them. I wish they would switch -- but for most people in most situations, it is a solution in search of a problem.

Re:It is a broken system

[johnlcallaway]

Only scientists care about the differences. And they are free to work in metric if they want. I can't measure 'one fluid ounce', I can only get close. And for most people, close is good enough. Only engineers need to worry about things less than 1/8th of an inch when building stuff. And working in fractions is pretty easy when you do it all the time. I worked at a factory that made corrugated containers (cardboard boxes to the ignorant), and everything was in fractions. I got really good at manipulating fractions down to the 16ths of an inch and adding/subtracting. Just because something is difficult for one person doesn't mean it's not difficult to learn, it could mean that they just haven't learned it. Like having to learn all of the centi, milli, micro, kilo, deci, etc. prefixes. Unless you use them often enough, they are difficult to remember. I have no problems remember inches/foot/yard/mile, ounces/pound/ton, secs/hour/day/week/year, months/quarter/year. None of those are decimal. And never had to convert inches to miles, so who cares. When I need to, I can calculate it long hand. And I've never been very good at remembering all of the metric prefixes. Never had to, don't really need to. But I'm sure if I worked somewhere that I was exposed to them, I could.

Imperial is very easy for cooking, most of the items are multiples of 2 (i.e. 2 cups in a pint, 2 pints in a quart, 2 quarts in a half gallon, 2 half gallons in a gallon). Even the factions are multiples of two, often 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16. The odd man out is fluid ounces, but many recipes use fractions of a cup, not ounces. Ounces usually means weight, unless it specifically says 'fluid ounces'. But then again, a cup of water is different from a cup of sugar, dry cups are different sizes from 'wet' cups and most people who cook know the difference. It's only confusing to people who don't cook very often, or who weren't taught it. Just as the metric system is only confusing to people who don't use it or weren't taught it.

Just because someone isn't smart enough or willing to learn a measurement system doesn't make it a bad system. They both have advantages and I agree 100% with letting individuals decide which one they want to use. Teach both in school, and if one system offers a true advantage it will become more prevalent while the other fades away to it's niches.

Re:Makes sense

[Chris Mattern]

that use of the word "sandwich" is an Americanism too far.

Ah yes, the Earl of Sandwich was truly one of the great Americans, wasn't he?

Re:no free choice for gov't info like speed limits

[camperdave]

No, you MUST have laws forcing supermarkets to use specific weights or measures. Otherwise, Shady-Joe's meat market could just shave down their scales and sell you 14 oz of beef instead of a full pound. This is the entire reason we have standardized weights and measures in the first place.

DIN A4 is meaningful

[fritsd]

Different standards for paper sizes might be annoying, but it has nothing to do with "metric conversion".

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 :-)

Re: metrication is nobody's business

[Darinbob]

Mandating for industry would be an economic boon, since we'd be on the same standardized system as the entire world, and outer space. Keeping an isolationist perspective is damaging.