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]

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

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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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).

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: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 :-)