Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
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.
Not yielding an inch, are they? Imagine the impact it would have on Subway.
Be we decided that provinciality was a smaller sacrifice than the cost of the paint.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
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)
Only a left wing extremist, America hating, Kenyan, terroristic, neo-communist, piece of scum like Obama would be pushing this hard for a multicultural approach to a system of measurement. I demand that my representatives in the House and Senate do everything they can to stop the President in this latest push to destroy what few remaining decent things remain in this once great nation. We should immediately adopt the metric system as a means to protest this naked grab for power by a mean spirited and hateful administration bent on the destruction of democracy and the last remnants of a Christian faith that sustain us. (We should also outlaw counting by base 12... just because.)
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
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.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.
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.
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 discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed. A meeting of trajectory software engineers, trajectory software operators (navigators), propulsion engineers, and managers, was convened to consider the possibility of executing Trajectory Correction Maneuver-5, which was in the schedule. Attendees of the meeting recall an agreement to conduct TCM-5, but it was ultimately not done.
But "We mixed up feet and meters! Whoopsie!" while embarrassing, is not quite so embarrassing as "We canceled the scheduled maneuver that would have saved the ship, even though we knew something was very wrong." Plus, it was an easy headline for the media. There were a legion of problems with the Mars Climate Orbiter that had nothing to do with unit systems. NASA was just in full-on derp mode at that time. Likewise, the Mars Polar Lander, which did not have a similar unit-conversion error, also crashed a few months later.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
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
No, no, you're not trolling at all. You carry the 'white man's burden' with total aplomb and grace.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
well, if it had been base twelve, it would have been divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 10
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).
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
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....
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.
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!
Outlaw base 12? Give me A good reasons!
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
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.
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
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
The second worst thing about non-metric systems is that the measure for a pound, a gallon, a foot, etc is not actually standardized between countries. Calling the US measurements "english" is a bit wrong, as an imperial gallon and a US gallon are two different amounts.
The worst thing obviously being insane conversions between different units of distance, volume, weight, etc.
We count/do maths in base 10. We have 10 digits. Our measurement system should reflect that. The rest of the world, and the scientific community get it.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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?
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.