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Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

petitions.whitehouse.gov

61–70 of 547 posts

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#61
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should mention beer – I've noticed an increasing tendency for pint glasses to be marked "568ml". Milk also doesn't come in pints any more, but does come in 568ml and 1 litre varieties. Still, as a nation we ask for and think of our beer and milk in pints.

The 2 cartons of milk in my fridge right now, say "2272ml 4 pints" on them.

This is because in both the US and the UK, imperial measures are legally defined in metric units. A pint is 568ml, by definition (well, in the UK, the US believes a pint is 454ml, but that's another argument).

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#62

Metrickery is a socialist plot to weaken America. First it's units of measurement divisible by ten, then it's universal health care, then gun control, and finally off to the gulag for the last remaining freethinkers. Sadly, there are people who believe more of less exactly what I just wrote.

Actually, the "Europe is better and the US is inferior" mantra, which is very widely held in the American left-of-center, is a significant factor in all of those.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#63
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think metric could be improved with a few imperial equivalents - A "metric foot" as 30cm, for instance - because they are convenient measurements. e.g. If somebody asks me "How tall is that person?" it's easier to say "About five foot" rather than "I dunno, about 155cm?" (I'm British, btw)

I only live in Metric-using country and I have no slightest idea how tall is five foot, whereas 155cm instantly comes to my mind as, ah, at around my eye level. It's all about familiarity.

Sure, but that's 3 digits versus 1; if the requirement is to express common, human sized-objects with rough accuracy in as few words as possible, it works just fine. Really, it's all semantics (as you say), but there are specific cases where one might be a better fit than the other. It's the inconsistencies in imperial that are truly horrible, not the arbitrary standard unit...

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#64
post #6

Sad it only has 237 votes as of my visit (waiting for my acct to validate so I can sign). The problem is, I think the US has already declared itself to be metric to little effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act It's not the do-nothing congress this time, it's the learn-nothing public.

Just a simple measure like forcing all government signs to use metric would go a long way.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#65

Before we start with the standard junk about "imperial measures are better because they are easier to understand / better suited to human scale / etc." can I say nope . The only advantage that imperial measures have (for some) is that they are familiar. That's the sum total of it. People where were raised metric find these apologies for imperial measures to be pure gibberish.

Actually, I think metric could be improved with a few imperial equivalents - A "metric foot" as 30cm, for instance - because they are convenient measurements. e.g. If somebody asks me "How tall is that person?" it's easier to say "About five foot" rather than "I dunno, about 155cm?" (I'm British, btw)

How does that even work - do you actually draw a mental image of yourself walking up that person's length foot by foot?

And what if your feet are not 30cm, but longer or shorter?

If you say "about x" you might as well estimate to 10cm precision and say "about 180cm" or "about 190cm".

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#66
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imperial is very visible in the UK (for road instances and for beer glasses in particular) but the country is pretty much metric now and has been for decades.

I disagree that the UK is metric at all. They try to teach us to think metric in school but in the real world almost everything is still imperial. We hear imperial units every day in this country. We hear it when we discuss body weight, driving distance, cooking, size of most things, etc.

I'm British. I live in the UK. I'm in my thirties.

I do a person's height in casual conversation (on forms I write it in metres) and driving distance in Imperial measurements (often; I use kilometres when I'm talking to someone I trust to know what a kilometre is, which is generally anyone under about 40). I do depth and altitude in metres, but sometimes I'll use an old chart that has feet (or sometimes fathoms, but that's the really, really old charts). Volume, mass, everything else is metric. I know my mass in kg. I've only the vaguest idea what a "stone" is. A pound? An ounce? Those are twee measurements I sometimes see in old books. I know how much a litre is. I don't even know what the metric unit of volume is. Cubic inches? That seems clumsy even for Imperial units. At the supermarket, the unit used on the fruit, veg and meat is kilogrammes. Last weekend I was comparing pork by cost per kilogramme. Which supermarket do you shop at that uses... I don't even know what you'd use. Not stones, I guess? Pounds and ounces? I remember at about age ten someone telling me the temperature in Fahrenheit, and having no idea whether that was hot or cold. I have less idea today of what it means.

Where this is going is that I thoroughly disagree.

Additional edits, for the fun of it:

"Though I bet you don't go to Asda and ask where you can find 2.272 litres of milk." Fair enough. I do buy milk in pints. If they switched to 2 litre bottles, I'd still buy it, and frankly I'd prefer it if they did. At the moment, I have to look at the scale on the side of the milk marked in litres to see how much I'm pouring into something (because the recipe I'm using specifies litres or millilitres; maybe there's a whole dual-industry for recipes in which you get Imperial units and I get metric; I note that the recipes on the BBC list both units; Jamie Oliver's web page is metric, Delia Smith is both, Hairy Bikers are metric, I've given up looking after those high-ranking four, but I note that not one of them is this Imperial only thing you talked about).

"Do you ever do mile-per-gallon approximations for your fuel economy?" Fair enough. I don't drive so this is a closed book to me.

"Do you ever buy a steak at a nice restaurant?" Yes, often. I have never once specified a mass the steak is to have. That it is marked on the menu in crazy measurements has always seemed a twee restaurant kind of thing; cosmetic rather than meaningful. The meat at the supermarket is, of course, in kg.

"Have you ever played golf or football?" Never golf, and football not since I was about ten. Perhaps we simply move in different circles. You're with the Imperials, I'm with the metrics.

"Where are you?" Deep south. Hampshire. As a drifting aside, I note that London is now approximately 40% non-British born, so that presumably means that about 40% of people living in London have even less grasp of Imperial measurements than I do. Perhaps metric is more common in the south.

Steak update: I am sure I have specified the steak by name, and its name is "Ten ounce" or "Eight ounce" or whatever. It is as meaningful to me as "Medium bowl of custard" or "large bowl of custard", for example. If you gave me a big bucket of sand and asked me to put about ten ounces of sand in a cup, I'd have no idea at all. I seem to recall that I once saw an ounce of butter and it was kind of about "this" big". I'd probably use that as a base.

Ramsay: A ha. Ramsay, of course, is Scottish. Maybe Scotland isn't metric.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#67
post #51

Before we start with the standard junk about "imperial measures are better because they are easier to understand / better suited to human scale / etc." can I say nope . The only advantage that imperial measures have (for some) is that they are familiar. That's the sum total of it. People where were raised metric find these apologies for imperial measures to be pure gibberish.

To be honest, although I know the obvious benefits of metric, I still prefer imperial simply because of its messiness. I realize the system is archaic, etc., but I still like that connection, as attenuated as it may be, to our ancient past. Use metric for all scientific purposes, etc., but keep that connection to the natural world. I suppose I like it in the same way I prefer natural languages to some artificial lang…

Sentiment is not a good justification in the science/engineering world.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#68

Before we start with the standard junk about "imperial measures are better because they are easier to understand / better suited to human scale / etc." can I say nope . The only advantage that imperial measures have (for some) is that they are familiar. That's the sum total of it. People where were raised metric find these apologies for imperial measures to be pure gibberish.

These "apologies" are not gibberish. Measurements units are like words in that they are conventions that enough people agree with to make them useful as a way of communicating. Measurement units exist to help us quantify our world and if two systems do this equally well then there is no recompelling reason to switch.

Besides which, what problem would be solved in the process? People will use whatever units they prefer anyways at the end of the day. As a negative, forcing top-down change would irritate people.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#69
post #51

Before we start with the standard junk about "imperial measures are better because they are easier to understand / better suited to human scale / etc." can I say nope . The only advantage that imperial measures have (for some) is that they are familiar. That's the sum total of it. People where were raised metric find these apologies for imperial measures to be pure gibberish.

To be honest, although I know the obvious benefits of metric, I still prefer imperial simply because of its messiness. I realize the system is archaic, etc., but I still like that connection, as attenuated as it may be, to our ancient past. Use metric for all scientific purposes, etc., but keep that connection to the natural world. I suppose I like it in the same way I prefer natural languages to some artificial lang…

That's great that you feel that way but a unit systems is suposed to efficiently communicate information. Using an archaic unit system because it makes you feel hipster isn't a good idea.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#70
post #15
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imperial is very visible in the UK (for road instances and for beer glasses in particular) but the country is pretty much metric now and has been for decades.

Funny you should mention beer – I've noticed an increasing tendency for pint glasses to be marked "568ml". Milk also doesn't come in pints any more, but does come in 568ml and 1 litre varieties. Still, as a nation we ask for and think of our beer and milk in pints.

Ugh US vs UK!

US gallon = 3.79 Litres where as UK gallon = 4.5 Litres

US pint = 473 mL where as UK pint = 568 mL

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