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Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

petitions.whitehouse.gov

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

#131

Post by jamesjguthrie »

EliRivers wrote: post #66
jamesjguthrie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd rather be with the metrics! I'm about to graduate with my design engineering degree, I'm so used to SI units that imperial drives me crazy, but I need to live with it.

Regarding the steak point, do you never ask for the 8oz or 10oz steak?

For curiosity, I'm just outside Glasgow, where are you?

Edit: Gordon Ramsay recipes: http://gordonramsaysrecipes.com/

Butter update: Butter is measured in knobs.

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

#132

Post by rohern »

randomdata wrote: post #110
rohern wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make any sense. 1ft is ~30cm. Just measure in units of 30cm. Doing the math in your head is trivial.

But why needlessly introduce the math, no matter how trivial it may actually be?

We are constantly needlessly introducing math across all of our industries that have international partners by keeping our current system. Your point to which I was responding was that you feel it is more natural to measure in units of feet. I was pointing out to you that you can make the same measurement in a convenient unit in the metric system. We can have ease of use in both cases with the metric system.

But it doesn't matter anyway. You could sit and invent an infinite number of cases when using the imperial system "feels" easier. None of these invalidate the conveniences of the metric system, nor do they remove the compelling motivation to setup our system in line with that of the rest of the world to stop the waste of money, material, and time the is now spent on conversion, dual labeling, and confusion.

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

#133

Post by EliRivers »

jamesjguthrie wrote: post #101
EliRivers wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I didn't mention buying anything in the shops. I mentioned cooking, as in recipe instructions. Though I bet you don't go to Asda and ask where you can find 2.272 litres of milk. Do you ever do mile-per-gallon approximations for your fuel economy? Cars are still advertised with mpg values. Do you ever buy a steak at a nice restaurant? Have you ever played golf or football?

Points addressed as edits in my post above. For the fun of it.

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

#134

Post by javert »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #109
javert wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a Canadian, I'd be inclined to call it the "every other industrialized liberal democracy on earth is better" mantra. Countries tend to converge on an optimal balance of individual liberties and social protections because it measurably works . The US is a notable outlier, and the various comparative social and economic indicators are pretty damning evidence that the continued American insistence on an 18th century…

> Countries tend to converge on an optimal balance of individual liberties and social protections because it measurably works.

That's just utter nonsense. What measurement are you optimizing for?

What makes you think that moving the US to the left moves it closer to, say, Germany, instead of closer to, say, Brazil, India, and Mexico (which is what I think will happen)?

And even if it did move it closer to Germany, I wouldn't want that, which speaks to the fact that your "measurably works" claim probably refers to some non-objective sense of optimality.

> the continued American insistence on an 18th century approach to governance

That's a straw man. Predominating sentiments in the GOP are strongly contra the Founding Fathers. I mean, George W. Bush greatly expanded the welfare state.

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

#135

Post by OriginalSyn »

goodcanadian wrote: post #103

Only vaguely relevant, but I grew up in a rural area in Canada which caused me to learn a strange set of units. For me, highway distances are measured in kilometres, but country roads are measured in miles. Groceries are priced per kilogram, but my weight is in pounds. I readily swap inches and centimetres for measuring small sizes and distances (sometimes on the same project). I am more comfortable with Celsius, but…

I would hazard a guess that we're roughly the same age because I grew up with the same mixture of units but I think it's less to do with growing up in a rural area than the fact that your parents and grandparents were educated on imperial units and even though metric was standard by the time you were born, the imperial system was still ingrained in your elders and some of that nomenclature was passed on to you. When I talk to anyone over 50 I have to be careful to remember when they say it got to -70 a few years ago they are most likely saying it was -70F and not -70*C.

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

#136

Post by flipbrad »

goodcanadian wrote: post #103

Only vaguely relevant, but I grew up in a rural area in Canada which caused me to learn a strange set of units. For me, highway distances are measured in kilometres, but country roads are measured in miles. Groceries are priced per kilogram, but my weight is in pounds. I readily swap inches and centimetres for measuring small sizes and distances (sometimes on the same project). I am more comfortable with Celsius, but…

This appears to be the situation in the UK, too.

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

#137

Post by AYBABTME »

dickbasedregex wrote: post #49

At the risk of being lumped in with the negative/unhelpful/HN-is-on-the-decline comment crowd, and I hate naysaying here but... Seriously? 1) If you haven't seen enough of these White House Polls go by yet (and there is a never ending list of inanity, for example: http://www.modernman.com/12-dumbest-whitehouse-petitions/ ) let me clue you in. They do nothing. Nothing. No one reads them. Just go back to wishing on a s…

Everytime I try to use data that comes from public US sources, it's a PITA to deal with Imperial Units. It does have an impact on programmers/developers/engineers/etc.

Just reading news about weather or some climatic phenomenon, all in Fahrenheit. Wth, Fahrenheit.

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

#138

Post by gurkendoktor »

danielbarla wrote: post #63
sirn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Incidentally, I was raised metric-only in Germany and we would often say "I'm one head shorter/taller than X", which is close enough to a foot.

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

#139

Post by rohern »

eloisant wrote: post #120
stdbrouw wrote: post #78

I moved from Belgium to the US last year, and one of the things that surprised me was that metric measures actually see a fair amount of use in the States. It makes a convoluted system even more weird, but it's also just plain fascinating. 2L bottles of coke and 9mm bullets, miles except when people suddenly switch to kilometers, 50 meter pools and 5K jogging runs but a 120 yard football field, 2 oz shaving cream but…

To be fair, non-metric units are also use worldwide in some specific fields. In aeronautics, height is in feet. In a boat, distance are nautic miles (not even the same miles as Americans on the road). Quick quiz: what's the diagonal size of your laptop screen in centimeters? Your mobile phone? So it doesn't matter if you use completely unrelated metrics for different things. When you want to buy a laptop you know how…

You understand, though, that the reason laptop screens are measured this way is because of America's continued use of the imperial system.

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

#140

Post by yardie »

talaketu wrote: post #54
davidw wrote: post #18

The way I explain this one to my European friends is: Do you remember the transition to the Euro? How you had to mentally convert prices at first? And how old people had more difficulties with it in some cases? Now, imagine that, not just for one unit, but weights, lengths, temperatures and volumes, all at the same time.

This doesn't explain anything. Why is the USA the exception?

Because we're exceptional! :-)

No really, the worst thing that ever happened to metric system conversion was getting endorsed by the UN. That was the kiss of death. We created the UN, we host the UN, we fund the UN, and we hate the UN. Anything backed by the UN gets turned into the UN trying to take over the US and creating a new world order.

And after the debacle with the, UN-based, ITU trying to take over internet governance metric will never get a serious political foothold in the US.

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