Good luck trying to change something that's part of a cultural identity. Irish are catholic not because religion is actually something positive, but because it's a contrast with the British church, and part of their cultural identity.
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It's time for the US to use the metric system
11–20 of 210 posts
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#12No one wants to carry the political risk of trying to replace the ALL-AMERICAN measurement system, I suppose. I wonder if there are any pro-metric lobbying firms that exist...
Not to derail the conversation, what how good can a political system be if their too scared to bring something up for fear of the public when its in their own interests?
In democratic systems, we generally trust the people to know their own interests, and when they're wrong win them over with debate rather than ignoring them.
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#13It's hard to "make people think" in the different unit system. I'm in the UK and people talk about sizes in feet and miles all the time even though the society is supposed to have switched to the metric system. There are places like on product labels where both units should be mandatory. Hopefully in a few generations people will gradually switch over.
I think most people in the UK use a pretty mixed up set of measures.
I think of beer in pints, wine in ml, driving distance in miles, walking distance in km, height in feet and inches, but weight in kg. Lengths are in m/cm/mm as are weights and volumes for cooking. Mountains in Scotland in feet and mountains in the Alps in metres...
Oddly, my teenage son uses m/cm for height and stones/pounds for weight...
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#14Good luck trying to change something that's part of a cultural identity. Irish are catholic not because religion is actually something positive, but because it's a contrast with the British church, and part of their cultural identity.
You realize every country that uses metric today used a different system before?
The US is not a special snowflake: The entire rest of the world managed to switch just fine.
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#15The UK is supposedly metric most people still think and talk in imperial - most shops give both measurements.
I think the EU gave up enforcing it.
edit: sorry, by most people I mean people I know who grew up before metric was introduced.
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#16It's hard to "make people think" in the different unit system. I'm in the UK and people talk about sizes in feet and miles all the time even though the society is supposed to have switched to the metric system. There are places like on product labels where both units should be mandatory. Hopefully in a few generations people will gradually switch over.
> It's hard to "make people think" in the different unit system
It is, but it can be done in just one generation. The generation that is raised metric finds it even harder to think in imperial measurements, since the imperial measuring system is significantly more complex. Source: I grew up in a fully metric country.
I just looked it up, apparently the conversion to metric happened around the time that I was born. I had no idea, I thought that it was a decade or two before that.
i.e. if the USA had tried a bit harder in 1975, they would be done now.
Also, the UK is not "fully metric". If it was, there would not be road signs showing numbers in miles and miles per hour. You can't stop people from buying beer by the 568ml, but if the UK was serious about metric, official communications and education would be all in metric.
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#17No one wants to carry the political risk of trying to replace the ALL-AMERICAN measurement system, I suppose. I wonder if there are any pro-metric lobbying firms that exist...
Not to derail the conversation, what how good can a political system be if their too scared to bring something up for fear of the public when its in their own interests?
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Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#18It's hard to "make people think" in the different unit system. I'm in the UK and people talk about sizes in feet and miles all the time even though the society is supposed to have switched to the metric system. There are places like on product labels where both units should be mandatory. Hopefully in a few generations people will gradually switch over.
This is similar in Canada
Yes, it's difficult to make people think about it. At the same time, sometimes the units "don't matter" (like speed limits, 50 is 50 in the speedometer, just make sure you're not looking at the mph scale)
I want to slap somebody when I hear about "pounds" or "feet/sq ft", or even worse, Fahrenheit (since this is a non-linear transform)
At least everything in the supermarket is marked per pound and kilo
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#19It's hard to "make people think" in the different unit system. I'm in the UK and people talk about sizes in feet and miles all the time even though the society is supposed to have switched to the metric system. There are places like on product labels where both units should be mandatory. Hopefully in a few generations people will gradually switch over.
I think most people in the UK use a pretty mixed up set of measures. I think of beer in pints, wine in ml, driving distance in miles, walking distance in km, height in feet and inches, but weight in kg. Lengths are in m/cm/mm as are weights and volumes for cooking. Mountains in Scotland in feet and mountains in the Alps in metres... Oddly, my teenage son uses m/cm for height and stones/pounds for weight...
> I think most people in the UK use a pretty mixed up set of measures.
I agree. But for science and engineering (where metric is really useful), I believe that everything is metric here now.
The measures for which we still use Imperial units are ones that generally are just directly and subjectively compared by humans, rather than any real engineering work.
Another way of making my claim is that nobody really has to input Imperial measures into a calculator any more, or make any conversions [involving non-metric units] for engineering purposes.
I suppose there are some exceptions (eg. BMI), but these calculations are generally isolated and have no wider unit-incompatibility impact.
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#20The last road sign I've seen in metric was one on I-95 northbound, just north of the I-26 interchange. Sadly, SC DOT changed it out a few years ago and now it just reads in miles.
I understand there's a road in Arizona that is still signed in metric.