ISO 216 paper sizes while you're at it, please!
Damn that would be nice, any time I see US paper sizes I go "WTH? Legal? What are you talking about?"
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Make the Metric system the standard in the United States
521–530 of 547 posts
Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States
#522The Metric system would probably be ubiquitous in the US by now if Ronald Reagan had not disbanded the U.S. Metric Board in 1982 and overturned laws encouraging schools to teach kids the metric system.
Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine if we measured time using units of varying multiples. Every time a friend tells me "see you in two weeks", I'm like really? 2 times 7 times 24 times 60? Fucking asshole, do I look like a calculator?
Incidentally, there was a metric calendar, invented alongside the metric system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar It never gained much hold, probably for two reasons - its units were too far off the customary units, hard to convert, and didn't fit into the neat 10^3 system. The other units (metres, kilograms) were close or easily convertible into what they replaced (ell and pound, both at appro…
> the neat 10^3 system
> a neatly decimal system with e.g. 10^3
Why is ^3 neat? 10 for the radix is standard all over the world now, except perhaps in IT where there's some competition from 16.
But 3 for digit groups isn't very standard. East Asia uses groups of 4, so 10,000 and 100 million are standard. India uses lakh and crore, i.e. the oddball groupings 3, 5, 7, etc.
Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States
#524Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
The comment you replied to never claimed that the U.S. uses metric units, only that it has been legal and even encouraged since 1866. So to re-iterate, there no change needed to the law, it already allows metric just fine (as you yourself note when you mention that the government-run military understands metric). Simply deprecating customary units won't be enough to make the switch, you would actually have to make it…
Actual problems like the dollar is no longer a defined weight of silver. Talk about weights and measures...
Where's the problem with that? You can price your goods in gramms of silver, if you like to. (You may have to quote dollar prices, but just adjust them daily based on the silver spot market prices.)
Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States
#526http://wh.gov/UQye
Help stop the metric system!
Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States
#527From the petitions.whitehouse.gov petition kindly submitted for comment here: "The United States is one of the few countries left in the world who still have not converted to using the Metric System as a standardized system of measurement. Instead of going along with what the rest of the world uses, we stubbornly still adhere to using the imprecise Imperial Unit - despite the fact that practically every other country…
> "A pint's a pound, the whole world round."
A UK pint is 568ml, which is some way off 454g. Unlike the US pint, which is much closer at 473ml.
Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lumber isn't 'weird' the sizes make perfect sense, if you're constructing something beyond a picknick table you'll see the logic immediately. Nobody said anything about integer whole numbers. But I can't seem to get around your mental block that the system you are working in is Imperial, not metric so I'll leave it at this.
Lumber isn't 'weird' the sizes make perfect sense... If you go to a home depot and ask for something 2x4x8ft, it will not be 2.00 by 4.00 inches or 8ft long, when measured with a caliper. Its weird in the sense that the stated sizes are only approximate, quite unlike hardware or fasteners, wrenches etc.
Those sizes are what they are because of the way lumber is produced. When the mill mills them they're 'true'. But they're also rough. So then they get planed which takes a bit of wood away from all four lengthwise sides.
The keep their name though. This is a convention and a quite confusing one if you're not familiar with the process.
Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm an American that grew up during the time they "tried" to go metric and none of this surprises me. Volumes are tricky for me, but I have no problem going from imperial to metric. Most other countries see the US and are like, "why aren't you using metric?" and we're like, "what's in it for us?" We learned metric in school and it's great, for exact measurements. Sometimes you just want to use what you have and not t…
"Speaking of globalization, TVs are still sold and classified in inches :-)" Nope...
Samsung UE75ES9000S - 75 inches
Samsung UE65ES8000Z - 65 inches
Samsung UE32D6200W - 32 inches
LG 55LM960V - 55 inches
LG 47LM960V - 46 inches
Notice a pattern, yet?
Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as you aren't a surveyor, that is... that industry has stuck with the previous American standard of 1/39.37 meters, for obvious reasons.
Land surveyor here. I understand the issues in play here deeply. Field calcs, just to name one thing, would be greatly eased by metric. But here's the thing: you can't make an old surveyor think in metric. The way I visualise distance is Imperial. This is deeply ingrained.
It wasn't as hard as I expected to make the switch in my mid-twenties. I know that is not the same, but it is not entirely different.