http://www.snoopy.com/comics/peanuts/archive/peanuts-20031114.html That 30-year-old cartoon makes me want to ask why has the USA *still* not converted to using the metric system of measurements? The cartoon correctly reflects that we were all taught that "the metric system is coming, so you must learn how to measure in it". It just makes so much sense. Yes, I know there would be a "terrible" learning curve for old fogies, but the British were able survive when they converted to a metric system of money. Are Yankees that much more weak minded?93 responses total.
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If we converted, could we drop the speed limit on the Interstates to 100 kph?
Nope, still 115-120 kph.
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"Yes, I know there would be a "terrible" learning curve for old fogies, but the British were able survive when they converted to a metric system of money." The US already has a metric system of money.
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Well, it's as metric as it will get like most of the rest of the world
I've heard that in England miles are still routinely used for distances and speeds. Is this true?
re #5: I think you mean "decimal" rather than "metric". I suppose our monetary system is "metric" in that we can use it to measure things, but it's not "metric" in a "metric system" sense.. Of course that's just my 20 m$.
What's the difference between the British metric system of money and the US system of money. Unless you can't say the British system is metric either. I would think that both are based on a Base 10 system, and you're right, that does not mean metric.
I'm in favor of making the system of weights and measures even more complicated. Base everything on its own standard, make each standard different from all the others. I'd even extend it to sub-second measurements of time. Everythng would be 67ths or 81sts or something.
"Metric" is the code word for a system of meters, kilograms and seconds. It can be used in base 2 (binary) if you wish (or any other base). If used in base ten, it is decimal metric.
I think the reason the US hasn't switched isn't because we're weak-minded, it's because we don't really care about getting along with everyone else. At least, we don't care enough to make the effort to change.
How does switching to m/k/s help with "getting along with everyone else"?
Well, for instance, we wouldn't have lost one of our Mars probes if everyone was peaking the same units.
Er, speaking.
Adopting one metrical system helps us get along with everyone else by creating uniformity and hence greater international availability and interchangeability in manufactured parts, in conformability of maps for different regions, in public understanding of geography and hence of geopolitical issues, and in international cooperation in science. Fortunately, science is mostly "metric", although scientific instrumentation is not always (with some major errors occurring because of this).
re: #0, #5: Actually, old farts and the anti-European lobby (not to mention other Twits) STILL moan about the fact that (a) we changed the money to be based on a decimal system (b) we are gradually converting to metric). I believe "the last step", at least legislatively, will be to change our road signs to show km instead of miles, which afaik is supposed to happen in either 2006 or 2010.
It is a lot easier to calculate distances in metric units than in inches, feet, miles, etc. Or weights and volumes in ounces and pounds or ounces and cups and pints and bushels. Jim ends up labelling our house plans in just inches (237" inches rather than inches and feet) to make calculations simpler. Unfortunately lumber comes in inches (1 and 5/8" = nominal 2" or maybe they are down to 1.5" now) and if we converted it would require stocking both metric and nonmetric sizes of a lot of things so people could do repairs.
Surely the "last step" would be to convert the inane system of time measurements to a metric basis. We have decades, centuries and millenia, which is nice and metric. But then we have 12 months per year, anywhere from 28 to 31 days per month, incommensurate numbers of weeks per year and per most months, 7 days per week, 24 hours per day, 60 minutes per hour and 60 seconds per minute, and we measure partial minutes and hours by halves and quarters! Subsecond units go back to metric again. So, at the largest and smallest ends of the scale we use metric time measurements, but for everything in between -- which includes practically all everyday "human" time measurements -- we're completely demented.
(Decimal, not metric. There is a difference.)
(That's no fun.)
Metric has been sneaking up on the US, mostly in food packaging (I'm old enough to remember when 16oz bottles of Coke became half-liter bottles). Still, getting people to replace their measuring cups, tape measures, rulers, etc. is going to be tough. And there are some areas where it's going to be really hard. Woodworking, for instance. You can easily do divisions by 2, 3, and 4 if you're working in English, but in metric dividing by 3 gets you into a lot of messy decimal points. I've heard that English woodworkers still used the feet/inch system too.
There is a lot of expensive measuring equipment that may not convert and thus must be replaced. Also, nearly every road sign in the US would have to be modified or replaced. I think making a list of all the things needed to be changed would be a constructive exercise.
The tooling and hardware inustries would resent the eventual loss of half of their tool sales resulting from a complete conversion.
Um, I don't follow that. Wouldn't people still need just as many tools? The sign industry would experience an unprecedented boom. I seem to recall that Canada changed all its road signs from British to metric very quickly and efficiently twenty-five years ago. With our good ol' American know-how, we should be able to do the same.
Re 20: Our "months" are not months, as a month is one full cycle of the moon. If we still based "months" on the cycle of the moon, they'd all be exactly the same length. Unfortunately, we'd also have to update our solar year a little, as we'd have a month that crosses the ending and beginning of the solar cycle.
The traditional solution to months is to have an extra period at the end of the year which does not belong to any month. 30 day months, 5 days of New Year's Holiday. Thirteen months of 28 days (four weeks each) comes to 364 days.
I'm fairly certain I have some tools in inches and others in millimeters. If we converted just to meters, I'd never need to replace the inch tools. As it is, I have to maintain both.
As it is, piecemeal conversion is taking place, and one encounters nuts and bolts in various things where you don't know which they are - inch or metric. I'd be happier if we'd gone metric when we said we did, and gotten over the transition long ago.
I ha'e a strong tendency to measure speeds and 'elocities in metres per second.
Fahrenheit is preferable to Celsius when discussing weather. Fahrenheit reserves the high-definition 0-100 interval to temperatures within normal human experience, so that negative numbers or numbers over 100 signify extreme weather or extreme environments (the poles, the Moon). Admittedly this means that things like boiling and melting points of water map to awkward numbers like 212 and 32. Celsius, on the other hand, is perfect for chemistry, but lousy for human environments. There is no reason why EVERYTHING has to be metric. As to half-liter soft drink bottles, I remember when Pepsi or Coke was widely ridiculed for coming up with the "half quart" (avoiding the equivalent term "pint"). The reason was psychological: a half quart sounded like a substantial amount, whereas "pint size" has all sorts of smallness connotations. Since a liter is only a little bigger than a quart, the cola companies simply switched to half liters. Had it not been for the pint problem, I suspect that the soft drink companies would still be selling in non-metric quantities.
FWIW, I havent seen a half liter bottle of pop in years.
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The rest of the world has no trouble discussing weather in Celsius. I don't think the rationalization for using Fahrenheit is anything more than that. I could take the opposite stance, and say it makes real sense to use a scale where water freezes at zero and boils at 100, as these are extremely important signature transitional experiences in our daily lives. In fact - that strikes me as BETTER rationalization.
I agree. (I'm feeling very agreeable this weekend!)
32: that argument didn't jive when Orwell made it, and it's not going to jive now. Celcius is fine for temperature; ask anyone but an American.
Of course, any scale will work. You can set freezing at 0.012 and boiling at 0.021, and have a perfectly good temperature scale. The only reason that has ever been set forth for why Celsuis is better is that having water freeze and boil at 0 and 100 "makes more sense". That's true, but lame. Fahrenheit nicely defines the temperatures where you have a right to complain about the weather. If it's below zero, you can moan. If it's above 100, you can moan. Just fine. Yeah, I've seen -20 and 120, but I'd prefer not to. The only thing I really want to do with temperatures above 100F is set the oven temperature. When I complain about the weather, I like being able to say it's 100, not it's 38. Yes, I know it's nothing much compared to the boiling point of water, but it's still too danged hot. "I'm hot blooded, check it and see, got a fever of 39.4444". There's one song that would never have been written. Does this make Fahrenheit better. No. But it makes Fahrenheit very nice.
> "I'm hot blooded, check it and see, got a fever of 39.4444". There's > one song that would never have been written. I'm confused.. Up until this sentence I thought you were arguing in favor of Fahrenheit.
Jan, I have to say, I never pegged you as a fan of Loverboy...
(I never pegged you as a fan of Foreigner, Eric. :))
Alas! have I misattributed? See how much attention I pay to music?
Re #38: you realize, don't you, that the "standard" body temperature has been set at 37 C, a nice round figure? That just converts to 98.6 F, a really ridiculously over-precise figure.
The king was running a fever the day they set the Farenheight scale.
Lol.
I don't think inch-based tools are going away any time soon. There will still be plenty of things around that need them for years. Perversely, my Volvo appears to have a mix of metric and inch-based fasteners. I assumed it was metric until I had to replace a seat belt and found that the bolts that secured it were 5/8".
Possibly the metric-marked parts are built to European standards, and the inch-marked to US standards.
I like to tell the story of Skylab, which was built entirely to metric measurements. I had a brief assignment to review some of the plans, and noticed that many tubes were specified to be 2.54 centimeters in diameter.
Heh. obviously, whatever measurement you choose, somehow you are going to get parts which need decimals or fractions.
Re #47: Could be. But there isn't a single inch-based fastener on my VW.
The fact that body temperature is exactly 37C instead of 98.6F would be more compelling if I thought it actually was a fact. I bet some European measured a bunch of people, then rounded the average off to the nearest degree Celsius, and that became the accepted value of body temperature. There is no such thing as an "exact value of body temperature", unless you want to decide which part of the body of which person doing which activity you are talking about.
Though most things are metric here in Japan, it is still quite common to use traditional measures in certain domains. The real estate world still use jo and tsubo to measure area, architecture and other traditional crafts commonly use the kanejaku system for measuring length. Somehow, folks muddle through it all without stressing too much :-)
Re #51: that's what I implied in #43 ("...that the "standard" body
temperature has been set at 37 C, a nice round figure..."). Of course body
temperature is no exact value. The point, though, is that we use the
metric standard but translate it to Fahrenheit, which is rather stupid.
98.6 is as much an average as is 37celsius. My mothers normal temp was 96 degrees, if she hit 98, she had a fever.
re #17 ... therefore, amke english teh official american language?????
(I'd thought those measurements were made in Farenheit, the Celsius scale not yet having been invented.)
The normal body temperature value of 37 C was an *average* rounded to the nearest degree, reported in a German study, since those making the measurements knew that there is a range of normal temperatures. it is only meant to be within two significant digits Celsius, not the three Fahrenheit implied by writing 98.6. Doing the latter is an error in implying the precision of the value. (There is some historical confusion about all this: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/LenaWong.shtml)
Do surveyors still measure in rods and chains?
resp:58 - There might be a few holdouts, somewhere, but most modern surveying uses either decimal feet, or meters. Of course, all surveyors are still familiar with the old units in order to retrace old surveys. a "chain" is also known as Gunter's chain and is equal to 66 feet. (this gives a nice round figure for a mile = 80 chains) * there are 4 rods/poles/perches in a chain (16.5 feet) * there are 100 links in a chain (7.92 inches) Just to make it more confusing, most original surveys in the Southwest are measured in varas, which is the Spanish equivalent of a yard and has been legally determined (in Texas) to be 33 1/3 inches.
Just curious. I know that a fair number of archaic measurements are still in use. I still routinely hear English people give weights in stone.
If you're even more curious, you might like to check out this new book. _Measuring America_, by Andro Linklater http://www.measuringamerica.com/book.php <snip> How we ultimately gained the American Customary System the last traditional system in the world and how Gunter s chain indelibly imprinted its dimensions on the land, on cities, and on our culture from coast to coast is both an exciting human and intellectual drama and one of the great untold stories in American history. At a time when the metric system may finally be unstoppable, Andro Linklater has captured the essential nature of measurement just as the Founding Fathers understood it. </snip>
It is well put that the "chain" has "indelibly imprinted its dimensions on the land". The mile is 80 chains, so the subdivisions of the land into sections and halves and quarters are simple subdivisions of 80. That makes an acre ten "square chains" - aha, a decimal value! I've had to deal with these units in land deals.
In old subdivisions, lot widths are commonly either 66 or 33 feet wide: a chain or half a chain (or, if you prefer, 4 or 2 rods). Rural roads in Michigan have rights-of-way 66 feet wide. In doing the history of a house in Lansing, I found the oldest records gave measurements in chains and links; later records gave the same distances in rods; still later in feet and fractions of feet; and the newest ones in feet with the fractions changed to decimal.
Most rural roads in Michigan also follow section lines. In fact, many of them have jogs or S-curves where the section lines are offset to compensate for the Earth's curvature.
Those section lines aren't offset "to compensate for the earth's curvature", at least not intentionally. They are offset because the surveys approached common points from different starting points, and also had little problems like trees, bogs, lakes, mountains (well, in the UP), etc. I dealt with one parcel that is 2.5 acres. That is a 25 square chains. However a rood is 40 square poles or 2.5 square chains, so 2.5 acres is 10 roods. I've since been calling it a "decarood", and letting people figure it out.
Actually, there are two types of correction built into the Public Lands Survey System --- accumulated error and allowance for convergence is placed in the North and West portions of a township. Due to convergence, township lines are adjusted --- every 24 miles from the base line, a standard parallel or correction line is used to correct for longitudinal convergence. The same was performed every 24 miles from the principal meridian, a guide meridian would be surveyed. So, this means that in Michigan, where the baseline forms the boundary between Oakland and Wayne counties, one would expect to find corrections 24 miles North and South of that line. The Michigan Meridian is East of Lansing, and forms the boundary between Clinton and Shiawassee counties.
Without looking it up again myself - I believe you are quite right, and I was being somewaht offhand in #65. My comment arose, however, with earlier experience with the topographic maps of the mountain west, where many sections look more like trapezoids, due to the surveyors being limited in where they could stand.
How many pounds are there in a stone?
20?
I thought it was 14 pounds in a stone.
You're probably right. I've never really known, despite having several British penpals always using that unit. A quick google search seems to verify keesan's answer.
As does "Ask Jeeves".. http://web.ask.com/web?q=how+many+pounds+in+a+stone
yep, fourteen.
I remember a British fellow mentioning that he had been really sick and lost a stone. He meant that he had been too ill to eat, and lost a lot of weight (probably he rounded it up to 14 pounds). An American he was talking with misunderstood him to mean that he had passed a kidney stone.
oof. Another good one is "Blow me!", which means "I'm so surprised you could blow me down!", not the other thing.
The classic British expression "I'll knock you up tomorrow." is also often misunderstood by Americans.
It's also a double entendre over here. These days, if someone said that to me, I'd assume it to mean I was in for a shagging tomorrow. Another favourite is "Thankyou for having me", which can mean "thankyou to inviting me to your house/party, etc., or "thanks for the sex".
I recall hearing the first in ordinary speech in England when I lived there, but that was in the 60's. Americanization has probably invaded ever more deeply.
And something that a lot of Indians needed to stop saying in America (and I hear the English say the same) - "I'm going out for a fag". The fag here is a cigarette
"Throw another faggot on the fire." [Hedley LaMarr (Harvey Korman) in Blazing Saddles, stunning his cowboy henchmen.]
A fag is a cigarette. A faggot is a piece of brain used as food.
fag.
Re #81: Ew.
-----a bundle of sticks.
an older definition, yes.
an older whore's a hoary whore.
I think we've got a little wannabe Jack the Ripper here. I'd better go alert the OPP.
what are the Ontario Provincial Police going to do about an insane Englishman?
Nothing, since I'm in England... Doesn't the RCMP police Ontario?
I wasn't referring to twenex.
I know...
RCMP is the Canadian national police force; OPP is, well, the Ontario Provincial Police. Not sure if England would have something similar to a provincial police force, since, as I understand it, England doesn't really have much similar to provinces. . . . Not sure about Canada, but in most states, there are city, county, and state as well as federal police forces. . . in Pittsburgh, most of the universities, the public housing authority, the public schools, and the port/transit authority all have their own independent police forces as well.
There are country police forces (constabularies).in England. For example,
http://www.lancashire.police.uk/.
"SERGEANT:
When constabulary duty's to be done.
POLICE:
To be done.
SERGEANT:
Ah, take one consideration with another,
POLICE:
With another,
SERGEANT:
A policeman's lot is not a happy one."
You have several choices: