Petition to make USA Metric

[Atomic Playboy]

Correct. And a CAN isn't a unit of measure. If its 350 mL so be it. Alcohol mixology stuff originated from the US, so yes the shot is based on the ounce. It could've been 50mL if we used metric.

And yet we sell alcohol in the following measurements: 50 ml, 200 ml, 375 ml, 750 ml, 1000 ml and 1750 ml. What the hell is up with that? Come on America!

 

[Theb]

I'll see your hogshead and raise you a liter o' cola

 

[Red Squirrel]

It definitely would be good for the US, they could finally be in the 21st century and use the system everybody else uses.

Metric is superior in every way especially when actively trying to measure/build something to a specific size. 10mm is 1cm, 100cm is 1m 1000m is 1km etc, and there's some units in between but not used much. I think 1 hector is 100m, but that's only used for measuring forest fires. But everything is based on 10's. inches are retarded you have to figure out fractions and stuff, if you're at the hardware store and need something a certain size you're not in a position to start pulling out a calculator and figure out if 43/24" is bigger or smaller than 3/5" etc. Some of the more standard stuff you just know, like 3/4 pipe is bigger than 1/2 pipe, but it would be much simpler if it was just in mm. Then you see two numbers and immediately know which one is bigger than the other. And who's bright idea was it to make it so 1 foot is 12 inches, why 12? why not 10? How do you even represent that on paper if you are working in autocad or something? 1 foot 6 inches would be 1.5? What about 1 foot 4 inches? Then you have to start figuring it out. Then it gets even worse when it's like 1 foot 4 1/4 inch etc... WHY?! Just use metric! it's going to be a simple number with no fractions and can easily be represented in any computer program.

Metric is also more accurate. When I'm building or measuring stuff I always measure in cm, if I need more accuracy, then I just need to look at the mm lines. So on the measuring tape it's quick and easy to know that the 3rd small line is 10.3cm or 103mm. No fractions. No need to do any math. It's just simple.

 

[silverpig]

Centimeters are clearly better than inches. They make penises sound longer. Kilometers aren't bad either; speed limits look more exciting. Volume I'm not sold on. It's a lot easier to do math with ounces than milliliters; 8 + 14 + 9 + 5 is easier to add up in your head than 237 + 414 + 266 + 148.

You realize you could add 2 + 4 + 3 + 1 decilitres right?

litres
decilitres
centilitres
millilitres
microlitres
...

 

[Atomic Playboy]

You realize you could add 2 + 4 + 3 + 1 decilitres right?

No, volume is silly in metric. Maybe if anyone actually used deciliters it could be useful, but they don't, so to hell with it.

People use liters and milliliters. The rest of them don't get used in the real world ever.

 

[Possessed Freak]

you're not in a position to start pulling out a calculator and figure out if 43/24" is bigger or smaller than 3/5" etc.

Dun need a calculator for that one.

Metric is also more accurate.

What the hell are you on about?

 

[SunnyD]

Hey sunnyd and skimple, go google base ten, and educate yourselves. I don't really have the time to pay taxes, AND do what the public education system failed to do.

SunnyD, just in case you think you're right, no. what's the smallest unit of measurement in you stupid 2 dollar bill that you keep bringing up? Holy shit you're beyond retarded. You went way past full retard.

My example wasn't $2 bill fucktard. Mine was the "tweenimeter", and the "tweenimeter" was the smallest whole unit of measure I'm allowing you to have available.

For purposes of convenience, however, I will allow you to subdivide a tweenimeter into fractional components evenly divisible by 67. But the smallest fundamental unit in this totally arbitrary measurement system is the tweenimeter. I hope that helps you in your quest to understand the arbitrary nature of this discussion.

By the way, how many seximeters tall are you again? Feel free to simply move a few decimal places around in your base 10 world using the rules of my arbitrary measurement system in order to provide the answer. Oh wait, that's right! You can't.

 

[nixium]

People use liters and milliliters. The rest of them don't get used in the real world ever.

Honestly in the real non-USA world those weird figures that you put for ml never get used. It's usually in 10's or 5's in rare cases. De-facto deciliters without actually calling them that.

I see the problem though, if the fluids were to switch to metric, then manufacturers would have to reduce or increase packet sizes to avoid weird figures. But after that initial pain the rest would be very easy.

Both for cooking and otherwise, the small increases and reductions you'll have to get used to won't make too much of a diff.

 

[diesbudt]

With the exception of ounces to pounds, no one makes those conversions. And even that one is fairly rare. You could just use 1.25 pounds instead of 1 pound 4 ounces. You know, like very scale does.

You don't go to McDonalds and order a four ouncer, you order a quarter pounder.

I think I shall do this next time.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Honestly in the real non-USA world those weird figures that you put for ml never get used. It's usually in 10's or 5's in rare cases. De-facto deciliters without actually calling them that.

I see the problem though, if the fluids were to switch to metric, then manufacturers would have to reduce or increase packet sizes to avoid weird figures. But after that initial pain the rest would be very easy.

Both for cooking and otherwise, the small increases and reductions you'll have to get used to won't make too much of a diff.

But there's no reason to bother making that switch. What we have now works. And while units of distance can come into play because you can drive over national boundaries and have to deal with conversions, you're never going to have a situation where you're measuring fluids when all of a sudden a wild liter appears.

 

[nixium]

Hey sunnyd and skimple, go google base ten, and educate yourselves. I don't really have the time to pay taxes, AND do what the public education system failed to do.

SunnyD, just in case you think you're right, no. what's the smallest unit of measurement in you stupid 2 dollar bill that you keep bringing up? Holy shit you're beyond retarded. You went way past full retard.

LOL and he thinks not wanting to waste time adding and dividing idiotic units means you're mathematically challenged. According to this the 6 billion people in the rest of the world are mathematically challenged. All those scientists are idiots, using lame, easy to divide units. Full retard indeed.

SunnyD: Just because your life is so insipid that you actually have the time to deal with memorizing and dividing arbitrary quantities and consider that a "challenge" doesn't mean the rest of us have to do it.

Why don't you just honestly say it's because you're used to it and think it should be used because you're used to it instead of making stupid arguments?

 

[Bubbaleone]

There's a saying in the US that's stood us well since the American Revolution: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!". All you "America needs to go metric" fanboys need to go back to school and actually learn to do math in your head instead of on a computer or calculator, or move to Europe where you can bask in the "superiority" of the metric system because you were to lazy or stupid to learn the US Standard Units.

Oh, by the way, how many countries using the "superior" metric system have succesfully flown manned lunar missions? How many millions of tons of American manufactured war machines did it take to keep the metric countries of Europe from having to fly the Swastika, or the Hammer and Sickle? As for the metric system not being based on an arbitrary unit... it doesn't get any more arbitrary than this, FFS!

The origins of the meter go back to at least the 18th century. At that time, there were two competing approaches to the definition of a standard unit of length. Some suggested defining the meter as the length of a pendulum having a half-period of one second; others suggested defining the meter as one ten-millionth of the length of the earth's meridian along a quadrant (one fourth the circumference of the earth). In 1791, soon after the French Revolution, the French Academy of Sciences chose the meridian definition over the pendulum definition because the force of gravity varies slightly over the surface of the earth, affecting the period of the pendulum.

Thus, the meter was intended to equal 10-7 or one ten-millionth of the length of the meridian through Paris from pole to the equator. However, the first prototype was short by 0.2 millimeters because researchers miscalculated the flattening of the earth due to its rotation. Still this length became the standard. In 1889, a new international prototype was made of an alloy of platinum with 10 percent iridium, to within 0.0001, that was to be measured at the melting point of ice. In 1927, the meter was more precisely defined as the distance, at 0°, between the axes of the two central lines marked on the bar of platinum-iridium kept at the BIPM, and declared Prototype of the meter by the 1st CGPM, this bar being subject to standard atmospheric pressure and supported on two cylinders of at least one centimeter diameter, symmetrically placed in the same horizontal plane at a distance of 571 mm from each other.

The 1889 definition of the meter, based upon the artifact international prototype of platinum-iridium, was replaced by the CGPM in 1960 using a definition based upon a wavelength of krypton-86 radiation. This definition was adopted in order to reduce the uncertainty with which the meter may be realized. In turn, to further reduce the uncertainty, in 1983 the CGPM replaced this latter definition by the following definition:

The meter is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second.

Note that the effect of this definition is to fix the speed of light in vacuum at exactly 299,792,458 m·s-1. The original international prototype of the meter, which was sanctioned by the 1st CGPM in 1889, is still kept at the BIPM under the conditions specified in 1889.

.

 

[nixium]

But there's no reason to bother making that switch. What we have now works. And while units of distance can come into play because you can drive over national boundaries and have to deal with conversions, you're never going to have a situation where you're measuring fluids when all of a sudden a wild liter appears.

I argue it should be changed just to get it in line with the rest of the world, for practicality purposes, maybe trade, etc. But yeah, it's nothing urgent.

 

[Tommy2000GT]

I hate when companies send us drawings in millimeters and I have to convert to inches especially when there are like 200 dimensions.

 

[nixium]

There's a saying in the US that's stood us well since the American Revolution: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!". All you "America needs to go metric" fanboys need to go back to school and actually learn to do math in your head instead of on a computer or calculator, or move to Europe where you can bask in the "superiority" of the metric system because you were to lazy or stupid to learn the US Standard Units.

Oh, by the way, how many countries using the "superior" metric system have succesfully flown manned lunar missions? How many millions of tons of American manufactured war machines did it take to keep the metric countries of Europe from having to fly the Swastika, or the Hammer and Sickle? As for the metric system not being based on an arbitrary unit... it doesn't get any more arbitrary than this, FFS!


.

'MURCAAAAAAA!

Hey genius, using the metric system makes it *easier* to do calculations in your head, so humans can focus on other, more important things rather than waste brain power on trivialities. Perhaps dividing 8ths and 16ths is a sufficient intellectual challenge for you, and doing it accurately fills you with a sense of accomplishment, but some of us prefer more meaningful challenges for our math.

While we're on the trivia topic, how many countries in the world actually used nuclear bombs on civilian populations? Twice?

 

[lord_emperor]

EVERY base allows you to move the decimal point.

Only if the numbering system has the appropriate digits, and it is applied to all units.

Metric:
0.000001km = 0.001m = 1cm = 10mm

Hypothetical base16 measuring system:
0.001f kilothings = 1f things = 0.01f millithings

Imperial
1 inch = 0.125 foot = 0.00001578282 mile

2 of those make sense.

 

[diesbudt]

I hate when companies send us drawings in millimeters and I have to convert to inches especially when there are like 200 dimensions.

millimeter x 25.4 = inch.

Not hard.

 

[Train]

Only if the numbering system has the appropriate digits, and it is applied to all units.

Metric:
0.000001km = 0.001m = 1cm = 10mm

Hypothetical base16 measuring system:
0.001f kilothings = 1f things = 0.01f millithings

Imperial
1 inch = 0.125 foot = 0.00001578282 mile

2 of those make sense.

OY. Wrong on so many levels

 

[SunnyD]

LOL and he thinks not wanting to waste time adding and dividing idiotic units means you're mathematically challenged. According to this the 6 billion people in the rest of the world are mathematically challenged. All those scientists are idiots, using lame, easy to divide units. Full retard indeed.

SunnyD: Just because your life is so insipid that you actually have the time to deal with memorizing and dividing arbitrary quantities and consider that a "challenge" doesn't mean the rest of us have to do it.

Why don't you just honestly say it's because you're used to it and think it should be used because you're used to it instead of making stupid arguments?

I haven't heard an plausible argument FOR switching to the metric system yet that wasn't just as arbitrary as your comment. So it's easy to memorize mathematical facts and do a bit of trivial manipulation on an arbitrary measurement system. It's just as easy to memorize mathematical operations on a different arbitrary measurement system as well.

The whole point of this thread is about berating a measurement system and the people who use it for it's "absurdness". The problem is that the imperial measurement system is no more absurd than the metric system!

Fine, the metric system is all dandy in that you can shift around a decimal and by god you get a slightly larger unit of measure, and/or a somewhat simplified method of converting between types of measure. The problem is, no matter how arbitrary the measurement system is, you can do these very same things in pretty much any measurement system there is. BOO-FUCKING-HOO you have to do a little bit of math. So what?

As has been pointed out, look at the UK and the shit they have gone through with what amounted to half-hearted attempts at changing systems. THAT is the point of this thread. Why hasn't it been done here in the US? Because somebody figured out that in order to change to metric, it would cost a good bit of money. How much money? Too much money to make it worth the headache. We get along just fine with the standard system. It's not broken, there's nothing to fix. It doesn't change on a daily basis. So the question then becomes, "Why fuck with it?" Just to make YOU happy?

And now you know why this thread is just as arbitrary as the measurement systems described within it. Because SOMEBODY decided that it should be.

Stupid thread is stupid.

 

[nehalem256]

Metric is also more accurate. When I'm building or measuring stuff I always measure in cm, if I need more accuracy, then I just need to look at the mm lines. So on the measuring tape it's quick and easy to know that the 3rd small line is 10.3cm or 103mm. No fractions. No need to do any math. It's just simple.

Unless you are talking about temperature. Or weight

 

[Tommy2000GT]

millimeter x 25.4 = inch.

Not hard.

of course not. but when you have to do it 200 times, it becomes a hassle.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

While we're on the trivia topic, how many countries in the world actually used nuclear bombs on civilian populations? Twice?

All the more reason to do it our way. Or else...

 

[nixium]

I haven't heard an plausible argument FOR switching to the metric system yet that wasn't just as arbitrary as your comment. So it's easy to memorize mathematical facts and do a bit of trivial manipulation on an arbitrary measurement system. It's just as easy to memorize mathematical operations on a different arbitrary measurement system as well.

The whole point of this thread is about berating a measurement system and the people who use it for it's "absurdness". The problem is that the imperial measurement system is no more absurd than the metric system!

Fine, the metric system is all dandy in that you can shift around a decimal and by god you get a slightly larger unit of measure, and/or a somewhat simplified method of converting between types of measure. The problem is, no matter how arbitrary the measurement system is, you can do these very same things in pretty much any measurement system there is. BOO-FUCKING-HOO you have to do a little bit of math. So what?

As has been pointed out, look at the UK and the shit they have gone through with what amounted to half-hearted attempts at changing systems. THAT is the point of this thread. Why hasn't it been done here in the US? Because somebody figured out that in order to change to metric, it would cost a good bit of money. How much money? Too much money to make it worth the headache. We get along just fine with the standard system. It's not broken, there's nothing to fix. It doesn't change on a daily basis. So the question then becomes, "Why fuck with it?" Just to make YOU happy?

And now you know why this thread is just as arbitrary as the measurement systems described within it. Because SOMEBODY decided that it should be.

Stupid thread is stupid.

If that was your argument all along, that's no so bad. What's this idiocy about using the imperial system because it gives a better 'brain workout' or some nonsense like that?

Assuming that both are based on arbitrary measurements, the metric system is easier to use, there's no denying it. Diving by 10 is easier.

Why fuck with it? Just to get on the same system as the rest of the world. Why is that not a worthy goal?

If you want tangible benefits.. how about the 650 million(?) NASA lost because they had to convert back and forth between systems?

That being said.. realistically it would take a long time to change over, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.

 

[SunnyD]

If that was your argument all along, that's no so bad. What's this idiocy about using the imperial system because it gives a better 'brain workout' or some nonsense like that?

Assuming that both are based on arbitrary measurements, the metric system is easier to use, there's no denying it. Diving by 10 is easier.

Why fuck with it? Just to get on the same system as the rest of the world. Why is that not a worthy goal?

If you want tangible benefits.. how about the 650 million(?) NASA lost because they had to convert back and forth between systems?

That being said.. realistically it would take a long time to change over, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.

When someone calls someone else a retard, the easiest response is to "challenge one's mind". I'm not denying moving up and down the metric system isn't easy. But when it comes to fundamental units of measure, it really just doesn't even matter. Fractional units, odd divisors, whatever - it's all still just, as I keep saying, an arbitrary unit of measure. What you get in the end is just a way to communicate a measurement.

On the other hand, I believe last I checked it was something like 65 countries that comprised the British Commonwealth. I'm sure a lot of those countries have since moved to metric systems, and for a lot of those countries it didn't really matter at the time. A lot of those countries that are still under that umbrella STILL use the imperial measurement system today (or a mixture of imperial/metric).

But at the time, as I mentioned, for the US the cost involved was prohibitive. And the question at the time was also one of "Why should we?" as a dominant superpower in terms of international trade and whatnot. Today, the cost has probably increased for that matter. Sure, the NASA thing is an error... and that can be blamed on people being stupid. But there's nothing saying that that issue may not have happened in a purely metric system either... it sure is easy to put decimal points in the wrong place after all! Those tiny little suckers are evil. But mistakes happen.

Is it a noble goal to change measurement systems? In my opinion - nope. It's irrelevant, and a waste of time when we have so many far more important things to worry about versus whether we are X feet tall, X meters tall or X seximeters tall. The system is established, it works just fine. Sometimes it might be a little bit ugly, but hey - that's why we have those brain things and Google.

 

[Bubbaleone]

'MURCAAAAAAA!

Hey genius, using the metric system makes it *easier* to do calculations in your head, so humans can focus on other, more important things rather than waste brain power on trivialities. Perhaps dividing 8ths and 16ths is a sufficient intellectual challenge for you, and doing it accurately fills you with a sense of accomplishment, but some of us prefer more meaningful challenges for our math.

While we're on the trivia topic, how many countries in the world actually used nuclear bombs on civilian populations? Twice?

LOL... did I strike a nerve? Your reply makes it very obvious that you recognize yourself as a metric fanboy who's "to lazy or stupid to learn the US Standard Units."