I'm an American, I want Metric, and you?

In My Humble Opinion
121

Yep, every since I spent 3 years in Europe back in the 1970s, I’ve wanted to switch to metric. It’s just so much easier to remember everything, and it makes so much more sense.

122

I’m not sure what you guys divide by four to arrive at a “quart”, but a fifth of a quart would a twentieth. Five centiwhatevers in the metric system.

123

Dear OP,

I’m American and I use SI units almost exclusively when I do technical work. It’s a huge hassle having half my reference materials in various other units and a pain that almost every machined part I deal with is in English sizes and has some odd dimension in SI units. I badly resent having to maintain all this overhead, perhaps forever, to save other people from having to get over making the change once. And I see this as an enormous expense that voters in effect keep opting for, year after year, out of stupidity.

Thanks for asking!

124

I agree with Post #11 by ralph124c. One or the other …not both! What drives me nuts are the folks who think we can make the metric system go away by closing our eyes and wishing really hard.

Sure, it’ll be a long time before us 'Merkins stop refering to ordinary building studs as anything other than 2x4s. Come to that, they’re not really 2 inches by 4 inches, so what difference does it make what you call it, as long as you can get one by asking for it?

I also suspect that contractors will continue to use #4 reinforcing bar, never mind what that really means. (Roughly 4/8 of an inch, or 13 mm.) Anyhow, figuring bar counts and spacing are a lot easier in metric, the times I’ve tried it out.
The metric system is good for long-distance driving, I’ve found. Since 100 kph is a reasonable highway speed (okay, a little slow), it’s trivial to figure out how far the next city is if the sign says it’s 450 km away. It’s less than 4-1/2 hours away, it is… well, we are going faster than 100 kph. Er.

But for Og’s sake, why are we hassling with conversions between the two systems? Let’s PICK ONE or the other. Me, I say let’s go with the metric system, mostly because I think it’s got more staying power than that confused “english” system we now use. (There’s 5,280 feet in a mile, true, but only for landlubbers.)