Maybe the same reason that the entire fucking world still plays soccer with goal posts that measure 8 feet (2.44 meters) by 8 yards (7.32 meters)?
Oh yeah, JRDelirious, I’d bet dollars to donuts that the speed limit would end up being 100 km/hour. As Babe Ruth once said, now there’s a nice round number…
Here they’re labelled in inches, called “pouces” (former french unit slightly longer than an inch)
I was about to say that that’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard, but then I realized that I prefer centimeters over inches for the same reason. Perhaps if I were more termperature-sensitive, if I could tell the difference between a 94°F day and a 95°F day, I’d feel different. But, even though metric weather reports wouldn’t bother with it, there’s nothing saying that your thermostat couldn’t have half-degree marks.
But very few things are so sensitive that the difference of a degree C would matter more than that of a degree F - certainly not your food in the kitchen, and I doubt you could tell the temperature. Besides, there are such things as half degrees C, and tenths, and hundredths, and thousandths…they can be just as precisely measured, it you really need to know, which most people don’t.
Sorry for the -32 thing - I was thinking about the -40F/-40C point, and must have still been in negative numbers while typing 
I DO know that its 32F
Hey it’s real simple, Americans are just smarter than everybody else. We have no problem understanding this strange fucking system that the rest of the world looks at w/ confusion.
That’s okay, y’all can’t help it if you have to do everything the easy way! Most countries can claim a specific history and nationality. So, you don’t have to deal w/ 100 diferent languages on the street. Here in Texas, English is not even the primary language in some parts.
We have a heritage to protect or make, I’m not quite sure which. When you live in a country that is comprised of every damned nationality in the world. Yet, somehow seems to be able to make it work. Screw whether you buy your tequila in liters or quarts.
Just as long as you can get what you’re after w/out getting shot or blown up.
Besides, it’s y’alls idea to use this metric crap anyway. I kinda like jackin w/ people about weights and measures.
BTW: How many pickled peppers are in a peck? 
PEACE
I still stand in the liquor department trying to figure out which of those bottles is a fifth and which is a fourth. 
When cooking, of course, 8 ounces is a cup, 16 ounces (or two cups) is a pint, 2 pints is a quart, and 4 quarts are a gallon. Smaller numbers than the metric system and lots easier to remember.
It is true that in the U.S. we have not converted to the metric system. That being said there are certain products sold using metric measurements, one of the most common being soda sold in liters and two liter bottles. Soda companies first made that switch in 1970, so it has been sold that way for quite some time now. The main reason the soda industry switched to liters in the U.S. is because the majority of the world is on the metric system. By converting their bottles to liters and two liters, they were able to standardize their bottle sizes worldwide as these changes grew. This was particularly important in areas that did not have their own bottling plants and had to rely on importing their products from the U.S.
I think after 15 years the OP has figured that out by now. And given that their last activity on this board was 3 years ago, I’m going to guess he isn’t listening.
I think elmwood might still be around, though. I wonder what he thinks of his 2010 prediction, now that twice that time has passed?
And a lot of Americans say that they don’t like the metric system because they don’t understand it, but I guarantee you that anyone who says that doesn’t understand the American system, either. Anyone who does actually understand the American system wants to stay as far away from it as possible, because it’s a complete mess.
The United States uses a decimal system for her currency … if we also used a decimal system for weights and measures it would be easier for the consumer to figure out the best value, many could do this math in their heads … by using fractional values for weights and measures, it’s more difficult for the consumer to figure the best value even with an electronic calculator … and most just guess rather than get pencil and paper out and compute the fractions involved … thus the consumer is far more easily ripped off …
To Wit: the 3 lbs 1-3/4 oz box of Bleef™ can be labeled “economy sized” and be priced at double the 1 lbs 14-3/8 oz box … the casual shopper would just assume the 3 lbs box is a better value than the other “one pound” box … in spite the opposite being true …
Also: US tons are cheaper on world markets than British tons, in spite the US product being more expensive per pound … good ol’ American ingenuity is what I say …
The metric system is getting very close to being an outstanding system for the conveyance of accurate information … completely unsuited for the American consumer marketplace … [wolfish grin] …
Actually, booze used to be commonly sold in fifths. Which is pretty close to 750 ml, which is now a frequent size for things like vodka.
You guys realize this thread is 18 decamonths old, right?
Yeah, this is the one that tipped me off.
It never fails to amaze me how many people believe that myth. I absolutely guarantee that EVERYBODY who understands the American system knows why we stick with it.
It’s FAR, FAR, FAR more intuitive and convenient than the idiotic metric system.
A foot is very close to the length of the average adult foot. The metric system has no equivalent. A yard is about twice the length from the wrist to the shoulder. Height of people is measured in a conveniently-small number – 5 feet, 6 feet, etc. Why in the name of common sense would anybody want to say 1.xx meters, or (alternatively) have to use literally hundreds of centimeters?
We have ounces and pints for small amounts of liquid, and gallons and barrels for large amounts. When the temperature hits zero, we know that it’s actually cold, not warm enough for a light coat. You clearly have no conception of how annoying it would be to have to use negative numbers on a daily basis for months on end.
25 mph is a good speed for a residential street, which is appropriate, since it’s a fairly small number. 60 mph is a mile per minute, which is nice and dandy. A standard city block is 1/10 of a mile.
Etc, etc, etc.
The TTB regulates this, but offically spirits can only be sold in:
50 mL, 100 mL, 200 mL, 375 mL, 750 mL, 1 L, and 1.75 L — except for cans, whose standard sizes are 50 mL, 100 mL, 200 mL, and 355 mL.
Wine is allowed in:
(27 CFR Part 4 — Labeling and advertising of wine)
And beer is the oddball, it is required to be sold in pint/quart/gallons.
(27 CFR Part 7 — Labeling and advertising of malt beverages)
For other products like food mandatory dual labeling went into effect in 1994.
But this is just a consumer confusion issue, all off these units have been officially defined off of the metric system in the US sense the Mendenhall order in 1893 or about 125 years ago. Outside of very small groups like Engineers, who stick to differing units of measure to keep their math pretty we have just been using a different scale for the same core units.
Maybe not perfectly SI, but SI is not the metric system.
As this is General Questions I need to correct this, it is a common myth that the pound is not a unit of mass.
This is only true if you are in a small number of fields or industry that uses the Foot-Pound-Second (FPS) systems of units.
This is a very specialized unit of measures and the only common one in the US that defines force as the primary dimension with units of pound-force and mass is a secondary unit with units of slug.
The avoirdupois pound is and has been a unit of mass forever, and officially defined against the Kilogram post 1883. This is the pound that is the basis unit.
While they did adjust the ratio by tiny amounts over the years, post 1959 1 pound = 0.45359237 kg the world round.
I know that I am tilting at windmills here, but before 1960 there were multiple versions of the metric system, and at least three base units for mass, the gram, the kilogram and the Metric Ton, it was not nearly as uniform as typically claimed in the common urban legend.
And I can guarantee that anybody who understands the metric system (as in “was raised with it his/her whole life”, like me) will always consider American customary units to be messy, stupid and counter-intuitive.
It is not “this or that system is better-suited for daily life”. It is “this or that system is what I grew up with and thus I think it is better”.
The metric system has no equivalent of the foot, but we never ever think we need one. As to making units correspond with parts of the body, 1 cm is roughly the width of the tip of your pinky finger, and 1 m is more or less the distance from your shoulder to the tip of the fingers of the hand in the opposite, outstretched arm. We find it silly to measure people’s height with 5 or 6 units of something, followed by a smaller unit that doesn’t go a nice “round” number of times inside the bigger one (12 inches to the foot? WTF, man?). We do not think it is hard, nonsensical or somehow “antinatural” to say people are “1 something” (or “2 something” in rare cases). I am one seventy-eight tall, and nobody around finds that saying that feels weird. What sounds weird to me is saying that I am 5 foot 10.
For some reason we are not scared to deal with fractions. 1 liter is a nice size for a bottle to share with family and friends; if you want more you always have 1 and 1/2 or 2 liters, of course. 1/4 liter is a nice table glass; 1/2 liter is a good size for a portable bottle of water; 3/4 liter is your average bottle of wine; 1 shot glass is roughly 50 ml, or 5/100 of a liter, or 1/10 of a 1/2 liter bottle (the latter is the usual understanding, in my experience). Now; around here, in pubs and for beer, you can find pints, although not often and they will almost always be British Imperial pints, which are a bit bigger than 1/2 liter (thus convenient when you want to do some kind of promotion, selling more quantity for the same price as a half-liter).
We are not afraid of negative numbers in temperature. Why would anybody think they are somehow unnatural, annoying and inconvenient, I will never understand. 10C is chilly; 20C is a nice spring day; 30C is hot, 40C is very hot, 50C is “WTF risk of death guys!!”-- Below 0, watch out for ice! 0 is nippy, -10 is cold, -20 is BRRRRRR COLD, -30 is holy shit this is bad, -40 C is “oh fuck better find shelter soon or we’re gonna die”. Incidentally, in Russia, during winter, they deal with this “negative temperatures” thing in a very simple way: when stating a temperature, if otherwise not specified, it is assumed that it will be negative.
Speeds: 30 km/h is OK for residential streets where you can find children playing outside or lots of pedestrians; 50 km/h is perfect for urban driving; 120 km/h is a good highway speed (~ 75 mph), wherein you go exactly 2 km per minute. Easy to calculate in your head.
Yes, the US went to the Moon and back with instruments labeled in American customary units… but the internal workings of the computers were SI 
The difference between long and short tons is one that really does bother me, and this is one that is too easy to miss. US gallon versus the rest is less of an issue (but you can get caught out.) The very close mass of the metric and imperial ton is rather neat, but possibly a source of confusion as well. You sort of have only two kinds of ton, but not quite. (And the tonne with its various weird pronunciations to try to distinguish it from ton gets zero support from me.)
Any how many people know what unit gold is measured in?
Perhaps the amusing irony is that the US is tied to the SI measurement system. All the US units are defined in terms of the SI standards. Indeed the US is very active in the efforts to standardise the kilogram in terms of Plank’s constant.
In Oz we changed from the Imperial system to metric when I were a lad. Curiously they decided that since they would have to change all the school textbooks they would run an even horizon through the school system, so one particular cohort would be the one that got the new textbooks, all the older kids stayed on imperial (where it was still used) right through schooling, and all the younger kids would get metric. I was in the changeover cohort. Which was interesting, as I’m pretty comfortable with either system, and can switch from one to the other for things like woodworking without even noticing. But anything even remotely scientific is metric, and almost (sadly only almost) all SI.
Ok–
So you’re not exactly scared of fractions, but you find them weird.
:rolleyes:
And you call us irrational?
Boom tish …