[QUOTE=Valteron]
Can anyone explain why an ad for mechanical devices to regrow your foreskin would appear at the nd of my posting about metric? Straight Dope works in stange and mysterious ways its wonders to perform.
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I can see the connection, but I’m really surprised Google can.
[QUOTE=Zsofia]
Somebody somewhere made the comment that the drug industry has already made the metric switch - you buy your heroin or coke in grams or kilos (although I suppose a “rock” of crack is an Imperial measurement), and you shoot other dealers with a 9mm.
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I don’t think that a ‘rock’ is a standard measurement, though, not that I would actually know.
[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
In metric, 1ml of water occupies 1cc and weighs 1g. If that aquarium was 1 meter on a side, it would have a volume of 1 meter cubed = 1,000,000cc (100cm x 100cm x 100cm). That means it would hold 1,000 liters (1,000,000 ml) of water and weigh 1,000kg (1,000,000g).
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Aren’t you going to put rocks, and phony plants, and a filter system, and a treasure chest that goes blub blub blub in there too? I think that stuff may throw your calculations off.
Anyway, if you are installing a one ton aquarium in your home, a few minutes with conversion tables isn’t going to kill you. Most aquariums I see are rated by gallon measure, not cubic feet or raw dimensions. The “difficult” conversions in US measure are generally trivial for manufacturers, and simple for people who have to do them often. Yes, the one time in my life I’m installing a custom built aquarium, I’ll have to look up a conversion factor. I’d rather do that than throw away all my tape measures, measuring cups and building codes.
[QUOTE=eenerms]
I find it interesting when watching British cooking shows they still use Imperial measure first, ie cups/ tsp/ etc.
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Are you sure they’re not using metric cups? Around these part a cup is defined as 250ml and a teaspoon as 5ml. They fit into the metric system just fine, and measuring cups and spoons are normally based around those sizes so it’s quite handy when they appear in recipes.
[QUOTE=Captain Carrot]
I don’t think that a ‘rock’ is a standard measurement, though, not that I would actually know.
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Well, ya got yer Troy rocks, yer Imperial rocks, yer avoirdupois rocks…
I’m sure one reason is that most cookbooks you find in the US still use tablespoons, cups, and so on. For some reason, the metric nuts tend to measure ingredients by weight, not volume, which isn’t something most Americans are equipped to do (a scale isn’t something you’d find in most American kitchens). I’m not sure why nobody uses metric cups or tablespoons in the US, but I’ve never seen any measuring cups or spoons in those sizes.
Both, and it does cause problems.
[QUOTE=Valteron]
How hard can it be to get the hang of Celsius temperatures? Zero is the melting point of fresh water. Any temperature below zero is freezing. 100 is the boiling point of water.
For purposes of weather reports, most inhabited places outside of Death Valley and Antarctica would fall somewhere within the range of -40 at the coldest to +40 at the hottest.
All you have to do to understand Celsius is form a few benchmarks in your mind.
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30 is hot
20 is nice
10 is cold
0 is ice
Until I learned that (somebody posted it on Slashdot once), Celsius temperatures were incomprehensible to me, since the formula for converting them to the Fahrenheit temperatures I’m familiar with isn’t something I can do in my head.
[QUOTE=Kevbo]
My only real beef with metric is threading. The modulus system (mm/thread) often results in fasteners with overly coarse or fine threads which weaken the fastener, and thus require larger fasteners to be used. The finer the thread, the coarser the increments. The reciprocal SAE pitch system (threads/inch) results in much finer increments at finer pitches, allowing the thread depth to be more closely optimized for the fastener diameter.
This is true even when .25mm modulus increments are used. And then there is the pain of having to keep the half nuts engaged when cutting metric threads on a lathe.
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This is an intersting observation. While the majority of Yanks simply ignore metric measure, the few I have known who were rabidly anti-metric were generally people in tool and die shops who could launch into 30 minute harangues (with no prompting and no pauses for breath) at the mere mention of metric.
Interestingly, my brother encountered an odd twist on this situation. My brother worked at an engineering firm that produced durable goods. In the early 1990s, their division decided to develop a product to go head-to-head with some of their competition in Europe. So, of course, the product was designed completely using metric standards. Then his company got bought out by a corporation with similar products, but based on commodity sales. For some reason, they put his department under the control of a Canadian division. The next thing he knew, he was getting orders to rework the entire product in “Standard” measure. (The first time he described the units as “Imperial,” he got a ten minute lecture from the chief Canadian engineer that he was not to repeat that mistake.) Over a period of months, numerous persistent efforts to get the Canadian division to stop insisting on Standard measure went nowhere–despite the fact that the only market for the new product was going to be Europe. The Canadians insisted that the design could not be in metric. Finally the truth was revealed, one day, when the new Canadian boss admitted that not one of their tools was calibrated in metric design and they did not have the money to buy new metric machines. (The project and my brother’s department were both eliminated shortly thereafter.)
[QUOTE=eenerms]
An aside: I was speaking to a British Engineer(she told me she was an engineer numerous times) she was upset that the 'Yanks" called it ‘English’ measure. Why oh why did not the US use metric. She was of an age where she could convert easily. I find it interesting when watching British cooking shows they still use Imperial measure first, ie cups/ tsp/ etc.
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As noted, my brother encountered a few Canadians who were quite put out at references to “Imperial” measure. 
Oh, don’t pick on the example. It was just the first thing that came to mind involving the three different scales.
I just love how clean the metric system is. Try calculating your water rights sometime on a Montana farm or ranch. Acre-feet, flow rates, ditch sizes, shares. It’s enough to make you yank your hair out. It would be ever so much easier in metric.
Another example was when I wanted to fill some water troughs that were a long way from the house. I thought of putting a vinyl liner in the bed of my pickup truck and filling it with water, but I wasn’t sure whether the water would weigh more than my axle ratings. In metric, it would be an easy calculation. I had to run for the conversion tables to do it in feet/gallons/pounds.
I bought a container of chemicals for my hot tub. It lists how many ounces to use per 100 gallons of water. I have to calculate the volume and then hit the conversion tables to see how many gallons it is. Again, a piece of cake in metric.
I need to spray some of my land for weeds. It’s 100 yards square and I need 10 gallons per acre. How much should I buy? How many square yards in an acre? Again, if we’re metric, a 100 square-meter area is exactly one hectare.
It goes on and on and on…
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
As noted, my brother encountered a few Canadians who were quite put out at references to “Imperial” measure.
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Those Canadians were wrong. Canada did use Imperial measure. Now, if they wanted to use US measure for compatibility, that’s another thing, but the gallon used in Canada was the Imperial gallon of 4.5 litres, not the US gallon of 3.8 litres.
Calling it “standard” is meaningless until you know which standard you are using.
I can think in both systems, at least as well as I can intuitively grasp any system of measurements - I suck at estimating much of anything without actually measuring.
But I do at least have a fair grasp of how warm 30 degrees is in either Celsius or Fahrenheit, and I understand about how far a kilometer is and a mile is. Actually, having lived in the US all my life, the English system does come to me first, unless I’m doing a physics problem.
The problem I have with the English system is that I can never remember how many friggin’ feet are in a mile. That’s a reasonably useful conversion, but…
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
It’s like learning a second language. Even if you get good at it, you still think naturally in the language you grew up learning
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Do you speak fluently a second language?, I may be a freak but for me it´s indistinct to either think in Spanish or in English, my brain just switches between both smoothly.
I didn´t start taking English classes until I was 13 or 14, so it´s not a parallel development of language skills.
[QUOTE=Mbossa]
Are you sure they’re not using metric cups? Around these part a cup is defined as 250ml and a teaspoon as 5ml. They fit into the metric system just fine, and measuring cups and spoons are normally based around those sizes so it’s quite handy when they appear in recipes.
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I believe they start off with Imperial and also use the metric in the cooking shows I have watched.(BBC Food) They seem no to have a problem with converting between the two.
[QUOTE=Martin Sable]
For me, trading in Fahrenheit for Celsius would feel like exchanging my HDTV screen for a lower resolution model. I’d get by just fine, but my question would be, why bother?
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I really don´t understand this argument, Celsius is a lower resolution model?, you know you can have as much resolution as you like, don´t you?, I mean nobody is going to snatch you away in the middle of night because you dared to wisper “21.4 Celsius” on someone´s ear (the same for Fahrenheit)
[QUOTE=Ale]
I really don´t understand this argument, Celsius is a lower resolution model?, you know you can have as much resolution as you like, don´t you?, I mean nobody is going to snatch you away in the middle of night because you dared to wisper “21.4 Celsius” on someone´s ear (the same for Fahrenheit)
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I would imagine that if you’re resistant to the idea of units in base 10, you might also not like decimal points.
[QUOTE=Valteron]
So how is it that some Canadians, DECADES after Canada converted to Celsius, cannot get their adult minds around a few new benchmarks in a new system?
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Cause there is no need to learn a new measuring system when we had a perfectly good one, some of us were not asked if we wanted to change, it was foisted on us along with a few other items.
But this is a good time to be asking this question , why worry about it. Obviously Metric is not going to go away anytime soon, so why worry about a number of us that still use American standard primarily.
Declan
Why don’t we convert already? I’ll tell you why, because America long ago stopped doing things that didn’t have some kind of immediate benefit. Used to, we sent people to the moon, and did big audacious things. Now we don’t do those things. Politicians are afraid to get rid of the fucking dollar bill for Christ’s sake. Too many people like the dollar bill! They are afraid of negative consequences. Meanwhile our friends in the EU are silently upgrading their infrastructure and making big plans that gasp might be temporarily inconvenient!
We need a freaking government of adults that sometimes make us do things that aren’t popular. People always come around once they see the benefit of such things.
Case in point. You’d probably never convince someone that a roundabout would be useful in our hometown. Eventually some clever guys decided that they’d go ahead and put one in. Sure, people have to be inconvenienced! But now people like it. Now if you had asked the general public about it beforehand then we’d all be fine.
If we went through with a metric conversion, you’d have some grumbling, with eventual acceptance.
At any rate, I lived in Europe for four years and I am fluent in metric for most parts. Weights are far simpler. Once you get an idea of what the appropriate weights for things are. Liters are even easier still. The C and F thing is harder. But you simply learn it. How? You look at a freaking thermometer and sit outside.
The hardest thing I had to do was learn 24 hour clocks. It’s not as easy as it sounds and it takes a while for it to become second nature. I keep all of my clocks like this now so as to avoid AM PM mistakes. I already know how to do it, so I might as well keep it going.
What’s wrong with the English foot? It’s a nice, workable size. About the size of, I don’t know, a foot. It can divide cleanly into two parts, or three, or four, or six. The inch divides cleanly into two, four or eight parts (hell, even 6, if you’re a printer).
Metric units divide into 2 or 5 parts. That’s it. After that, we have to bring out the decimal. And that little bastard has already ruined our libraries.
Plus, I don’t care what frame of reference you’re accustomed to, 30 degrees isn’t hot. 30 isn’t a lot. It’s some. A hundred is a lot. A hundred dollars, a hundred years, a hundred degrees: rich, old and hot. Thirty: poor, young and freezing.
[QUOTE=Mbossa]
Are you sure they’re not using metric cups? Around these part a cup is defined as 250ml and a teaspoon as 5ml. They fit into the metric system just fine, and measuring cups and spoons are normally based around those sizes so it’s quite handy when they appear in recipes.
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No, the description of TV shows is quite right, that they give measurements in both systems. If they gave them in one or the other, they’d alienate a chunk of their (original British) audience.
[QUOTE=eenerms]
I believe they start off with Imperial and also use the metric in the cooking shows I have watched.(BBC Food) They seem no to have a problem with converting between the two.
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Who’s “they”? Most people will follow one or the other, ignoring the bit they don’t understand.
[QUOTE=initech]
What’s wrong with the English foot? It’s a nice, workable size. About the size of, I don’t know, a foot. It can divide cleanly into two parts, or three, or four, or six. The inch divides cleanly into two, four or eight parts (hell, even 6, if you’re a printer).
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The problem comes when you need to work with more than just a single unit - What is one third of two foot four and five eighths? - in a metric system, this measurement would be expressed as a single value, so it’s a simple division operation.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
Why have you tied this to conservatism? Maybe some new political benchmarks are in order.
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There are other flavors of conservatism besides the political.
In my opinion the U.S. is by far the most hidebound and reactionary country, in certain minor aspects of life, in the entire developed world. Look at how they brought in the metric system, abolished the piddling low value bank notes and changed the coinage in virtually every other developed nation. And, for a real coup-de-grace, brought in a whole darn new currency in Europe that umpteen countries had to agree to use.
But in this country if anyone suggests changing over to metric, or abolishing the penny or dollar bill, everyone screams foul and decries the violation of their God given constitutional rights.