Metric and how not to use it.

jtg452 wrote:The metric system just never really caught on in the US in everyday life. The effort in the '70's to start a gradual change over was a complete bust. All it succeeded in doing was confusing small children. Sort of like the 'new math' craze of the same period did.

About the only piece of the metric system that can be found regularly in everyday life in the US is the 2 liter soft drink bottle. Inches, ounces, feet, yards, pounds and miles are the measurements of everyday life. The only impact is that most Americans have figured out a way to translate from the metric system when necessary.

It never caught on in America because the great American pastime is Baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet.

Nobody wants to see Hank Aaron's record shattering homerun #715 hit meters out into the outfield. We want to see him tear the fucking cover off the ball 700 yards out the park!

Don't get me wrong. I love the metric system. Kilometers are so much easier to handle than miles. Millions of kilometers is a million times easier to handle than a million miles. The units are made for metric. Everything made in metric always fits better. A brand new mansion has a door that doesn't fit properly thus doesn't close properly when first built. And has to be "readjusted." That doesn't happen in the metric system.

But like I said. Metric is worthless in a fight when you need to put a foot up someone's ass. That's why the American military always wins! We don't fight in metric. There's a big boot on the end of that big foot.

cthia wrote:But like I said. Metric is worthless in a fight when you need to put a foot up someone's ass. That's why the American military always wins! We don't fight in metric. There's a big boot on the end of that big foot.

cthia, if your fight is being decided by the direct application of footware (as opposed to it happening during the afters party), you are doing it wrong. That close-in stuff is dangerous.

Kael Posavatz wrote:

cthia wrote:But like I said. Metric is worthless in a fight when you need to put a foot up someone's ass. That's why the American military always wins! We don't fight in metric. There's a big boot on the end of that big foot.

cthia, if your fight is being decided by the direct application of footware (as opposed to it happening during the afters party), you are doing it wrong. That close-in stuff is dangerous.

That's what I used to think too. Until I visited an American factory supplying arms to the war effort.

They measured in units specific to the US Navy - they used a figurative foot.

The American war machine always uses misdirection.

You should try being here in the UK, we have a right mishmash.

We buy petrol(gas) in litres, but drive in miles, we buy draft beer in pints, but in bottles it's in ml(millilitres) sometimes it's 500ml, others it's a direct conversion from pints more or less(440ml is common). The EU is Brussels tried for years to make us buy draft beer in litres, but gave up in the end!!!

We buy sheets of timber in millmetres, say 2400mm x 1200mm, but its still the same old 8ft x 4ft sheets.

Me ... well having lived through the conversion period I'm pretty well bi-lingual in all that stuff.

Until I come to the US where your US gallon is 3.8litres and our imperial gallon is 4.45litres.

Oh well we cannot all be the same.

John

I don't know how UKrazies measure beer, but don't you think you put just a wee bit too much in that mug? Ask for a glass of beer in Germany and you get essentially a keg with a handle on it.

German women have guns on their biceps from lifting a keg err stein to their lips. Repeatedly. You can cry a tear in your beer for a year, at that rate.

You're pretty big on aged beer, but it ages in my glass.

The United States made the mistake of allowing the National Teachers Association write the curriculum to teach the metric system. Since the goal was to teach metric in elementary school, they appointed a committee of Elementary School teachers to develop the curriculum who had zero knowledge or experience to enlighten them. They didn't understand that while the English system gradually evolved in a primitive era and was painfully adapted to accommodate science and technology, the metric system was designed to enable scientific and technical calculations.

As a result, rather than focus on converting centimeters to millimeters or meters of kilometers, they focused on conversions to inches, feet and miles. I actually got sent to the principal s office for pointing out the absurdity.

American s would embrace metric if they were taught how to use metric in isolation rather than in context of the English system.

Since all societies in the Honorverse descended from colonists who used starships, no one even remembers that a foot is anything other than an appendage or that a yard is anything but a vegetated area adjacent to a residence. Mile? What the heck is a mile?

jtg452 wrote:The metric system just never really caught on in the US in everyday life. The effort in the '70's to start a gradual change over was a complete bust. All it succeeded in doing was confusing small children. Sort of like the 'new math' craze of the same period did.

About the only piece of the metric system that can be found regularly in everyday life in the US is the 2 liter soft drink bottle. Inches, ounces, feet, yards, pounds and miles are the measurements of everyday life. The only impact is that most Americans have figured out a way to translate from the metric system when necessary.

There are a few other places it's snuck into regular peoples' lives around the edges.
Car engine displacements are almost always given in liters now rather than cubic inches.

Home power usage is reported in kilowatt hours kWh - but that's partly because practical use of electricity is new enough that there weren't widely adpoted pre-SI units to displace.

Similar situation for sound volume with decibels (though you could report it in PSI).

If you looking for a bright LED light you're now looking at its number of lumens not its candlepower

Back when people took film photographs it was usually 35mm film

A popular pistol caliber is 9mm

But yeah, it's all peripheral stuff and some of those it's just a name that happens to describe a physical characteristic; 2 liter, 9mm, 35mm, etc. People aren't measuring it or even usually thinking about the metric system when the use the name.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Since all societies in the Honorverse descended from colonists who used starships, no one even remembers that a foot is anything other than an appendage or that a yard is anything but a vegetated area adjacent to a residence. Mile? What the heck is a mile?

Except Grayson. They play baseball. You can't mark a baseball diamond in metric. The pitcher's mound is exactly 18 feet away. 18.39 meters. In a friendly game of pickup, how do you walk off 18.39 meters?

The bases are ninety feet apart, forming a diamond. Can't form a diamond in metric, it will have flaws. LOL


It's over 450 feet to the Harrington Treecats' centerfield wall.