> > But as for the rest of the metric system...
>>kilograms, liters, the Celcius scale, and
>>measurements of force in Newtons and Pascals...
>>they make SO much more sense than the old
>>Imperial measures that it's nothing sort of
>>idiotic to retain them. And "forcing SI down
>>people's throats" -- i.e., teaching our children
>>to know metric and love it -- is basically the
>>only way we'll get metric permanently into the
>>North American lifestyle diet.
>
> Why? I personally despise the Imperial units of
>force, energy, and power, but these are not used
>outside of technical fields. When I'm doing
>physics calculations, I use meters, newtons,
>joules, and so forth. Outside of physical
>sciences, I use Imperial units, because they're
>better all around. There's no sense throwing the
>baby out with the bathwater.

Why do you say they're better all around? Because they're "based off things in real life?" Try this some time. Put your foot on a foot-long ruler and find out exactly how long *your* foot is. I have pretty darn big feet, and my foot isn't even a foot long. A 'foot' is a lot bigger than most people's feet are. Someone once told me that an ounce of water was "about a sip". Huh? How much is a sip?? Anybody who's seen me drink knows I'm more of a guzzler anyway--where's the unit of measurement based on the Dave-guzzle? A cup of water is about how much you can hold in your cupped hand--bull. Ever tried holding a measuring cup's worth of water in your hand? Whoever designed this measurement must have had a pretty darn big hand. (Maybe the measurement is based on both hands cupped together--that'd be closer. But still, I have pretty big hands, and my sister has much smaller hands--who's hands do we use?)

I was at the DMV last week getting my Colorado license, and this hispanic girl next to me was having problems figuring out how tall she was. She knew exactly how many meters/centimeters tall she was, but had no idea how that equated to feet/inches (I guessed in my head that she was 5'2", and when she and the teller finally got it figured out, she was 5'3" -- familiarity strikes again ;-) Same thing with her weight. She knew what it was in kilograms, but had no clue how that equated to pounds.

I guess I sort of agree with both sides of the argument. It's silly to say that it's "better" to measure your weight in kilos rather than pounds. Either one is just fine for daily use, provided you don't have to convert from one system to the other (if I had to haul someone out of a pit with a rope I knew could hold 200 pounds, but the person at the bottom of the pit only knew his weight was 150 kg, I'd have to sit down with a pencil and paper to figure out if the rope could hold him. Tough luck for that guy if there are snapping turtles in that pit with him.) If you're doing anything where you have to do a lot of conversion within units, like from inches to feet to miles or centimeters to meters to kilometers, I don't think anyone would argue that the metric system is way easier to use.

But it all really comes down to familiarity. I can comfortably judge distance in feet, but not so comfortably in meters. If I had been brought up thinking in meters, I'd think in meters. I think forced metrification is a bad idea--only because I generally think forced *anything* is a bad idea.

However, I do think we should adopt the metric system. Generally, 'because everyone else is doing it' is not a good reason to do anything, but in this case, I think it is. As others have pointed out, the only reason the US can keep it's Imperial measurements is because it has the economic clout to dictate to other nations what they'll accept. We recently lost a space probe because someone somewhere did an Imperial to Metric conversion wrong. That should never have happened. The entire thing should have been built on one system or another, not a mish-mash of the two. The Metric system has long been the system of choice for scientific and technical problems, what's so wrong with bringing that into our everyday lives? How much harder would it really be to start buying milk or gas by the liter instead of the gallon? (Unless, of course, the price for one liter of gas was the same as the price for one gallon of gas--and I can see some stations trying to get away with that, too ;-) How long would it really take to get used to seeing "110 KPH" on speed limit signs, or thinking that you have about 16 kilometers left in your journey rather than 10 miles? Especially if your speedometer and odometer measured kilometers rather than miles? I'm not saying I'm going to be the first to volunteer, but if the government *did* decide to suddenly try to metrify, I wouldn't get all bent out of shape about it.

And this whole "taking away my Heritage and my Culture" argument is so bogus. Cultures change. It's *right* that they change. It's *good* that they change. It's *neccesary* that they change. Not all culture changes *are* good, but in general, change is a good thing. Heritage is something you remember and cherish, not something you cling to stubbornly out of single-minded determination to avoid change. About half of my ancestors were Scottish Highlanders, that doesn't mean I carry a Claymore and wear a kilt to work every day. And just because my early English ancestors used the Imperial system of measurement doesn't mean I have to stick with it forever. Change is not a dirty word.

-- Dave