> "...Today, the use and importance of standardized measurement is vastly greater than at the dawn of the industrial age. Geodetic, topographic, climatologic, political, and road maps of the entire earth have been meticulously calculated with customary units. Surveys are the conceptual infrastructure for the layout of streets, highways, railroads, and parks; for the engineering of bridges, tunnels, canals, and dams; for the installation of pipelines, water mains, power grids, and cable networks; and for the positions of navigational beacons and the orbits of satellites.
>
> "Customary units, in blueprints and hardware, are built into our homes, ships, skyscrapers, churches, monuments, and historical landmarks. The construction and operation of nuclear power plants, airports and aircraft, military equipment, and the International Space Station, to name a few, are predominantly based on customary specifications. Our system is communicated through countless labels, cookbooks, manuals, textbooks, schematics, menus, and traffic signs. Preserved in our literature, songs, and movies, thriving in the daily conversations and habits of a quarter-billion U.S. professionals, consumers, and students, customary measure serves the diverse needs of everyone from carpenters to chefs, children to rocket scientists.
>
> "With such an enormous investment in physical and human capital, there ought to be a convincing reason to justify our suffering the stupendous costs, confusions, and hazards of drastically altering our measurement system."

:-(

[Gratuitous emoticon face which, when replied to, will be given angry-eyebrows]

So I think if our civilization is nearly driven to the brink of extinction from a worldwide disaster or suchlike, we should start over and do it the right way, with metric measurements.

Because disregarding the fact that we're stuck with all of these units in our infrastructure and culture, metric measurements are more sensible to use.

Though probably not a "convincing" reason and certainly impractical, the reason to switch is based on principle.

--grem "fiXX0red the apparent temperature-conversion-like formula in the subject line"linn