One of my other groups got off on a metric tangent. This is from a poster who used to live in San Francisco but now lives in Australia. It seems like his USA background still affects his opinion.
Carleton ------------------------------------------------- Australia has switched to the metric system, Herman. It has some advantages but constant meddling by the French and the others make the metric system one that frequently changes. Many of the measurements are based on engineering principles and some on obviously logical premises like the centigrade degrees where 0 is the temperature at which water freezes at sea level and 100 the temperature at which water boils. That was logical and a semi-educated person could immediately twig to the logic by the name centigrade-100 gradients, but they fiddled that to and changed the name to Celsius which means nothing to me. Another slight problem there is the coarseness of the metric degree. So instead of round numbers (as is usual with the finer Fahrenheit system) we need to put decimal places in daily weather reports (for instance). With other metric measurements, they have introduced hard to pronounce and spell wog names which I simply can't be bothered with such as Pascal as in kPa. And why should we be bothered with that kind of thing? They could have picked easy to remember or self explanatory names (like centigrade) but they chose to immortalize long dead people. Then, still fiddling, they have changed the unit of measurement for torque and others to suit engineers but which are unintelligible to the reasonable man. They are more suited to engineering than everyday use. I quite frankly can't be bothered referring back to formal sources but the hubris, vanity and even narcissism displayed by those mostly European people constantly fiddling with the metric system is mad useless, just what I expect from them. And I guess you know about one metric system of measurement based on the distance from the north pole to the equator via Paris. Please spare me that silliness. The US has simplified the old Imperial measurement system enough so that it works well. Simply not a problem, domestically and an extraordinarily high (by international standards) percentage of US production is consumed domestically. And the continent that gave us the metric system is sinking of its own intellectual vanity and weight. They can't even reproduce. They are in a "death spiral" to use a common phrase and soon won't matter. The United States and China now power the world economy with Europe and Japan contributing little (except hot air and moral posturing on the part of Europe). And given China's massive internal problems, their vital contribution to the world economy could be seen as volatile. It's quite possible that the US will eventually go metric, but there seems to be little movement in that direction to me, an occasional visitor to the US. Metric road signs and speedometer markings have all but disappeared in recent years and no one I spoke to in the US recently used or even knew metric measurements unless they were Mexican, Canadian or other foreigners. And even though we have gone metric here in Oz we still stay 20', 40', 48' and 53' for shipping container lengths, and still measure truck engine outputs in horsepower and lb ft of torque, and US thread, bolt, and nut sizes are still in wide use. And my new rainwater tanks are in gallons (with litres in the fine print). The Anglosphere still seems quite comfortable with imperial measurements even those countries that have formally gone metric.
