metric are some of the most pathetic excuses I've ever seen. Pascal hard to pronounce? Centigrade
changed to Celsius by French meddling? Celsius doesn't mean anything to him, because like Pascal, it is
a name of a dead scientist? And this constant European fiddling that someone's doing with the metric
system--I bet it just changes every few years, in a whimsical way, like fashion, cars, or software, eh?
Geez! The worst part is that luminaries like this guy tend to be the loudest voices that oppose the metric system
in the US, and they're the ones politicians are likely to listen to. His list of complaints is almost as pathetic as
the statemets that the metric system is unpatriotic or sexist.
We live in a wolrd of continuous change. With PC's and then the Internet, the pace of change has probably
increased by an order of magnitude, but people, especially in the US, have adapted easily. Yet a simple, one-time-only
change of the measuring system seems to be beyond reach.
On 3/2/06, Carleton MacDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
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.
