Undercurrent

I contend that "is handy" is just a synonym for "was taught to me as a child". To a good fraction of middle-aged physicists, FORTRAN is handy.

This, I absolutely don't get. The freezing and boiling points of water are particularly germane to discussions of weather and cooking. The lowest possible temperature attainable with salt water and human body temperature are damn near completely irrelevant. In fact, situations where the properties of water are irrelevant are more likely to occur in labs than on the street.

Pyrrho

I agree.



I don't think looking for a rational explanation is going to work. Consider again his opening sentence:

Do you seriously expect REASON to be relevant to someone who says things like that?

gcameron

Is a decimeter really a less useful standard of everyday measurement than a foot? (They are on about the same scale, though I guess there are about 3 decimeters to the foot.) Or is it just the pronunciation issue? Ditto with inch/centimeter, mile/kilometer, etc.

I am pretty metric when it comes to volume, I'll say that much. I guess that's because I drank a lot more 2-liter bottles of Coca Cola as a youngster, than 1/2-gallon cartons of milk.

Godless Dave

Here's how Fahrenheit works:

0: really cold, with regard to human comfort

100: really hot, with regard to human comfort

Just makes sense.

And it seems to me that there are a lot of things that are about a foot long. A meter is a good substitute for a yard, and centimeters are a useful size. Realistically, I could live with food products and other "measured" commercial products being packaged in metric measurements. But I think we should keep the mile (as I believe the UK and Australia have done), and redefine a foot as a third of a meter. Fortunately the bolts on my 75 Toyota are mostly metric and my Saturn is completely metric, so I only have to own one set of wrenches. But on principle I am against any kind of government mandate for this. And I refuse to order a "half liter" of Guiness.

A final thought: virtually every pothead in the country can convert grams to fractions of an ounce and back. If they can learn to use both systems just about anyone should be able to.

Jesse

I may be confusing college with high school here, but don't most science classes use the metric system even in the US?

RRoman

Taken from:

The Metric System and Religion

I like the metric system. Not only is it a useful and simple way to classify weights and measures, it's darn fun too! Just thinking about picometers and centigrams and deciliters gets me visibly flushed and aroused. Honestly, can you blame me??? The only other thing in this world that is close to the metric system fun-wise is Catholicism, which incidentally, is always a barrel of laughs (in a good way, mind you).

So I was sitting around in my room the other day, spinning a dreidel and reading Torah, when I had an amazing idea. Why not combine the two most funnest and bestest things in life and come up with this super...um...thing? We'd have Catholicism and the metric system together as one! It could be called something really crazy and creative. Like...the Catholic Metric System. This could be the single greatest thing the world has seen since Immanuel Kant's legendary dissertation on the Categorical Imperative or even since Plato's invention of Socrates. It's really simple, but here are a couple of examples of what could happen.

Meters would become Peters. Instead of saying "I'm running in a 5 Kilometer race," you would say, "I'm running in a 5 KiloPeter race." Isn't that just the awesomest thing ever?


A gram would become a Jesus. A typical exchange could be as follows:
"How much does that weigh?"
"About 10 KiloJesuses."
"Whoa, that's a lot of Jesuses."
"Yeah, man, it's heavy."
"Yeah, it's KiloJesus heavy."


Finally, a liter could become a PopeCardinalBishopliter.
"How much water is in that bucket?"
"Two PopeCardinalBishopLiters."
"Gesundheit."

You see how fun this is??? I could go on and on and on and on and on until eventually we all get so bored and tired of reading this tripe, we all believe that the Church will actually enact these changes. Until then we can only hope. And we can read Torah. There's always time for Torah.

Lobstrosity

And then you encounter Gaussian units and everything goes to hell.

There is nothing inherently special about base ten. I sure we use it only because we have ten fingers.


Now allow me to rant for a moment about what really bugs me: our units of time. What the hell's up with 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day? We're not living in base-12 land, here! When I see 347 minutes, I want to be able to instantly convert that into 3 hours and 47 minutes, not have to divide by sixty and extract the remainder. When I see 7.24 hours, I don't want to have to multiply by 60 to get the true number of minutes.

The following is my suggestion for how we can vastly improve our units of time:

If I could restructure our units of time, I would make 20 hours in a day (10 day hours and 10 night hours). I would then further set 100 minutes in an hour and 10 seconds in a minute. Changing our definition of the second is simple. Right now time standards are maintained using atomic clocks. It's very easy to just recalibrate these clocks to hold a different time length as standard. Actually, fuck all these confusing time units. I have a better idea.

Let's just go with our friend the second, defined to be 1/20,000th of a day. Now, the fundamental units of time would be the second, the decasecond (10 seconds), the hectosecond (100 seconds), and the kilosecond (1000 seconds). Just think of how blissfully simple the abbreviations would be: s, ds (well, technically das), hs, and ks! None of this s, min, hr crap.

Conversions:
1 s = 4.32 old seconds = almost same as old seconds, right?
1 ds = 43.2 old seconds = .72 old min = basically an old minute
1 hs = 7.2 old min = a fun new unit!
1 ks = 72 old min = 1.2 old hours

Think of the conversations you could have:
"Hey, I'm getting hungry. When are you getting here so we can grab some lunch?"
"I'll be ready to go in a few decaseconds. I should be there within half-a-kilosecond."

Alternatively, we could just as easily use the hour as our standard time base. Simply define the hour by setting 20 hours in a day. Then we're left with the time units hour, decihour (10^-1 hours), centihour (10^-2 hours), and millihour (10^-3 hours). Think of the elegance!

Ideally, I'd like to see 100 days in a year, but this first requires us to develop the technology to either increase the rate at which we orbit the sun (although this puts us closer to the sun, so, you know, global warming and shit might make this more bad than good) or decrease the Earth's rotational velocity (which would rescale all of the units above).

Should changing the number of days in a year prove impossible, I'd accept as consolation having all months be 28 days (no more of this "crap, how many days are in this month again?"). It would just be so elegant to have all months be composed of an integral number of weeks. It would be an added bonus that each month would be defined by exactly one lunar cycle. This would mean that we would have thirteen months covering 364 days. New Year's Day would not be part of any of the months (much like Washington D.C. isn't part of any state). It would just be a special holiday. Leap years would still have to occur once every four years to account for the fact that there aren't an integral number of earth rotations in one full solar orbit of Earth, but the solution is simple: every four years, the New Year's holiday is comprised of two days of partying. People will appreciate leap years like never before. Hell, it's an extra day...why shouldn't we use it in celebration of laziness?

Doubting Didymus

I can't believe it! Someone else who is pro-metrictime!

I've been pushing metric time for ages, but everyone just laughs. Well look who's lauging now! ME! There will come MORE recruits to this cause, and then more and more, until none of you stinking oldtimers can stand in our way! We WILL change the earths rotation, too, don't you worry about that! We'll use the disastrous chaos caused by the shift to come to prominence in evey major capital, united and strong beyond reckoning!

... until we hit the great schism, those of us who will settle for nothing short of 10 hour days. Whats with this 20 hour crap, lobstrosity? whats the point of turning every thing else metric if you're going to screw that over? Are you still holding on to the memory of 24hour days? Thats the OLD earth, get with the TIME. If we use 10 hour days, the new halfhour will be close enough to the old hour anyway. Think of it! A four hour workday for all! Foam! Splutter!

NialScorva

Why are you guys clinging to an arbitrary standard like the length of the day? It changes and isn't a good reference. Just take the current second and start dealing with decaseconds and kiloseconds. The measure of time called a "day" is rather arbitrary anyway, and this way you don't have to change any atomic clocks.

Doubting Didymus

You think a day is arbitrary? Is a year arbitrary too?

Wait, I guess they are. There should be a universal time not based on any stupid planet. But wait, isn't time relative to speed, or some such? Then a universal time is impossible! My utopia is crumbling before it even began!