Metric

[gfish]

Talking to my mom tonight, she mentioned that I was arguing for the metric system when I was ten. Which would be super cool if I was particularly good at thinking in it by now, but I'm not. I have mass, length and temperature down pretty well. I'm much weaker on volume, speed and pressure. Curse the US Congress for not mandating a switch in the 70s like they promised! One of the few powers explicitly granted to them by the Consitution, and all they've managed to do is a toothless 1988 proclamation that metric is the "preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce". Bah.

Comments

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

To quote a Dead Kennedys album title, give me convenience or give me death. You could say the same thing about the existence of $1 bills. Only in America, it seems, are legislators so chicken shit.

"Dark and metric is my town..."

[keystricken.livejournal.com]

Here's a belated welcome to my friendslist, gfish. We seem to have no one in common, so I'm not sure how you found me. With your evident interest in robots, you may find this post (http://keystricken.livejournal.com/59376.html) interesting, and here is my fledgling website (http://helper-robots.com/) of alternative purposes for robots.

Re: "Dark and metric is my town..."

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I think it was through an interest search for 'xkcd', actually. (Coincidentally, I've also met boojum a couple of times.) Anyway, hi!

[socialistboy.livejournal.com]

metric system is killing me. i have to think a lot to convert everything here. but i know its good for me. road speed was an interesting one to get used to, because i know that 120k/h is nothing, but seeing 120 on the speedo was odd.

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

*sighs* When I was a wee girl in elementary school, my teachers were all convinced that the country was going to be converted entirely to metric by the time I graduated from high school ... so that's what they taught me. I loved it, because it made so much sense.

Learning to cook was a stone bitch, let me tell you--pretty much every recipe available used the English system, which I barely knew!

[callmem.livejournal.com]

I thought I was pretty decent on metric temperatures, working in a lab and all, 'till I was telling a coworker from Germany an anecdote where the punchline is someone was running a fever- "and it turned out his temperature was 103!" She looked at me blankly, said "what's that in metric?" and I couldn't be any more specific than "uh... above 37 but below brain damage"

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I read the other night -- and probably already knew but had forgotten -- that A: in 1866 Congress declared the metric system a legal system for commerce (the only system they've so certified) and in 1893, because the 'standard yard' was noticeably changing size, we officially stopped using the Imperial system as a standard, and rebased Imperial on metric definitions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendenhall_Order). So we *are* using metric, just with goofy awkward units.

I'm not sure whether that makes it better or worse.

[creeves78.livejournal.com]

i think it makes it worse...

ummmmm...

[creeves78.livejournal.com]

as a recipient of an engineering degree, i am woefully ashamed of my inability to use the metric system. :(

maybe that is part of my lack of an engineering job - or maybe i'm just not patient enough...alot of the "new grad" jobs are for may or june...but an interview would be nice...

Re: ummmmm...

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'd love to work in metric, but no civil engineering is done that way in the US, to speak of.

Other than that really horrible idea that WSDOT had for a while where every freeway job had to be done in metric . . . wait for it . . . and english units. Literally, two sets of plans. Because the contractors wouldn't build off metric plan sets. And all the nominals were nominal in both systems, so they were not actual sizes in either. Etc.

It'd take me a while to adjust to metric at this point, but mostly it'd be a matter of getting all the references in the correct units.

But, hell, it has to be better than what I do now; working with architects, I have to translate between feet(decimal feet, engineering standard) and the architectural standard unit of, an inch. Not only do they label everything in feet and inches, but they draw it all in inches. All our cad work is 12x scale difference. I do site development and support architects, so I have to insert architectural drawings, etc., all the time. Big PITA to scale everything.

-B.

[tnarg42.livejournal.com]

I had a very devious, prankster high school teacher who convinced all of the office secretaries that we were switching to "Metric time"... They were most upset by the prospect and even wrote our congress-critters to complain... :-)

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I actually have a big 24 hour analog clock with the face divided into 'decimal minutes', 100 gradations to the minute. The workings are normal, however, so the sweep hand still ticks in seconds. I don't know why it was offered, but it seemed harmlessly amusing when I was looking for big 24 hour analog clocks.

[samildanach.livejournal.com]

You probably know this, but some areas of the French Republic ran on decimal time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar) after the revolution.

Each solar day was divided into ten hours, each hour into 100 minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds. A decimal minute was 86.4 conventional seconds, so a decimal second was .864 conventional seconds.