I agree that it would be ridiculous to prohibit people from using the old system. Nor would it make sense to tell people they can not trade in SAE goods. I do, on the other hand, want to see education and public signage 100% metric. Of course, continuing to include the older units of measure on road signs in smaller type during the transition period. Get people used to using both units, and the resistance to using metric will fade with time. Hm, that reminds me, I should go out for a liter of good German beer this evening.
The main reason Metric units suck is that they don't scale too well to humans, but the worst problem is the Base 10 basis. Because while it's really nice for the math (If you're mathematically illiterate enough that you can't cope with SAE units) it's rotten for engineering.
Consider, one of the most common things you do is to find the center of something, or divide it in quarters. With metric units, you are soon racking up more decimal places than you could possibly mark out on a ruler. SAE units are most often used with fractions, powers of two, which are just natural for common physical engineering uses.
And in the real world, the size of an item doesn't vary depending on what units you measure it in. An overfixation on Metrification as some kind of cure-all fixes nothing.The distance between Seattle and Portland doesn't change if you measure it in Km, so why is it better?
My Can of Coke is 355 mL, but that's still 12 oz to me. Although in Canada, you can count on 22 ml less. Their cans are 333 mL.
Let me remind you of Proverbs 20:10: "Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD."
Falwell and Robertson thought that 9/11 and Katrina were God's punishment for permitting abortion and gay marriage. It is just as probable that they were God's punishment for our stubborn refusal to adopt the metric system and our persistence in maintaining "divers weights and divers measures."
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Consider, one of the most common things you do is to find the center of something, or divide it in quarters. With metric units, you are soon racking up more decimal places than you could possibly mark out on a ruler. SAE units are most often used with fractions, powers of two, which are just natural for common physical engineering uses.
And in the real world, the size of an item doesn't vary depending on what units you measure it in. An overfixation on Metrification as some kind of cure-all fixes nothing.The distance between Seattle and Portland doesn't change if you measure it in Km, so why is it better?
My Can of Coke is 355 mL, but that's still 12 oz to me. Although in Canada, you can count on 22 ml less. Their cans are 333 mL.
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Falwell and Robertson thought that 9/11 and Katrina were God's punishment for permitting abortion and gay marriage. It is just as probable that they were God's punishment for our stubborn refusal to adopt the metric system and our persistence in maintaining "divers weights and divers measures."
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