"21 feet by 6 feet"

I thought UK was on the metric system.

"Milestones are important because it means that, no matter how far we've come, we will NEVER convert to the metric system." got me.

I always thought Fahrenheit makes much more sense, on a day to day basis then Centigrade. 100 ~ the hottest day of the year, 0 ~ the coldest, also 100 ~ human body temperature.

But yeah, for everything else the metric system works better.

Who controls the British crown? Who keeps the metric system down?

I can think of several scenarios why our President may decide to delay the individual mandate. One: The employer mandate won't be in effect this year. Some of those dollars will be lost. Two: The sign-ups from the youngest eligible group is suspect. While the program may have been successfully sold to them, the outcome is in doubt. If that group decides for a bit of civil disobedience - trouble. Three: There is this real possibility: http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottgottlieb/2013/10/04/president-obama-will-delay-his-health-insurance-mandate/

While I wish this were running more smoothly, there are other reasons outside of the Tea Party, to think that more trouble is coming.

I remember when the government tried to get this country to go on the metric system. I see something similar in play here right now. Hopefully it will get straightened out. It needs to.

EDIT: Reuters had an article on this as well:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/05/us-usa-healthcare-technology-analysis-idUSBRE99407T20131005

As with much of what's wrong with America today, it can all be traced back to Ronald Reagan.

http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/2893/keeps-metric-system-down
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Metric_Board

Who the hell measures volume by weight? Like "30oz" volume of corn syrup is the same weight as the same amount of vegetable oil?

How about using the metric system already? It's just unbelievable that one country refuses to budge and does things in the most complicated manner possible causing lots of confusion. Who the hell measures short distances in fractions when we got nice and neat decimal system that allow for precise and instantly understandable figures? 2.22cm is 2.22cm, no need to figure it out in your head or rely on memorization of large tables. Fast, how much is 7/8"?

65 mph... being used to the metric system, when people say how fast a cheetah runs, they would always say 60-65 mph, and I've only now just realised how fast that actually is. Amazing animals

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The soothing effect of the metric system.

>> ^jbaber:

Why you should learn to love the metric system.


After reading that link, I think he raised a few good points such as nautical miles, and chopping wood but I still don't see that much advantage of imperial over metric. By example:

Fahrenheit degrees are a 0-100 scale of normal temperature: 0° is quite cold, 100° is quite hot.

Celcius 0° is water freezing and 100° is water boiling at 1 atmosphere, isn't that more intuitive than quite cold and quite hot? You can even use water to measure temperature.

Traditional units naturally express an estimation's margin of error.
Because there are units for every scale, my choice of units expresses my confidence in an estimate. Telling you my couch is about 10 ft. 6 in. wide expresses more confidence than saying it is about 10 ft. wide. Because metric units differ by such great amounts, there is often no way to do this. I must say my couch is about 3 meters or 300cm wide. The former implies my margin of error is 1 meter, and the latter that it's 1cm. In reality, I must depend on the roundness of 300 to imply that my margin of error is 10cm.

Err, what about saying it's about 3.3 meters? You can be as vague or precise as you want with metric. How is it intuitive if you can't express the measurement with fraction?

The steps between units are often small and intuitive.... ...A few feet is a yard. A few yards is a rod. A few rods is a chain. 10 chains is a furlong. 8 furlongs is a mile.

What? How is that intuitive? How do you trust measures when you can say a few something is a another thing? How many is a few?

To me, most arguments are about "Imperial is good because I'm familiar with the notions.", which can apply to any deprecated local standard and shouldn't be used as proof of being intuitive.

FYI, I grew up in China that uses another local system which nobody else use. I never liked it even though it mostly uses the power of 10 like the metric system. It's just too arbitrary of a scale to be any use other than understanding what old people is trying to say.

I live in Canada, I grew up with the metric system. For anything that's much smaller or bigger than I can practically hold or lift, it's metric for me. I still use imperial measurements for everything that's near to human scale. Human sized height and weight for example, I think of in inches and pounds.



Except temperature--That Fahrenheit stuff makes no sense to me at all!!

>> ^bmacs27:

I like our system for small measurements. I prefer fractional divisions, especially with the multiple of two in the denominator. It's easier to think about bisecting graduations than it is to divide them by ten when you are talking about small distances. I mean, a tenth of a mm is just stupid. I'd rather a system that has a finer resolution to its units, i.e. half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, etc... It gives me a bit more freedom to pick the best unit given the precision of what I'm working with.
I'd never use it in a scientific context however. I'm mostly talking about workshop stuff.


As primarily a metric user, I'm just the opposite. When faced with adding 5/8 and 17/32, I'd have an easier time using 15.9 and 13.5. For accuracy I always use fractions though. But the best is when I'm working with something designed in metric so I'm adding 16 and 14...

>> ^jbaber:

Why you should learn to love the metric system
Right. You just made my point.

Why you should learn to love the metric system.>> ^bmacs27:

I like our system for small measurements. I prefer fractional divisions, especially with the multiple of two in the denominator. It's easier to think about bisecting graduations than it is to divide them by ten when you are talking about small distances. I mean, a tenth of a mm is just stupid. I'd rather a system that has a finer resolution to its units, i.e. half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, etc... It gives me a bit more freedom to pick the best unit given the precision of what I'm working with.
I'd never use it in a scientific context however. I'm mostly talking about workshop stuff.