• secretlife said on May 07, 2009....

  i used to dread when the kids brought home worksheets from school on conversion to metric-  *shivers*
  it's not easy and they all tell you it's based on 10's so it's easier, but i agree, they're full of shit!!!!
   
  having been the owner of a used toyota when i was in my early 20's, my husband (then boyfriend) had to go out and buy metric tools in order to work on my car.  i well remember the cussing at having to

• uniquely-ironic said on May 07, 2009....

  Do I detect some crabbiness this morning beyond?  Having grown up here in the US I find the metric system baffling.  When in OZ I had to step on a metric scale (for heli ride) and get weighed in kilos.  I have to say that the numbers were pleasing, so much smaller than pounds.  (yes, I did the conversion and it was not great news)  I never was exactly sure how fast we were driving, since the signs and the speed gage were in kilometers and I can't do the conversion in my mind that quickly.  It's very inconvenient.  But then, when people visit the US I would guess they're just as confused as I was.

• Hegemone said on May 07, 2009....

  I do have to agree, that metric BS is confusing and I've not got hardly any use for it.  I hate having to go find an online converter when I need to know what goes where.  For instance, when we got my husband's tranny fixed and they said it took a specific fluid now.  They told us it was supposed to take like 2.7 liters.  All right, they sell it in quarts.  What the hell's a liter to a quart dammit?  So we had to look it up and find out before we could go get the damn fluid.  I've witnessed MANY times a project being worked on, usually with a vehicle, and everything comes to a screeching halt with a few profanities because 'This bull shitting thing is metric!' or 'This bullshitting thing is metric AND standard and I only borrowed one of them!'  Phooey to metric, just give us one line of crap to digest please.

• fragglesrock said on May 07, 2009....

  hey! my NON metric measurements are 91.5 -61 - 91.5 what's wrong with that?
   
  tools? they make metric and non metric? i thought they just made hammer and screwdriver.......
   
  that's all i use, if the screwdriver don't fix it then i grab the hammer

• beyondtheveil said on May 07, 2009....

  secret- You're right, its based on tens which means you'll have a hundred or a thousand of everything. I couldn't tell you the trips I've made for something metric for a vehicle. Oh, and yes, the cussing.
  
  unique- Kilo means a thousand grams, which means everything less than a thousand is measured in a bunch of grams. Try to visualize that. Anything is confusing if you're not used to it, but some systems and methods are better than others, like ours. The constant conversion is the problematic crap I'm talking about.
  
  hege- My projects come to a screeching halt too - all the time. I have a conversion table on my bookmarks, but why don't they give both measurements? Would that be so difficult?
  
  fraggles- Hey, I've seen your picture and those certainly aren't your measurements in our system. Oh, and I know several people that if a screwdriver don't work, they just use a hammer. Its fun to watch.
  

• D6fer said on May 07, 2009....

  beyond.....you say the French brought this upon us????.....I say nuke the bastards!.....I hate the metric system.....I had to learn that shit back in the fifth grade or something like that and then we never used it!

• beyondtheveil said on May 07, 2009....

  d6- I never had to learn it in school. Perhaps they should have taught it to us the way the country is today. No country should have two complete systems to live by, its just absurd (and expensive, and stressful, and mind-bending). 

• moonriver said on May 07, 2009....

  hi beyond.
  in my country of birth, we grew up using both systems (now mostly metric), and were given constant practice in conversions at school.
  
  my mind is metric all the way, especially in long distances, areas, volumes, and lab or precision tools.
  in some measures, though, i'm dual by training (e.g. kg or lbs, feet-inches vs cm, liter vs gallon, fahrenheit vs celsius, hp or kw).
  but i don't feel the extreme shittiness you seem to feel in shifting or converting between the two systems.
  
  even in the small plastic tumblers and labels provided by drug companies to measure doses, the hashes are both in tbsp/tsp (sometimes in oz) and ml. we choose what we're most comfortable with.
  so far, i don't know of anyone personally who died because he used metric doses... ;-)
  
  i don't know if this is a parallel question:
  most people in my country are at least bi-lingual, and many can speak fluently in 3 languages, but we seem to cope well with problems in shifting or converting.
  is it probably a matter of cultural mindset?
  
  

• ann013 said on May 07, 2009....

  do u want branded handbags,watches,jewelry and shoes?

  http://www.btbnt.com

  a good online store

  high quality, reasonable price

  worth to have a look
  

• speaking_up said on May 07, 2009....

  folks, I am shaking my head in awe at your ignorance.
   
  I started to copy to paste a freaky weird statement of the host of this thread...but then I read the next line and wanted to copy and paste that one too.  I held off.  I read the next line, and LOL so much I peed my pants a bit.  By then I was screwed as far as direct quoting the amazing stupidity of the people above in general. 
   
  Then I said to myself, "self, what now?  how can you give evidence to back up your theory that these pople, these chatters, are retarded.  RETARDED! 
   
  I said I would use the people's own words...!
   
  But you can't just copy and paste one bit unless you sroll all the way down, paste, then all the way back up again...copy...all the way down again...paste...
   
  You get my meaning?
   
  There is too much copy.
   
  So let's get back to the point...
   
  Now, what we are talking about is metric...versis IMPERIAL forms of measurement.  OMG I wish I had that stupid quote from above!!!)  Anyway, it is not metric vs. UNITED STATES or us as you put it).  FYI.  *shaking head in awe*
   
  And, metric system of measurement is the ONLY accurate system of measure, and only 1 portion of your continent (the portion you live in) is STILL IMPERIAL!!!  Europe, Asia, Austrailia, FUCKING AFRICA!@!@!  are now in metric easurement mode!!!$$$?????!!!
   
  DO YOU HEAR ME??????!!!???????????
   
  THE IMPERIAL SYSTEM IS BACKWARD, OLD FASHIONED, IGNORANT, AND NOT THE UNIVERSAL STANDARD OF MEASURE!!!!!! 
   
  It's a headache.
   
   
   
   
  this whole scene is a headace.
   

• speaking_up said on May 07, 2009....

  My point was...
   
  Please teach your children to learn metric.  Save our intelligence well-being on this planet!
   
  or we will die.

• speaking_up said on May 08, 2009....

  Canada.  CANADA.  sounds like ------ C.eh.N.eh.D.eh 
   
  IS FUCKING METRIC!

• beyondtheveil said on May 08, 2009....

  moon- I don't know if its cultural, I would imagine its more of being born into a double system and accepting it as normal regardless of what culture. My point is that another system was dumped alongside an existing one and created havoc for many and quite a great unnecessary expense. There was no need whatsoever for creating this  mess for our country. I still claim the US system is more user friendly, the rest is just an opinion rant anyway.
  
  speaking- I'm happy to have been able to entertain you. Most rants both in posts and comments on occasion contain their own level of stupidity. Its a part of being able to rant. I am somewhat curious as to why you used bold letters for 'imperial' when I explained what the imperial system was in the post. It is 'our system' and it is 'us' and it is vastly superior to the despicable metric system on more than one level. And speaking of less than intelligent remarks, how about this : the metric system sucks donkey dicks.
  

• speaking_up said on May 08, 2009....

  beyond, it only sucks because you don't know it.  Once learned, it is easier than imperial.  Like everyone else in here I learned imperial in school first.  When I had to learn metric, I found it easier.

• Voltaire said on May 08, 2009....

  I personally disagree, but that has to do with that I have been raised with the metric system. Over here we find it odd not to use metric really.
  
  Odd world we live in isn't it?
  
  Voltaire
  

• stopmediabias said on May 08, 2009....

  I'm going to chime in and say I 100% agree with Beyond, the metric system completely sucks and D6 hit the nail on the head about those God-damn French :>

   

• beyondtheveil said on May 08, 2009....

  speaking- The whole point really is that we have a perfectly good system and they shoved another down our throat. This causes real problems.
  
  voltaire- I know enough to make a comparison and of course like ours better for the reasons mentioned. But honestly, the one of anything people are raised with is usually the one they prefer. Its human nature.
  
  smb- Yes, yes, and yes.
  

• kruuyai said on May 08, 2009....

  I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one, beyondce.  I loved using metric while I was doing my research in grad school and found it hard to go back to feet and inches.  The problem is not the metric system itself.  It's the conversions.  But if it was proposed back in the sixties (fifty years ago) to change to metric, and they still haven't gotten around to doing it, that's really the problem.  It should have been done fast, like ripping off a band-aid.  Hurts less that way.  Metric is very easy to work with.  Every metric unit of measurement easily converts to other metric units simply by multiplying or dividing by a factor of 10.  But you have to multiply inches by 12 to get feet, and feet by 3 to get yards or by 5280 to get miles.   There are 16 ounces in a pound and 2000 pounds in a ton.  There are 8 ounces in a cup and 2 cups in a pint, and two pints in a quart (I think) and four quarts in a gallon.  And what about bushels?  What is the common thread in all these numbers?  The common thread is that they're illogical.  Using the Imperial system, you constantly have to do conversions.  With the metric it's automatic, and if they had just axed the Imperial system with one swift blow, there would never be a need to convert between metric and Imperial.  I rest my case.  :)

• moonriver said on May 08, 2009....

  kruu, i agree with you 95%.
  especially about the problem of conversions and the band-aid metaphor.
  the 5% disagreement is in concluding that the imperial measures are illogical.
  
  yes, the imperial system was the result of a long, often-random process of development of different measures, which had their own internal logic in the hoary past, like the mish-mash street pattern of an old medieval town that followed local terrain instead of the standard roman colonial city grid.
  
  as a universally acceptable precision tool of scientific measurement, the imperial system is doomed.
  but, again, like the quaint medieval street pattern that modern city planners decided to preserve for historical, cultural, sentimental and other reasons...
  using pounds, gallons, yards, miles, etc. will continue to have their special uses where precise conversion is not a requirement.
  
  
  

• superbozo said on May 08, 2009....

  Ok the reason that the US has the imperial system is because of someone you have all heard of Thomas Jefferson. He proposed a system of coinage weights and measurements based on the English Imperial System. Why because the metric system didn't exsist yet. Read a bit about it here.
   
  The imperial system seems to date back to prehistory. Some would say only to Anglo saxson times (here) 
   
  I prefer the prehistory option offered by Christopher Knight in his book Civilization One. Where he takes the early work by Alexander Thom and his theory of the Megalithic Yard and shows how it can be translated to pints and pounds.
   
  As you look through this information you'll see that people have been arguing over these 2 systems for quite a long time.

• D6fer said on May 08, 2009....

  No country should have two complete systems to live by, its just absurd (and expensive, and stressful, and mind-bending).
  
  Beyond....are we talking about the metric system? or english as the official language?
  

• beyondtheveil said on May 09, 2009....

  kruubaby!,so good to see you and you were missed (but you knew that)-
  I do understand your comment and metric could be better in certain applications but in my opinion not in everyday life which is 99.9% of the average American's usage. In the post when I mentioned 'user friendly, and in the next comment mrmoon said something I didn't expand upon. The imperial system from my knowledge came largely from the human body. The step of a Roman soldier, the thumb, the distance from fingertip to the elbow, all the the origins associated with usable features of a person.
  
  The metric was extrapolated from the base ten mathematics and doesn't take usability into consideration. Being more logical does not mean easier usage. But, regardless of that, they created a big mess that is confusing and costly in many ways to citizens. The fact imperial is illogical to you doesn't remove its easier visualization and common usability properties.
  
  moon- Thanks for bringing up the origin aspect, something I neglected to do, but I'm confused about something. Why can't imperial be precise? I was with the understanding all measurements had been precisely established. Why can't it be used with science? Does that mean without the base ten system we couldn't have precise science, or because everybody else uses metric?  
  
  super- There's so much to learn, its all so interesting. I'm going to check out your links today. Thanks.
  
  d6- Hey, I'm getting lost.  I don't know.
  

• speaking_up said on May 09, 2009....

  I like metric because I only weigh 62 Kg.  With imperial I weigh about 2.2 times that in pounds (I think).  I have no idea how many stones that makes me (English Imperial).  Sigh, I hate math and cannot stand converting back and forth from metric to imperial or imperial to metric, but I do agree unless the universe goes 100% metric or 100% imperial, the system sucks for us math challenged peoples.
   
  I always have to convert the time turkey stays in the oven because the oven and recipe are imperial but the meat is purchased in metric (where I live).  ie I have a .546 kg roast beef, but the recipe says cook for 15 mintues a pound @ 350 f.  Come on!
   
  Because I travel often, I have to convert how fast I can drive (I can drive 80 km in most countries, or 50 mph in US). 
   
  I still use the foot and inch long measurements because it is so widely used.
   
  We must pick one or other systems: unless we stop importing or exporting anything, we need to make sure our system lines up with the rest of the world.

• moonriver said on May 09, 2009....

  hi mrbeyond.
  yes, the imperial system can be very precise, but only on its own terms.
  what science needs (and has evolved, in the metric-based SI system) is a tightly integrated system of measures that scales well and across the board from the nano to the tera magnitudes and beyond.
  
  example 1:
  just imagine how you'd represent 10 angstroms in the imperial system: it would be 3.9730 x 10^-9 inches.
  you don't have an equivalent unit of the same magnitude.
  in the metric system, it's simply 1 nanometer, which is an exact unit of the meter.
  guess which of the two systems will be more helpful to nano-tech scientists and engineers.
  
  example 2:
  most measures of electrical properties (starting with the ampere) are metric.
  there are no widely-used and integrated imperial equivalents.
  
  i could cite more examples.
  
  the more important advantage in the metric (or rather, in the metric-based SI) system is not that it's in base-10 -- after all, much digital tech is in base-2, not base-10 -- but that it is a tightly integrated and highly scalable system that's ultimately grounded on just a few universal physical constants.
  it continues to grow together with scientific advances, especially since it's tied up to ISO.
  
  in contrast, the imperial system has become fossilized into what it already was in the early 20th century.
  it doesn't even have a common counting base, which makes even conversion between values within the imperial system a monumental headache.
  that's why i said the imperial system is doomed... in this sense.
  
  

• javadewd said on May 09, 2009....

  Nuke France!!! Uh, what did they do again? I just like that idea...
  
  The "decimeter" is the closest measurement to a foot of sorts...
  
  10cm = 1dm
  1ft = 3.048dm
  
  It is also hard to envision women with square breasts measured by sugar cubes! And damnit I hate that stupid Burger King commercial with the square butts!!!
  And rainbows! I hate fucking rainbows!!!
  

• beyondtheveil said on May 09, 2009....

  speaking- I'm sure glad I can still buy things in ounces and pounds. Luckily, I don't do much conversion in cooking. By the way, I don't like kilograms either. A kilo has too many grams, I can't visualize that very well.
  
  moon- I read where legislation requiring the federal government to go metric was defeated in 1902 by one vote. There is no push in the US to go metric, so guess the congress just doesn't want the battle and the anger it would cause. I'm beginning to change my attitude about having to put up with two systems because the alternative is to go total metric and that would change my feeling about life itself.
  
  For instance, water wouldn't boil at a hot temperature, just 100 degrees. Water would freeze at zero. It would be hot outside at 38. I'd be 186 centimeters tall. The distance to my home town would almost double to about 275 kilometers. I would weigh about 90,000 grams.
  
  There would be a new disease called metric transition.
  
  java- You could say that the reasonable reason we are in this position is due to France.
  

• Voltaire said on May 10, 2009....

  Beyond,
  Yes, I can say the very same thing you did in your post about the imperial system.
  Your arguments can go both ways, not very favourable is it?
  I can however admit not to have read all the comments, so maybe I missed a good argument.
  
  As for the Kg, remember "kilo" means thousand, so 1 kilogram is 1000 grams.
  Pretty logic to me, but as said I think metric is more user freindly etc, as I was raised with it. Every one to his own I guess.
  
  Almost like Carbon dioxide, CO2 ("di" means 2)
  
  

• beyondtheveil said on May 10, 2009....

  voltaire- I don't know if its what metric has so much as what it doesn't have. I've become very close to many imperial measurements and two of my favorites are inches and feet. I've built things all my life up to and including houses with those two guys alone.
  
  Logic and multiples of ten don't mean anything to me, its how they can be used. It seems to me metric has a lot of large and difficult to use numbers, grams being one and centimeters is another.
  

• speaking_up said on May 10, 2009....

  beyond, and you haven't even touched on the metric measurements...in addition to grams or centimeters (cent = 100s), there are mililitres (mm), cmg, egad, don't remember them all but mm is very popularly used to measure, especially in the medical community.

• Voltaire said on May 11, 2009....

  Beyond,
  I understand, if you have nothing to relate to it is hard indeed. Same goes the other way around, I think inches are strange and odd; pretty hard to use really.
  

• kruuyai said on May 11, 2009....

  moon:  Those old medieval towns are fun to wander in and get lost if you're a tourist and have all the time in the world, but take my word for it, if you have to be somewhere at a certain time, and you don't have a map, you get a new appreciation for the grid system (which, by the way, the Americans have perfected). 
  
  beyondce:  As far as using the length of a human foot or the distance from the tip of your nose to the tip of your finger... whose body are we to use for those measurements.  They'll do for a pinch to get a rough estimate, but for anything where precision is needed, you still need a measuring stick.  And if you're doing scientific calculations, yes imperial can be as precise as metric, but converting within imperial is a pain in the ass, because it has too many different bases.
  

• beyondtheveil said on May 11, 2009....

  kruugirl- Speaking of a pain in the ass, you aren't keeping me up to date. Are you still in Turkey? Weren't you going on another trip to Italy?
  

• kruuyai said on May 11, 2009....

  beyondce:  Yes, yes, and yes!  I just got back to Turkey a week ago.  And I'm already planning my next trip to Portugal in June.  (actually, on the last trip, I was in Italy, doing the Mystery School at Damanhur, then in northern Spain, volunteering at a donkey sanctuary, and then in Portugal, taking the Horse Course at the Tamera community.. yep, I learned to ride a horse without a saddle, without a bit, and blindfolded! (me.. not the horse).  Sorry I couldn't keep you up to date... there was no internet out there on the range... :)
  

• beyondtheveil said on May 11, 2009....

  kruu-  Home, home on the range....I can't hardly believe you sometimes. Sounds like the typical kruugirl life to me.
  
  A donkey sanctuary? You come up with more things I've never heard of.
  

• kruuyai said on May 11, 2009....

  beyond:  And there's so much more to come.  ;-)

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