Well, it’s probably less the French per se and more of it being un-American. And we aren’t quite alone, there are still folks in Britain opposed to the suspiciously continental policy of metrication, complete with their own (not hugely effective) advocacy group.
I dunno. The phrase seems like it’s a doorway into a very strange, and in the end, not very satisfying worldview.
Of course when you see the top temperature on the TV, its for a particular spot in your city at a peak moment, and probably give or take a degree or two.
It’s only a rough indicatation anyway.
And how that temperature feels depends on humidity and wind and what you’ve eaten and your general mood.
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I don’t buy the argument that if the U.S. was to finally go metric that we would see the collapse of society. Imperial measurements could stay for things like sewing, lumber, and so on where they are traditionally used. Everything else can go to a sensible measuring system.
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Mobile phones.
Im sure a few people here have succumbed to Smartphone nerditry.
How are they described?
It’s a 5" screen, and the phone is 8.5mm thick. Different measurement systems to describe the one device. Why? Because 5" is easer to say and understand… you might not know what 5" is but you know its “Fairly big but not gigantic”. And millimeters makes sense for a thin measurement of the thickness of a phone.
Units appropriate for the situation.
Of course, if you are an engineer designing the phone, its all millimeters. But that has different needs.
That’s exactly what we’re doing, we just have different ideas of which systems are sensible for which activities
I’d find it more comprehensible in centimetres. But whatever.
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Expensive marijuana is sold by the gram, but dirt weed is Pounds, Kewpies, OhZee, hafs, quarters, eights. Ahhh, the weed of the poor disenfranchised and/or youth, the smell of gasoline really takes me back there
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One way and another, it has to be cultural. However you feel about metric vs imperial measurements, there’s no difference applicable only to the United States. Yes, changing to metric would create difficulties, but they’re the same difficulties that ever other nation had to face, no more and no less.
If we were to list America’s distinctive cultural impulses, we surely wouldn’t list a drive toward internationalism among them. You only need to be a non-American internet user to understand that. It would astound me if the US was to do something as complex as adopting the metric system merely to make life easier for people outside America, or even to make life easier for people within America who trade with foreigners, simply because the international world is a highly abstracted part of most Americans’ experience, and it seldom warrants a great deal of consideration in their day-to-day lives. People in Europe are, through a combination of history and geography, much more confronted with the reality of the fact that theirs is one nation among many, and small countries like Australia and Canada are only too painfully aware about the economic and security risks inherent in an insular stance. America is big and rich and its people have historically enjoyed the luxury of not having to think very much about events beyond their borders. Their recalcitrance (if that’s what it is) on the metric system is unsurprising.
It’s also largely benign, when compared with some of the other ways in which Americans assert their uniqueness.
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If your smartphone says “Designed by Apple in California”, it may have been engineered to US specifications.
one mil is one thousandth of an inch
Or, Apple may have been sane.
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I’m throwing this in from a bit of Googling. I don’t know how legit it is. Whether it is directly from Apple, or something that is more from Foxconn… but if it is legit, it’s in Millimetres. Which would make sense. Apple may design it, but Chinese folks are going to physically make it.
But then… lots of fractions of mm shown. As if it might have once been Imperial, but converted.
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Metric is used a lot more than you see on liquor store shelves. U.S. automakers have been on metric since like 1989. Every bolt in your car is Msomething instead of 33/64".
Tire sizes are still a really fun look into the mind of a fucking lunatic though.
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When Boing Boing is going metric ? At last give the two units, it’s hard for us too, poor metric users, to have to convert everything. Internet is an international place and most of the world already use the SI, sooooo… please ?
There are two types of countries in the world: countries in which there is no movement of people who believe that the U.S has not been to the moon and the U.S.
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I remember a panel in Cracked magazine showed a protest, where someone was holding up a sign “Down With Metrics – We Don’t Need No Foreign Ruler.” (circa 1981)
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It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
Besides, I’m never wrong.
I once thought that I was wrong, but I was mistaken.
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Everytime I see a discussion about the metric system, I recommend to read The Metric Maven’s blog.
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Aelfric’s colloquy (written about 1000AD) suggests it’s one man with two oxen in one day.
The Überlingen_mid-air_collision happened close to the boundary of metric (Russian) and imperial (European) airspace. While the transition between altitudes measured in feet and metres is not documented as a causal factor in this incident, I believe it represents a serious ongoing risk, where aircraft cleared in multiples of 100 feet interact with aircraft cleared in multiples of 25 metres.
The Gimli Glider incident has been put down to confusion between metric and imperial units.
