Why does the US not go Metric?

We're fighting the unified one world measuring system obviously! We are keeping the NWO at bay with our unwillingness to convert!

Honestly, I don't have a problem with the way we do things and don't want to bother with converting.

I thought we were metric.

I bought a Mountain Dew last night, was in a one liter bottle.

Bought smokes for my wife, they were 100 millimeters long.

The drug dealer down the street got busted with two kilograms of marijuana.

Yeah, we're metric.

reply to post by Crazy Man Michael


We buy beer in pints because it is just the right amount. Any smaller and you spend too much time at the bar. Any bigger and it goes too flat or warm.

reply to post by tooo many pills


As a Brit I knew that one - 1760 x 3 equals 5280 feet. Now it is obvious why the metric system is easier.

I remember getting a drawing from a us company that had something like 57/67ths inch drawn on it.

I was in grade school when Pres. Carter tried hard to push this through. We were all told to learn metric along side the English system - I was in 1st grade at the time. All of our signage was supposed to change, so that everything would be rendered in both KM and Miles, and a lot of these changes did stick like our FDA mandated food packaging has to offer everything in both ounces and grams or kg. Our speedometers in our cars all have both MPH and KPH. The rules that were put into effect back then still apply in much of our life, but the fact is we were too entrenched and nobody could change our thinking to metric.

Even us kids, who were supposed to learn both and become equally conversant in both systems of measurement were unable to get used to metric. To this day I know exactly what 75 degrees Fahrenheit feels like, but I can't even begin to tell you what 30 degrees Celsius means...

[edit on 6/25/2010 by LifeInDeath]

Originally posted by evilminime
Both systems are used where appropriate.

For example, where height is concerned it's more efficient to use the Engloish system. It's easier to say sixty feet than 1827.5 centimeters.

That works both ways. It is easier to say 18 metres than 59.05512 feet!

reply to post by ghaleon12


So,too stupid to learn somthing new?
In the past year,I have learned...
1.Shoot a gun
2.Can homemade jelly
3.Grow potatoes in a tub
4.Learning to sing,Amazing Grace in cherokee
I don't have to learn the metric system,I just
refuse to

You all have fallen for the hype that the metric system is somehow better. Makes sense, too, right? I have ten fingers, therefore base ten is easier to use......

Ask yourself this: Which number has more whole number divisors? Twelve, or ten?

Ten can ONLY be divided by five or two. Twelve, on the other hand, can be divided by two, three, four, and six. So which one is easier to split up, no matter how large the numbers get? RIGHT.

Why does a foot have twelve inches? Why does a clock have twelve hours? Why does an hour have sixty minutes? Why does a circle have 360 degrees? If your metric system made so much sense, well, then, why didn't they make it ten inches to a foot? Why aren't there ten hours in a day? Why not make a minute 100 seconds? An hour 100 minutes? A day ten hours and a night ten hours? A circle 100 degrees? What, was no one thinking back when they made these divisions? WHere does the idea of 360 degrees in a circle come from?

Coming from a nautical background, I wondered about all these things many years ago. Kilometers or miles? Now, land miles don't really make any sense. Of course those are called "statute" miles and they have as little bearing on reality as all the "statutes" that the NWO goons (cops) keep hassling and fining you for. But a NAUTICAL mile, ah, now there is a thing of beauty. It is directly related to the circumference of the Earth, and immediately demonstrates to you the relationship YOU have in the size of your body to the size of the Earth.

The depth of the water is fairly important when you are on a boat, especially a sailboat because there is no reverse if you hit the bottom. The easiest way to determine the depth is to cast a weighted line, known as a sounding lead, to the bottom and then measuring how long the line is.

When you pull the line in hand over hand, the easiest way to measure it is to stretch it hand to hand, and see how many times you armspan it is. If it's less than one, well, you are probably already aground. (Stuck in the mud, or on the rocks) If it is two or less, you'd better turn around immediately. Of course it depends how big your vessel is, or more importantly how deep is the draft, or draught for the limeys, how much water you need to be afloat.

So the armspan of a sailor was determined to be one FATHOM. When we want to know if we are in danger of running aground, we are usually not too worried about the inches. And of course, most men, especially in the old days, are less than six feet tall and so at worst will be erring on the side of caution because their fathoms are a little short. However, I have tried this many times with several hundred feet of line, measuring with my arms in a few seconds, then taking a tape measure and after twenty minutes of measuring found that yes, thirty fathoms is 180 feet, within an inch or two.

The Earth is divided into 360 degrees. Each degree is further divided into sixty minutes. That minute happens to be one thousand fathoms. So let's call that a mile. The average man's armspan is exactly equal to 1/21,600th of the circumference of the Earth. Coincidence?

And why is everything in base twelve? We have ten fingers and ten toes, so cavemen developed a base ten system of counting. But then after a while the smart people figured out that base twelve is much easier to work with. Quick, what is one sixth of four meters? One twelfth? One third? A quarter? You probably need a calculator. Whereas twelve can easily be divided into thirds, quarters, and halves usually in your head even with large numbers. Quick, what is one sixth of an hour? One twelfth? One third? One quarter? One fifth? One tenth? Gee, you can figure all those out in your head and they all come out to whole numbers. None of this 0.25 or 0.33333333333333333333333333 BS. What is one quarter of 360? One third? One tenth? See?

If I am traveling at six knots in my boat, I know I cover a mile every ten minutes. I cross a degree of the ocean every ten hours. If I am going five knots, it's every twelve minutes and every twelve hours. If I am going four knots, it's every fifteen minutes, and so on. Gee, I didn't even need a calculator. Hey, even airplanes use these stupid nautical miles and degrees. On my flight here from Miami, at 580 knots we covered nine and a half miles every minute. OK, at 958 kph we were covering 95.8 kilometers every minute. No, wait, that's not right. We were covering 9.58 every minute? No, that;s not right. Where's that calculator?

Do you really think people in the old days, after inventing some important stuff, such as an alphabet, or, say, mathematics, geometry, astrology, were stupid? Why didn't they think of this base ten or metric system a long time ago? How come no one ever figured it out until a hundred years ago or whenever they came up with this crap? Right around the same time as central banking came about, but that's another story.

If it really made sense, they would have been using something like it thousands of years ago. Do you think they built the pyramids in meters and centimeters? I DON"T THINK SO!

So those of you who seem to love this metric system, I hope you are like me. I happen to be exactly two meters tall, and weigh one hundred kilos, so it makes sense. However, I seem to be a LITTLE above the average here. Maybe not so much on the weight anymore, everyone is so fat now.

Everything is based on average man size, and the size of our home planet.

How bout that Celsius temperature? Whoa, that makes total sense! Zero is the freezing point of water, and one hundred is the boiling point. Now this makes total sense. Three quarters of the planet is covered with this water stuff, and it is the second most important thing for life, after air.

Now ask yourself, how often have you seen water boiling outside because it got so hot? That never happens, even on the equator. We would all be dead if it reached TWO HUNDRED DEGREES outside, or one hundred in the Celsius or Centigrade system. And it hardly ever reaches zero either, right? Oh wait, that happens all the time in the temperate zones. Oh wait, not in Fahrenheit degrees, in those sensible Centigrade degrees. Lucky for you Canadians. This way it can be BELOW ZERO MOST OF THE YEAR. Lets everyone else know, it's not really as cold in Canada as you think. IT'S ONLY TEN BELOW ZERO.

Fahrenheit seems to be a little more based on reality. In other words, zero degrees is REALLY F%$#ING COLD. One hundred degrees is DANGEROUSLY HOT. Most of the entire planet hardly ever exceeds these limits. When it does, you know it's REALLY COLD or REALLY HOT. However, the freezing point of FRESH water is not really uncomfortably cold for humans. The boiling point? You're dead before you find out how hot that feels. So in Centigrade, Canada spends say nine months of the year below zero. But thirty degrees isn't really that cold, just kind of bracing. But TWO BELOW ZERO? Forget it, I'm staying inside. Oh wait, is that Fahrenheit or Celsius? Maybe it's just a trick to keep the Americans out of Canada! When they tell us it's time for spring skiing at five below zero, we change our plans to Killington instead of Mont Tremblant.

reply to post by loner007
here in the uk we use both systems of measurement , in the construction industry it is all metric . yes we still use miles and pounds and ounces but i have no problem using kilometers and kilos and gramms
i am 61 years old so maybe its just your generation that can,t handle it

reply to post by CaptChaos


So do you do all your maths in base 12 then? I can do exactly the same for metric, quick as a flash, 72.45 percent of a foot. Quick, 12.2 percent of a foot - all simple if I change the word foot to metre. Now which is more useful. Fractions were useful once but now we have the decimal point. You missed out the most powerful devisor of 10, which is 10 to the power of any other number.

Thanks for the interesting post anyway

[edit on 25/6/2010 by LightFantastic]

Metric is stupid thats why! If American standard is so bad, why then is our smart bombs so good?

reply to post by HooHaa


Thats funny, a Smart Bomb???

Can it write an essay, calculate?

reply to post by CaptChaos


A lot of good points but I dont think we are giving up on using fractions..

Also I am not aware of a different metric system for degrees,
a right angle is still 90 degrees, a day is still 24 hours.

Its more about weights, distance and volumes.

They are the 3 that are much easier to work with in metric...

BTW, after being metric most of my life I still see a footy player listed as 190cm and think Wow, 6'4"..

reply to post by virgom129


I take it you haven't heard of gradians, or radians?

There are 400 gradians in a full circle while there are 2pi radians in a circle. Radians is the standard.

[edit on 25/6/2010 by LightFantastic]

Originally posted by HooHaa
Metric is stupid thats why! If American standard is so bad, why then is our smart bombs so good?

Why not enlighten us as to why the system is so stupid and what is good about what you call 'English' units?



[edit on 25/6/2010 by LightFantastic]

reply to post by LightFantastic


Thanks, heard of them but never used...

Not even in yr12 physics...

I use metric when calculating my marathon training. I wish the US would switch over, but America is still full of people that are so resistant to any change, that I can't see it happening anytime soon.

Originally posted by virgom129
reply to post by LightFantastic

 

Thanks, heard of them but never used...

Not even in yr12 physics...

I'm not sure what year 12 is exactly but any physics formula using angles should be in radians

I feel the Imperial system, once you know it is easier and makes so much more since than the metric system.

The metric system seeks to standardize measurement in a way the dumbs down people.

In my opinion, the rest of the world are stooges being manipulated and are wrong for using the metric system.

Plus.. the metric system does not do a very good job. There are some Imperial measurements that do not have a metric equivalent. That's how inferior the metric system is.