Lincoln Chafee: The US should convert to metric units

[Tom Sawyer]

I'm unsure how you could read my post and miss the point of it so completely.

Were you trying to be sarcastic and agree with dismal? I guess we need to make sure we put enough sign makes and installers to work to change all our signs to metric to correct a non-issue.

Yes. My point was the conversion is trivial and it's not an issue.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Were you trying to be sarcastic and agree with dismal? I guess we need to make sure we put enough sign makes and installers to work to change all our signs to metric to correct a non-issue.

Yes. My point was the conversion is trivial and it's not an issue.

Okay, we are in agreement.

 

[dismal]

Yeah, this is kinda my point upon which no one seems to be able to engage or rebut. I can I make it through life just fine buying gallons of milk and 12 oz sodas. I am quite well calibrated to how many miles my car can get per gallon, and whether it sucks to miss a 5 foot putt to lose the US Open.

I am not helped in any way by changing these things to measures to things with which I am unfamiliar.

Well, what if you travel? If you're in a foreign country and you see that you need to go twenty kilometers to see some tourist attraction you're interested in, how are you going to get there? It's not like there's some some kind of magic device you can carry in your pocket to do the conversion for you automatically in manner of seconds or anything.

It adds to the exotic flavor of the foreign lands.

Like in Pulp Fiction when they talk about going in to a McDonalds in Paris and ordering a "Royale with cheese" because you can't get a Quarter Pounder.

 

[Bronzeage]

Today's metric resistance is just another manifestation of our conservative's anti-intellectualism. Metric units are the purview of scientists and other white jacketed geeks, who are responsible for the global warming hoax.

It's really of no consequence, one way or the other. While they are steadfast and resolute, the world does what it always does with those who can't recognise a better idea when they see it. The world moves on without them.

 

[dismal]

Today's metric resistance is just another manifestation of our conservative's anti-intellectualism.

The idea that for hundreds of millions of Americans already going about their lives calibrated on the English system converting provides essentially no benefit but added cost and hassle sounds intellectually sound to me. Common-sensical, even.

The counter argument that "ZMFOG the .00001% of people who calculate space launch trajectories might not get the units right!!!11" smacks of something other than "intellectualism".

 

[Bronzeage]

Today's metric resistance is just another manifestation of our conservative's anti-intellectualism.

The idea that for hundreds of millions of Americans already going about their lives calibrated on the English system converting provides essentially no benefit but added cost and hassle sounds intellectually sound to me. Common-sensical, even.

The counter argument that "ZMFOG the .00001% of people who calculate space launch trajectories might not get the units right!!!11" smacks of something other than "intellectualism".

There really is no valid defence of an invalid position. You are free to cling to a system based on the length of some guy's shoe and then divide it into 12ths and 64ths. You read the arguments for the metric system and if you counter argument is "idonwanna", it's of of no consequence to the rest of us, as long as you have no position of responsibility.

Just to make it safer for the rest of us, please mention your deciphobia at the beginning, should you ever be considered for such a position.

 

[Keith&Co.]

The idea that for hundreds of millions of Americans already going about their lives calibrated on the English system converting provides essentially no benefit but added cost and hassle sounds intellectually sound to me. Common-sensical, even.

Wouldn't business benefit? If they didn't have to keep two separate inventories of labels for products to sell in English-System markets and the-rest-of-the-world markets, they could streamline a lot of their inventory, shipping, marketing. And pass the cost savings along to the consumer, so we could buy the pocket conversion calculators that'll make the inconvenience hardly noticeable.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The idea that for hundreds of millions of Americans already going about their lives calibrated on the English system converting provides essentially no benefit but added cost and hassle sounds intellectually sound to me. Common-sensical, even.

Wouldn't business benefit? If they didn't have to keep two separate inventories of labels for products to sell in English-System markets and the-rest-of-the-world markets, they could streamline a lot of their inventory, shipping, marketing. And pass the cost savings along to the consumer, so we could buy the pocket conversion calculators that'll make the inconvenience hardly noticeable.

Wouldn't they need separate labels for all the language stuff and to conform to any local regulations anyways? That seems like a really, really trivial potential benefit.

 

[Nexus]

There really is no valid defence of an invalid position. You are free to cling to a system based on the length of some guy's shoe and then divide it into 12ths and 64ths...
Just to make it safer for the rest of us, please mention your deciphobia at the beginning, should you ever be considered for such a position.

You're not the first in this thread to express deciphile feelings. But the fact remains that 10 is objectively less useful that 12. Its obvious once you consider that despite having a decimal base numeral system for so long 12 based fractional units crept in.

Certain numbers are just better for division that that's what measurement is about aside from standardization. Mathematicians call these numbers highly composite numbers. Think of these numbers as opposite of prime numbers. This site coined the term versatile number. A number that has a greater number of factors than any smaller number. Some other versatile numbers for you to consider 60 and 360. Do you think it would be better to standardize time and circles to a decimal based measurement?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

There really is no valid defence of an invalid position. You are free to cling to a system based on the length of some guy's shoe and then divide it into 12ths and 64ths...
Just to make it safer for the rest of us, please mention your deciphobia at the beginning, should you ever be considered for such a position.

You're not the first in this thread to express deciphile feelings. But the fact remains that 10 is objectively less useful that 12. Its obvious once you consider that despite having a decimal base numeral system for so long 12 based fractional units crept in.

Certain numbers are just better for division that that's what measurement is about aside from standardization. Mathematicians call these numbers highly composite numbers. Think of these numbers as opposite of prime numbers. This site coined the term versatile number. A number that has a greater number of factors than any smaller number. Some other versatile numbers for you to consider 60 and 360. Do you think it would be better to standardize time and circles to a decimal based measurement?

How about we use a binary system of measurement where all values are represented by combinations of 1s and 0s? Then any other types of measurements we want to use are translated into 1s and 0s and outputted as any other system of measurement that other people want to see them in? We can even build some sort of devices to do this type of processing for us.

 

[Bomb#20]

Um, you do know that was in Canada, don't you? It's like you're lunging at your opponent's sword throat first.

Does not matter, what matters it was stupid english system.

The US used the stupid english system too and we didn't run out of gas in mid-air. This points to the causal factor being the stupid decision to switch system rather than the stupid english system.

 

[dismal]

Does not matter, what matters it was stupid english system.

The US used the stupid english system too and we didn't run out of gas in mid-air. This points to the causal factor being the stupid decision to switch system rather than the stupid english system.

The problem was that the original ground crew, and the flight crew (twice!), had forgotten that the new airliner used the metric system (as Canada was in the process of switching to the metric system, so the new planes purchased by Air Canada were being calibrated in metric units); as a result, they had all erroneously used the figure 1.77 lbs/liter for their specific gravity factor in the calculations, but what they should have used was 0.8 kg/liter.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index...al-aircraft-ran-fuel-mid-flight-gimli-glider/

Yep, it's teh switching that causes planes to drop from the sky like paperweights.

Also, in this country we have advanced technology called "fuel gauges" that show "empty" as an E and "full" as an "F" with non-unit-denominated dashes to show half and quarter tanks (not tenths metric fuckers) which it seems would prevent this problem.

 

[Jarhyn]

The US used the stupid english system too and we didn't run out of gas in mid-air. This points to the causal factor being the stupid decision to switch system rather than the stupid english system.

The problem was that the original ground crew, and the flight crew (twice!), had forgotten that the new airliner used the metric system (as Canada was in the process of switching to the metric system, so the new planes purchased by Air Canada were being calibrated in metric units); as a result, they had all erroneously used the figure 1.77 lbs/liter for their specific gravity factor in the calculations, but what they should have used was 0.8 kg/liter.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index...al-aircraft-ran-fuel-mid-flight-gimli-glider/

Yep, it's teh switching that causes planes to drop from the sky like paperweights.

Also, in this country we have advanced technology called "fuel gauges" that show "empty" as an E and "full" as an "F" with non-unit-denominated dashes to show half and quarter tanks (not tenths metric fuckers) which it seems would prevent this problem.

Dismal, your ignorance is showing. As someone who knows, *intimately* the way aircraft fuel, CoG, and tank calculations are made because it's literally my job to program the behavior of those systems, and who has literally run into this exact same scenario before (fuel weight conversion issues causing aircraft failure albeit in simulated environments), it's no joke.

Fuel on an aircraft is calculated by the difference of the zero fuel weight and the gross weight of the aircraft. It has to be because the tanks on the aircraft are huge. And the fuel has to be calculated to within a close and exact margin of the trip requirements or they waste more fuel on carrying fuel, and that's their biggest overhead expense. So, again as a person whose biggest debugging problem happens to be when some guy doesn't configure every fuel display to the same units, this causes major issues. Simply put, having an incomplete or unexpected fuel measurement in an aircraft is probably the easiest way to guarantee a crash.

That said, if there was only one way to configure the fuel weights, it wouldn't be a problem. There's be one way to do it, and it would make my life at least half again easier.

 

[dismal]

The problem was that the original ground crew, and the flight crew (twice!), had forgotten that the new airliner used the metric system (as Canada was in the process of switching to the metric system, so the new planes purchased by Air Canada were being calibrated in metric units); as a result, they had all erroneously used the figure 1.77 lbs/liter for their specific gravity factor in the calculations, but what they should have used was 0.8 kg/liter.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index...al-aircraft-ran-fuel-mid-flight-gimli-glider/

Yep, it's teh switching that causes planes to drop from the sky like paperweights.

Also, in this country we have advanced technology called "fuel gauges" that show "empty" as an E and "full" as an "F" with non-unit-denominated dashes to show half and quarter tanks (not tenths metric fuckers) which it seems would prevent this problem.

Dismal, your ignorance is showing. As someone who knows, *intimately* the way aircraft fuel, CoG, and tank calculations are made because it's literally my job to program the behavior of those systems, and who has literally run into this exact same scenario before (fuel weight conversion issues causing aircraft failure albeit in simulated environments), it's no joke.

Fuel on an aircraft is calculated by the difference of the zero fuel weight and the gross weight of the aircraft. It has to be because the tanks on the aircraft are huge. And the fuel has to be calculated to within a close and exact margin of the trip requirements or they waste more fuel on carrying fuel, and that's their biggest overhead expense. So, again as a person whose biggest debugging problem happens to be when some guy doesn't configure every fuel display to the same units, this causes major issues. Simply put, having an incomplete or unexpected fuel measurement in an aircraft is probably the easiest way to guarantee a crash.

That said, if there was only one way to configure the fuel weights, it wouldn't be a problem. There's be one way to do it, and it would make my life at least half again easier.

tip: joke

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The US used the stupid english system too and we didn't run out of gas in mid-air. This points to the causal factor being the stupid decision to switch system rather than the stupid english system.

The problem was that the original ground crew, and the flight crew (twice!), had forgotten that the new airliner used the metric system (as Canada was in the process of switching to the metric system, so the new planes purchased by Air Canada were being calibrated in metric units); as a result, they had all erroneously used the figure 1.77 lbs/liter for their specific gravity factor in the calculations, but what they should have used was 0.8 kg/liter.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index...al-aircraft-ran-fuel-mid-flight-gimli-glider/

Yep, it's teh switching that causes planes to drop from the sky like paperweights.

Also, in this country we have advanced technology called "fuel gauges" that show "empty" as an E and "full" as an "F" with non-unit-denominated dashes to show half and quarter tanks (not tenths metric fuckers) which it seems would prevent this problem.

It would have helped had they not taken to the skies in a plane that couldn't legally fly. The plane didn't meet the minimum equipment list, it had no business being in the sky no matter how much fuel they loaded or didn't load.

 

[Bomb#20]

Yeah, this is kinda my point upon which no one seems to be able to engage or rebut. I can I make it through life just fine buying gallons of milk and 12 oz sodas. I am quite well calibrated to how many miles my car can get per gallon, and whether it sucks to miss a 5 foot putt to lose the US Open.

I am not helped in any way by changing these things to measures to things with which I am unfamiliar.

Well, what if you travel? If you're in a foreign country and you see that you need to go twenty kilometers to see some tourist attraction you're interested in, how are you going to get there? It's not like there's some some kind of magic device you can carry in your pocket to do the conversion for you automatically in manner of seconds or anything.

^^^^ This ^^^^

What I don't get about this debate is, if we grant that worldwide standardization of terminology is important enough that we need to put people to the trouble of changing whether they call something "10 feet" or "3 meters" even though most of us don't feel like all that mental relabeling is worth the effort to us, then why the bejesus are the fans of metric conversion dicking around with anything as trivial as metric conversion? Shouldn't they be focusing on the big picture? Why aren't they campaigning to get people to switch to Esperanto?

 

[dismal]

Well, what if you travel? If you're in a foreign country and you see that you need to go twenty kilometers to see some tourist attraction you're interested in, how are you going to get there? It's not like there's some some kind of magic device you can carry in your pocket to do the conversion for you automatically in manner of seconds or anything.

^^^^ This ^^^^

What I don't get about this debate is, if we grant that worldwide standardization of terminology is important enough that we need to put people to the trouble of changing whether they call something "10 feet" or "3 meters" even though most of us don't feel like all that mental relabeling is worth the effort to us, then why the bejesus are the fans of metric conversion dicking around with anything as trivial as metric conversion? Shouldn't they be focusing on the big picture? Why aren't they campaigning to get people to switch to Esperanto?

The reasonable conclusion is they're too "anti-intellectual" to advocate switching everyone to Esperanto.

And also too anti-intellectual to switch everyone to right side driving. I assume right side driving is the pro-intellectual side since Americans (including NASCAR) use left side driving.

Also salad should come after main course.

 

[Bronzeage]

There really is no valid defence of an invalid position. You are free to cling to a system based on the length of some guy's shoe and then divide it into 12ths and 64ths...
Just to make it safer for the rest of us, please mention your deciphobia at the beginning, should you ever be considered for such a position.

You're not the first in this thread to express deciphile feelings. But the fact remains that 10 is objectively less useful that 12. Its obvious once you consider that despite having a decimal base numeral system for so long 12 based fractional units crept in.

Certain numbers are just better for division that that's what measurement is about aside from standardization. Mathematicians call these numbers highly composite numbers. Think of these numbers as opposite of prime numbers. This site coined the term versatile number. A number that has a greater number of factors than any smaller number. Some other versatile numbers for you to consider 60 and 360. Do you think it would be better to standardize time and circles to a decimal based measurement?

Twelve is more useful than ten when gathering eggs, because three eggs can be picked up with one hand, and four hands of eggs makes and even dozen. The only problem with the number twelve is we have run out of numerals when we get past nine.

It would be nice to decimalise the length of a day's light, but every day is slightly longer or shorter than the one before it. There's no much point to standardizing something which refuses to standardize itself.

 

[bilby]

Well, what if you travel? If you're in a foreign country and you see that you need to go twenty kilometers to see some tourist attraction you're interested in, how are you going to get there? It's not like there's some some kind of magic device you can carry in your pocket to do the conversion for you automatically in manner of seconds or anything.

^^^^ This ^^^^

What I don't get about this debate is, if we grant that worldwide standardization of terminology is important enough that we need to put people to the trouble of changing whether they call something "10 feet" or "3 meters" even though most of us don't feel like all that mental relabeling is worth the effort to us, then why the bejesus are the fans of metric conversion dicking around with anything as trivial as metric conversion? Shouldn't they be focusing on the big picture? Why aren't they campaigning to get people to switch to Esperanto?

Because Esperanto is far from the most widely spoken 'artificial' language.

If you are going to promote such a language, then you should lobby for one with more speakers, like Klingon*.

In fact, we are rapidly approaching a standardised language worldwide; we call it 'English'.







*True story.

 

[4321lynx]

The idea that for hundreds of millions of Americans already going about their lives calibrated on the English system converting provides essentially no benefit but added cost and hassle sounds intellectually sound to me. Common-sensical, even.

Wouldn't business benefit? If they didn't have to keep two separate inventories of labels for products to sell in English-System markets and the-rest-of-the-world markets, they could streamline a lot of their inventory, shipping, marketing. And pass the cost savings along to the consumer, so we could buy the pocket conversion calculators that'll make the inconvenience hardly noticeable.

Admittedly Boeing has little difficulty exporting its products with presumably American screws and other fasteners and American gauge electrical wiring, but what about other exporters? Cars, tractors etc. Or is America forever going to be an importer with little desire to increase exports of manufactured items?