America's use of the old English measurement system is an embarrassment. The rest of the world converted to metric-only long ago. The US, and pockets of Britain, are the last vestiges of people who use the English system.
We already use the system in some ways. For instance, my car has a 3.1 Liter engine and I drink Coke from a 2-liter bottle. These are metric measurements. We need to fully convert in order to make it easier to interact with the rest of the world. The system is easy once learned and kids won't grow up trying to figure out how to convert from quarts to gallons, etc.
When I went through high school and college, all classes were done in metric. So, I know there is at least some familiarity with the system at least among those who are 35 and younger.
Converting would be fairly easy as far as who starts it. The Federal Government will have to set a timetable for when all of its dealings will be done in the metric system. Eventually, street signs and mapquest.com will convert (80 kilometers to Cleveland). Cars will have 40-liter gas tanks and the "mph" will be the small numbers on the speedometer and opposed to "kph", which will be the bigger numbers.
Eventually, everything down to grandma's recipes will be done in liters and centiliters vs. quarts and cups. This may take a generation to take full effect, so the grandmas I'm referring to here are today's kids.
Unfortunately, this is one area where we'll have to suck it up and meet the world's standards as opposed to the other way around.
Please share your thoughts.
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My friend Mike left a comment on this one. The clean part was, "What about my jeans? Will I now wear a waist size in centimeters instead of inches...and the hem too?
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I am ALL for it, and I think LOCAL time zones should be abolished and the whole world just uses GMT. Time is just a number....who cares what time sunrise is? We are going to adjust and go to work and school in the day based on Zulu right?"
Yes, your jeans would be in centimeters or however the rest of the world does it.
ReplyDeleteI've never thought about the time zone thing. That's a very interesting idea. We wouldn't have man-made lines on a map and oddball places where daylight savings time aren't observed.
The hard part would be getting the world to play along. Everyone would want noon to be when the sun is overhead.
Putting everyone on Greenwich Mean Time might be a good idea. I'll think about it and I may adopt the idea.
Brian