STOP BEING SO FREAKING STUBBORN, AMERICA!

Hitman wrote: Almost every country that ever used the english system were smart enough to switch, including england. All you nay sayers are claiming that America isn't as smart as the rest of the world.

Whatever, the United States has done more than any other country.


Edited by djrock - 10 January 2006 at 8:57pm

Frozen Balls wrote: piranhakiller wrote: Yes many of us are lazy no doubt but it would not only be easier and Cheaper to stay with the same way. Clark what r we gonna do about speedometers of older cars let laone just ne that dont have KM on them which I know none of mine do..., or thermometers or football fields heck nehting that usings the standard system. Do you honestly have ne idea how expensive and long it would be to change everything....? Most cars have a smaller kph line running inside the mph line...

Yes I know but many don't, obviously its not going to be expensive to change that but I meanmy school has a $1,000,000 turf field. I dont even want to imagine how expenisve it would be to repaint...And yes I admit that our country is stupid, I mean arent we also the fattest? 

Tolgak wrote: They don't have to change EVERYTHING that uses the old system. Like you said about football. Most likely it would stay Yards because that's how it started and changing it would be costly. We could still use the measurement of foot as estimation because 30cm is right about the same length. If you want to worry about speed limits. 100 km/h is about 62.5 mph. The math is simple. 50 km/h is close to 31.25 mph. 75 km/h is about 46.875 mph. 25 km/h is too slow no matter what road you're on and is close to 16 mph if you're wondering. In your head it would be 60, 45, 30, 15 if you want to keep it as an approximation. There's an allowance of up to 5 mph above the limit so you should be fine.

Ok disregarding the football what about road signs, and police lasers and radars? Yes I am lazy but what would 65 be? and if it is into decimals what would the limit be? How would they decide? jw...

piranhakiller wrote: Tolgak wrote: They don't have to change EVERYTHING that uses the old system. Like you said about football. Most likely it would stay Yards because that's how it started and changing it would be costly. We could still use the measurement of foot as estimation because 30cm is right about the same length. If you want to worry about speed limits. 100 km/h is about 62.5 mph. The math is simple. 50 km/h is close to 31.25 mph. 75 km/h is about 46.875 mph. 25 km/h is too slow no matter what road you're on and is close to 16 mph if you're wondering. In your head it would be 60, 45, 30, 15 if you want to keep it as an approximation. There's an allowance of up to 5 mph above the limit so you should be fine. Ok disregarding the football what about road signs, and police lasers and radars? Yes I am lazy but what would 65 be? and if it is into decimals what would the limit be? How would they decide? jw...

If every other country in the world can figure out their speed limits, I'm sure we can handle it to. We are at the cutting edge of technology, after all.

Yes, the transition will be expensive and annoying.  But given that ALL THE OTHER COUNTRIES have already made the transition, we should have plenty of models for how to do it well, and we should be able to estimate the cost pretty closely.

But the long-term savings will dwarf the short-term expense.

It is completely IDIOTIC to suggest that we should not switch to a superior system that will save us oodles simply because there is a short-term cost.  Penny-wise, pound-foolish.

Sadly, I think you are right, and we will not change for a long time yet.

Eventually globalized trade will require it, but that is a ways off yet.  My suspicion is that we may not initially see a government-required change, but simply a gradual change in consumer goods.  Many industrial items are already made to metric specs.

Oh, because that is so much better?

djrock wrote: This topic will probably be closed soon, because it is just getting so old.

No, because people are bringing up irrelevent issues, like spanish coworkers. This is about the metric system. Let's have some thoughtful arguments here that pertain to the subject.

^^^^  DOH!  I made the same mistake.  Too many dj's here.

My bad.

the governmens has been trying to switch to metric, but in idiotic small ways, like requiring all cars to show both mph and kph(although yes, very old cars dont have that), and then requiring schools to teach the metric system along with our standard system, but what they really need to to just go all out and do it, turkey used to use the same system, hell they used to speak arabic as well, then they forced the entire country to switch to the metric system AND they created the turkish language, all in 5 years, yes it was a little easier to do it at that time because it was a patriarchal society but the fact is they did it, i realize it would take the US a good deal longer to do this, as it would cost lots of money and take a good deal of time(i'm think'n more like 10-15years minumum based on how slow it takes to get things done in this country)but it just needs to be done, the longer we wait the harder it will be to change