Dr. Maddkap, WerepsychologistAmericans will really do anything to avoid using the metric system.
The Duality of Xan@drmaddkap Ah yes, the emperor penguin, a well known unit of measurement with which all people in North America will be intimately familiar.
Jeff Grigg... compared to, say, a "yard" (three foot long), which is almost as long as a meter. And many people have used "yard sticks" of that length. A "yard" is just over 8.5 cm short of a meter.
So about 24 yards wide, as a really rough number.
"Nearly to the 25 yard line on a football field" would do it!
wb x64@JeffGrigg @XanIndigo @drmaddkap I just aggressively swap meters and yards, it's almost always close enough for guesswork. Also being a difference of 2.54, you can guesstimate centimeters as being either 1/2 or 1/3 of an inch, whichever you feel like. Finally 1 mile is about 1½ km, a gallon is about 4 liters, and there's about 2 pounds per kg. 20°C is about room temperature, 10°C is jacket weather, & 30°C is beach weather.
Attempts at precision suck.
Frank
johnnyr@fschaap @wilbr @JeffGrigg @XanIndigo @drmaddkap Americans just don’t like the metric system. The penguin system however has legs and things can easily be measured in millipeguins, kilopenguins etc… and then it would be easier to convert to the metric system where 1 penguin = 1 metre.
@johnnyr @wilbr @JeffGrigg @XanIndigo @drmaddkap That would work, as long as we stay away from twelve herrings to the penguin and three penguins to the seal measurements.
YetAnotherGeekGuy 
@drmaddkap @XanIndigo @wilbr @fschaap @JeffGrigg
There’s no metric time. So you have to do conversions anyway that aren’t powers of ten. At that point it makes no difference, so why change?
There’s no metric time. So you have to do conversions anyway that aren’t powers of ten. At that point it makes no difference, so why change?
@YetAnotherGeekGuy @drmaddkap @XanIndigo @wilbr @JeffGrigg I really want to find a flaw in that argument, but it's hard! 😉
Paul H 🏴🇪🇺@YetAnotherGeekGuy @drmaddkap @XanIndigo @wilbr @fschaap @JeffGrigg
The second is the SI unit for time. There's no "metric" minutes/hours - we don't need them
@wilbr @Henrysbridge @drmaddkap @XanIndigo @fschaap @JeffGrigg
If you are going to simplify conversions to power of ten math … isn’t that the Metric System brand promise?
If you are going to simplify conversions to power of ten math … isn’t that the Metric System brand promise?
@YetAnotherGeekGuy @wilbr @drmaddkap @XanIndigo @fschaap @JeffGrigg
No. Just to clarify, SI is *a* metric system, not *the* metric system. (another example in wide use in science before SI was cgs, with the centimetre, gram and second as base units).
"metrication" after the French Revolution introduced metric time and the grad for angles. Neither caught on as they had no advantage over the "traditional" systems.
SI seeks to connect units to sound, universal standards.
@fschaap @JeffGrigg @XanIndigo @drmaddkap Americans are getting used to liters (we have 1L and 2L and sometimes even 3L soda and water bottles), meters are much easier to understand when directly translated as yards, grams are great for baking, and the new generation of 3D printing enthusiasts measure exclusively in millimeters, but we just don't have much of a daily use for other stuff. (See: UK still using stones for body weight?)
@fschaap @JeffGrigg @XanIndigo @drmaddkap one advantage of feet, pounds, and fahrenheit is that they're human-scale measures: everyone has a foot, a pound is about can of beans or a pound-cake-tin-sized bread or cake, it's like the lightest item you'd consider as having heft. And 0°F is unreasonably cold but livable while 100°F is unreasonably hot but livable. SI prefixes are great, but it's hard to visualize 1000 of something.