I told Joon the other day on our ride that I was going to become a “one-issue voter.” I’ll vote for anyone who promises to convert the US to metric.
And then I saw this chart online, and that really helped cement my position:
I couldn’t help but imagine how utterly boring a metric equivalent to this would be — and yet how great at the same time.
Having lived in Korea for a while now, I’m almost there in both systems. Sadly, I’m still converting things mentally. I know that a mile is a tad over 1.6 kilometers. A kilogram is around 2.2 pounds. If anything, I’m keeping my mind active with quick and constant math problems, especially when I’m on the road. And although I drive a North American car, I’m so used to reading the metric (kph) speedometer that I don’t even notice the mph ring anymore.
It’s not that miles and gallons and Fahrenheit are necessarily bad things. It’s just that they’re certainly not any good. They’re arbitrary and senseless, and are only close to useful to a person if they grew up with them — and even then, just barely. It’s almost as embarrassing as America’s fascination with only knowing one language (more on that in another piece, I’m sure).
Metric, on the other hand, is ordered and makes sense. I mean, who ever thought that dividing the distance between the equator and the north pole by ten-million would make a good unit of measure? (well, the French, actually). And then calling a thousand of those a kilometer, or calling 1/100th of one a centimeter? Or figuring that it makes more sense to call the freezing point of water “0” and the boiling point “100”? Have you seen the formula for converting Fahrenheit to Celsius? Using fractions when converting temperatures should be illegal.
And going to metric would take care of that for all of us.
Isn’t it about time?
Way past time. I blame Reagan. We don’t need to know how to convert. Just throw out all yard sticks and measuring cups and give people meter sticks and metric measuring cups. We already know how much 2 liters of soda is. Charley said the building industry would have trouble, but a 2×4 is actually 1.5×3.5
pfft. a 2×4 isn’t even a 2×4 most times.
and i just got that 1.5×3.5 comment.
We converted to the metric system about 40 years ago, in the US. Well, at least that was what I was told was going to happen when I was in elementary school. A 10cm step each year can still be measured as progress!