US switching to metric system?

[RedDevil]

So, what countries do not yet use the metric system today?
Name ten.
Remember there are over 200 countries.

Oh wow look here (wiki on metrication)...
Also the bottom part of the Wiki link to the metric system has a map showing when countries adopted the metric system. White is unknown, mainly Africa.
In words:

According to the US Central Intelligence Agency's Factbook (2007), the International System of Units has been adopted as the official system of weights and measures by all nations in the world except for Burma, Liberia and the United States,[72] while the NIST has identified the United States as the only industrialised country where the metric system is not the predominant system of units.[73] However, reports published since 2007 hold this is no longer true of Liberia or Burma.[74] An Agence France-Presse report from 2010 stated that Sierra Leone had passed a law to replace the imperial system with the metric system thereby aligning its system of measurement with that used by its Mano River Union (MRU) neighbours Guinea and Liberia.[Note 6][75] Reports from Burma suggest that that country is also planning to adopt the metric system.

While it is true that the metric system was in part imposed during the French revolution, that revolution itself went through several stages.
The early liberal phase saw the introduction of the metric system; those responible for that like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Condorcet were killed in the later stages of the revolution.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

The metric system irrationally defines some units in terms of other units to which they are unrelated. As for instance the gram being the mass of one cc of water. Why water rather than mercury or hydrogen? Purely arbitrary.

Water is the base of life on Earth, very easy to find. Much easier to find, contain, manipulate and weigh, than mercury or hydrogen. Had we evolved elsewhere, we may have used methane or ammonia. As I wrote:

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

The actual scalar length of the meter is more or less arbitrary, just like the inch or pound. On Earth or on a different planet, neither is better.

We all know that the transition from imperial to metric units will not be easy nor cheap. But if it were started today, then would it be relatively less expensive, than had it been done in the 1970's? And if we wait another 30 or 50 years, will the change be still easier and cheaper then?

[Xist]

Obviously, our currency needs to be standardized to 17 silver Sickles to a gold Galleon, and 29 bronze Knuts to a Sickle.

What would happen if McDonald's started using the metric system? How many customers would stop going because their Big Mac is using a different measurement (that they still do not know) and a large soda is also measured differently (but they probably do not know how large it is, either).

Of course, explaining it that way makes it sound like a waste of time and money.

McDonald's executives, are you reading this?!

[gone-ot]

Some how, they just DON'T have that magic marketing jingle:

"...a quarter-kilo..." hamburger

"...a liter..." Big Gulp™ drink

"...a 1/3-meter..." long hot dog.

[user removed]

I'll see ya a sheckel and raise ya a quaatlume.

regards
mech

[Frank Lee]

I'm used to our goofy system of measure, just as all of us Uhmericans are more or less (from the looks of it, mostly less) used to that craziest, most irrational and arbitrary of languages, English. P.S. Because of this I will probably always have to use conversions to English units for weights and measures, simply because of their overwhelming dominance in common usage.

Speaking (PUN!) of which, since the world is deciding on the most rational system of weights and measures, why would the world also decide on the most irrational language?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

We all know that the transition from imperial to metric units will not be easy nor cheap. ...if we wait another 30 or 50 years, will the change be still easier and cheaper then?

The most economical time to change is now. If we recognize that the change is inevitable, then we are fools to delay it because every year that goes by wastes resources that are lost due to needing 2 different tool sets, time wasted learning a soon-to-be irrelevant measurement system, and catastrophe caused by conversion errors (see Mars Climate Orbiter).

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

Some how, they just DON'T have that magic marketing jingle:

"...a 1/3-meter..." long hot dog.

I ate a yard of Subway in 25 minutes once. I'm sure I could have managed a meter of Subway.

I'm rather looking forward to the kilo-burger.

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

I'm used to our goofy system of measure, just as all of us Uhmericans are more or less (from the looks of it, mostly less) used to that craziest, most irrational and arbitrary of languages, English.

Speaking (PUN!) of which, since the world is deciding on the most rational system of weights and measures, why would the world also decide on the most irrational language?

I'm far from being a language expert, so tell me, how is English much more irrational than other widely spoken languages? All languages have exceptions to their own rules. What language do you have in mind as possessing superior efficiency in conveying precise meanings?

On the topic of irrational standards, the US date format drives me nuts. Of all the ways you can arrange year, month, and day, we choose the most arbitrary (mm/dd/yy). The rational way would be yy/mm/dd going most significant on the left, to least significant on the right. Our decimal number system works this way, why not our dates? It would make sorting files on a computer easier since they would be arranged by year automatically. For example, why would I want to group photo by the day I took them? It would be absurd to sort all photos taken on the 20th day of any month into a group, but very logical to sort them by a particular year.

[Frank Lee]

I'm far from being a language expert, so tell me, how is English much more irrational than other widely spoken languages? All languages have exceptions to their own rules. What language do you have in mind as possessing superior efficiency in conveying precise meanings?

I'm no cunning linguist (well, it depends on who you ask ) but my sister is an English Major and Senior Editor and we agree that English is whack. I'm not fluent in any other languages but she's studied a few. Sometimes I run etymology observations/questions past her and she says if she wasn't born into this language she might never have bothered to (try to) learn it.

I don't know German but I've heard it's a good one for conveying precise meanings.

[redpoint5]

Are particle-based languages superior to positional-based ones like English? I suppose it makes for a wider variety of ways to form a sentence.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

So, what countries do not yet use the metric system today?

Which has been the most economically successful country since the invention of the metric system? Why has just about every major country that adopted the metric system gone downhill after doing so? While those that haven't gone downhill pretty much make their money selling stuff to the non-metric country? And why do those countries adopt the language, currency, and a lot of the culture of the non-metric country?

Originally Posted by redpoint5

It would make sorting files on a computer easier since they would be arranged by year automatically.

So what exactly is so difficult about "ls -ltr"? Of course you do know that the internal time/date field is not mm/dd/yyy format, but a time_t type, usually an interger value representing seconds since midnight, January 1st, 1970. And there's why the date is usually in mm/dd/yy format: because that's the way we normally say it.