Frazz by Jef Mallett for August 11, 2022

There’s a scene in The Marching Morons in which we are informed that the big fast-looking cars sound like they’re overpowered, and when you press on the accelerator pedal, a breeze blows on you to make you think you’re going faster. But the vehicles don’t go fast at all.

We have gone metric in many ways: soda, liquor, medicine, science, olympic sports, autos, money, and on and on.

I once had a motorcycle that had both metric and imperial on the speedometer. Really had to watch out not to look at the imperial, as I would have been speeding all the time. My husband once did, while test driving one, complained to the seller that the brakes were not really good, as he was cruising at 50 and it didn’t slow down very quickly….turns out he was looking at imperial, and doing 80km/h in a 50km/h zone….

As to image, sometimes habit brings strange results. For years shoppers have habitually referred to standard supermarket ice cream containers as half gallons which they once were. That reference hasn’t changed but half gallons have. Recently found two competing ice cream boxes that listed contents as 1.4 ltr and 1.89 ltr respectively, yet shoppers still refer to both as half gallons, while neither is. An actual half gallon is 1.925 ltr.

But, then, if there were real truth in advertising, [a dream devoutly to be wished but rarely realized] producers would have to find a catchy phrase for not quite a half gallon. Be interesting to see the results.

Is that why running is classified in "k"s?And would measuring temperatures in k instead of F help in any way?

The English system developed through use, and the measurements exist because they are useful. In the metric system, they exist because they divide by ten, which is arbitrary.

For instance, nobody uses the decimeter (1/10 of a meter) because it’s just not useful. A foot is useful. It’s not a coincidence that the metric measurement that’s most commonly used is the meter, which is very close to a yard.

Miles per hour sound better when the cop asks if you know how fast you were going.

hooray for Hollywood….

The only thing we do metric in this country is running marathons and soda bottles.

Ya, “someday”… right.

USA, Barbados and that other economic power, Aruba, I think, have not officially gone metric.

The Constitution actually forbids forcing a measuring system on the population, but the commerce act allows federal law to require all containers crossing state lines to be labeled in metric. In 1975, this was implemented but in 1982, it was rescinded. Still, water and soda are still sold by liters, not imperial. Progress?

At the height of the government’s attempts to teach us to use the metric system, the auction house I went to posted a sign “Keep liter in it’s place!!” I never did find out if it was a protest or just misspelling.

Some of the measuring usage from overseas is fine, but others…I live in West Germany for many years. First time as a child 4-7, so not a lot of memories about this kind of stuff. The second tome was a a newlywed. We lived on the “economy” for that because the wait for housing was over a year, so my husband got us an apartment off of the kaserne. Over there “furnished” does not mean “with furniture”, but instead implies that it has some appliances, lights and cabinets. The oven only went to 300 degrees. I told my husband that cakes bake at 350 degrees! Of course we realized it was Celsius and not Fahrenheit. We got a good laugh out of that. Thankfully the army supplied us with all of the furniture and appliances. It is cheaper for the government that to have to move furniture overseas. They will do it, but having the option was nice. Yes, the stuff was from the 70s, but it was well-made and clean. The Marc was very low while I was there, so unlike the rest of my family I did not return stateside with a shrunk.

Europe also uses different shoe sizes. I have very large feet. Peggy Hill large feet. in US sizes I wear a 10. (Bowling I always rented male sizes so it looked like I had on an 8 1/2.) In Europe there are not “baby”, “child”, and “adult” sizes. Nope. It goes size 1 thru whatever. I wear a 42!!!

I also doubt there is an American woman who wants their weight told in kilograms. Or stones for that matter. It just sounds like we would “weigh” more with stones. All of my doctors for that last 30+ years of course have used KG, but the nurses always tell me the pounds as well.

In MLB, Aroldis Chapman threw a pitch clocked at around 169.14205 kph!

I’d be fine with metric, but there’s one argument I have to shoot down: “What would you rather convert, kilometers to meters or miles to feet?”

.

This is not a problem most people face with any regularity. (And if you do, consider the possibility that you are not “most people”.)

Y’all are using quite a bit. Pop bottles, tools, auto parts

When I sent of Vancouver BC, it was fun when I crossed the border. The speed limit signs all read “100”. Luckily my truck had MPH and KPH on the speedometer, or I might have gotten in trouble.

President Jefferson tried. They said it was too French.

President Ford tried. Whiskey & wine said 750ml is within machine tolerance of a fifth of a gallon. Just change the labels. Few others paid much attention.

Most US cars seem to have both, with the mph scale in larger, easier-to-read numerals. I had occasion to rent a car in Toronto a couple of decades ago, and it had the same two scales, but with the kph scale larger. You do what you gotta do.

Except no one measures running pace in MPH/kph, they use minutes/mile or minutes/kilometer…

Um, I think it’s usually called “English” measure (of length). “Imperial” is a term used more for volume, an artifact of the circumstance that in olden times, volume measure varied with what substance was being measured—a bushel of wheat was a different size from a bushel of oats, say. In the infancy of the American colonization, the “wine gallon” and “ale gallon” were both in use. We wound up here with the wine gallon of 3.7 liters, divided into eight pints of 16 ounces. The rest of the English speaking world uses, or used, the ale gallon, a.k.a. Imperial Gallon, of 4.5 liters divided into eight pints of 20 ounces (which are therefore smaller than ale ounces, though the Imperial pint is larger than the wine pint.).

Prior to the 19th century there were a variety of regional measures in Britain, and elsewhere. An impediment to commerce. First on the list of demands following the French Revolution, was the establishment of a national sysem of weights and measures. And voila, the Metric System sprang into being.

We tried metric in America back in the 70’s. Hated it.

I have lived a few places overseas and visited a few more. Metric is easy, it’s rational, it’s sensible… so naturally we can’t have it here in the USA ‘cause we’re so special…

The trick is to just make the switch and not bother with all the conversion crap. Learn the new set of references and forget the old and you’re done. It’s just that easy.

But for those that must have the conversions, here you go:

0C is freezing

10C is comfortable with a light weight coat or maybe a sweater

20C is comfortable

30C is hot

40C is really hot

anything more than 40 is insanely hot…

See, it’s simple and easy to learn.

It sounds like you’re going faster in kilometres per hour, and furthermore it sounds like you’ve been losing weight in kilograms. OK, I’m convinced!

IF, The USA ever switches to metric, the rest of the world will switch to some other measures. They have been pranking us all along.

Metric makes so much sense, but you won’t get Americans to change, it would take educating to get many to understand. Until we fund education, it’s going to be the older Imperial system.

“Someday”? How do you think Trump got elected?

Someday?

Of course, there’s a difference. I think, if you multiply the kph x6, it gives you the mph… 80 kph x 6, = 48 mph…or thereabouts. That really helped me, when I was stationed in Europe, and the cars didn’t have both mph, and kph.

Many years ago, I flew to Orlando, Florida, for a family vacation. When I went to the car rental agency to pick up the car reserved for me, they saw that I would be dropping it off in Tallahassee. They offered me a vehicle upgrade to a Canadian car they had and were trying to get it back to Canada. It had only metric values on the speedometer and odometer. As an engineer, I was familiar with the metric conversions and took them up on the offer. It helped that our family had visited Canada several times after the metric conversion there, so I was familiar with the relative values for the usual speed limits.

My son lived in China for years. When he came back he switched the speedometer and odometer on his car to kilometers. He switched it back when getting emissions tested, now they flagged his car as having the odometer tampered with. No amount of explanation has helped.

There’s a somewhat similar problem with American money. The Treasury would like to retire the dollar bill and switch to dollar coins, saving a considerable amount of money. Several efforts in this direction have failed.