I bought some sand today, a 60lb bag which equals 27.2 KG. That's messed up, I prefer the nice round number, lol. 
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Why the heck does America still use outdated measurement and date units?
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I bought some sand today, a 60lb bag which equals 27.2 KG. That's messed up, I prefer the nice round number, lol.
Just tell them you want them to bring it up to 30 KG and you'll pay them in pounds.
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Driving along listening to the radio.... There's a 20 car pile up on I-35.... Looking frantically for signs, where's I-35... Wait what's that sign?.... Crash... Oh, I think I found I-35.... Radio announcer now says there's a 21-car pile up on I-35.
Notwithstanding the OP, I do think we'd have no problem if the US woke up tomorrow and everything is metric. We (Americans) are much more resilient than people give us credit for. Everyone expects up to riot when things change, but that says more about them than it does us.
Of course, had the sports team lost (or won) the championship, that's a different story.
That was a joke.
Yes, as was mine. Hence the reference to paying in pounds.
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Imagines the confusion as they approach the 45.72 meter line. Lol
I bought some sand today, a 60lb bag which equals 27.2 KG. That's messed up, I prefer the nice round number, lol.
If we were on metric, it probably would've been rounded up to 30 KG, which means you would've gotten more sand for your buck.
...it's the little tragedies that hurt the most.
Greedy, like expecting 2.8kg of free sand because the measurement unit changed?Yeah, they'd probably be greedy like that.
This stuff isn't dirt cheap.
Prior to about 1996, all US Aviation Weather was in empirical units.
For some odd reason, we went to the French system of Metars and TAFs (and airspace reclassification), even though North America has my flying than the rest of the world combined.
The younger guys get confused when I ask for a sequence report and I have to correct my self and ask for a Metar.
If you want to use Celsius for science, cooking, body temperature...I don't care. Great, let's do it. But for weather temperature outside or building temperature? Fahrenheit. 0 is freaking cold, and 100 is freaking hot. 50 feels nice. It feels silly and dumb to say, "Oh my God it's so hot outside! It's like, 35 degrees!!!!" or "Man, it's pretty chilly outside...it's negative five." No. I refuse to use Celsius for the temperature feeling.
Metric is, by far, much more logical. Our units are stupid. Especially when you get into things like "Okay, I need this to be four times 17 19/32 inches long", instead of "Okay, I need this to be four times 446.9mm long". Or, "How many gallons do I need to fill 20 cups?"
I hate the Euro date system. I say May 22, 2016, so I'm writing it 05/22/2016. Especially since the year is only used sometimes. So 22/05 looks really dumb. Since at that point, I'm wanting to look at the big unit first, then narrow it down. When I date files, it's always YYMMDD-HHMM.
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Well, only if they didn't change the containers and started selling it as 3.785L bottles. Otherwise, they'd be changing their machinery to make new litre milk bottles, and that would be difficult and expensive.
No. I suspect that it is a kind of inertia, and they don't like to be told what to do by others.
Re the ordering and writing of dates, I think that there is a profound difference of opinion on that matter, on both sides of the Pond, and I doubt that either will change anytime soon.
Certainly, most Europeans always - even in conversation - start with the date of the day, and then add the month. To us, that seems more logical, day, followed by month, followed by year. (And yes, even when minuting meetings, or writing lectures, I will jot down all three).
As for the rest, I am equally fluent in both metric and imperial - because I grew up with both, and can use them interchangeably as needed.
Re the measurement of temperature, the metric is exceedingly logical, and using the freezing point and the boiling point of water as the two bookends mean that it makes intuitive sense; besides, any system derived from a base of 100 is always going to be easy to calculate, and remember.
Now, I'll grant that Fahrenheit allows for a greater degree of precision in the measurement of the taken temperature, but there, the usual debate between convenience and degrees of precision applies.
However, for anyone who has read the Harry Potter works of J K Rowling, I have long thought that she must have been giggling insanely to herself when she devised a completely wonky and utterly irrational system of currency for her wizarding world. It reads almost as though it is a send up. But it is still very funny.
I can't find the reference at the moment, but I have read somewhere along the way that Rowling was an imperial system advocate. I wish I could find the reference.
Aside from the wonky and backwards money system, you will find no references to metric units through the book and plenty of reference to imperial units and even more(somewhat obscure) measure of units. I recall one Unicorn being described as "nearly 17 hands."
In any case, I'm going to jump in my car afterwhile and make a trip that will probably involve me exceeding speeds of 2.07x10^14 fathoms/fortnight, or 207 terafathoms/fortnight
Ah, I hadn't spotted that, or, if I did, I passed over it as being an obvious way to describe this.
"Hands" are actually the unit of measurement for horses in the British Isles, so I'm not surprised to see that she used it for unicorns.
(You measure at the shoulder of the animal, - not above - using a specially designed measuring stick with a spirit level, which is placed at right angles (90 degrees) to the shoulder of the animal, the measurements marked off on the stick). For convenience, a 'hand' in this context is read and recorded as four inches, and obviously, in earlier times, it was - physically - a man's hand that was used. Inches are used to define - or delineate - the difference between two 'hands'.
A horse of 17 hands would be a pretty large animal.
Now, I hadn't realised that Rowling was a devotee of the Imperial system, but I'm not terribly surprised. However, her system is so gloriously illogical that it does read almost as a send up, or a hilarious and slightly bizarre alternative.
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Hands are also ubiquitous in the US and have the same definition(4"). I agree that it made sense in that context, although it might be an unusual unit if you weren't use to seeing it.
And yes, 17 hands is quite large. I live in the middle of thoroughbred country, and most race horses are 15-16 hands tall. There again, as I mentioned earlier, the equestrian industry(or racing industry at least) at least in the US is somewhat deep in measurements that really aren't common outside of it. Furlongs are still common for race lengths and distances on the track. The official standardized horse "length" is 8 ft(used/recorded when reporting winning spreads). Even up until a few years ago, times were still measured and recorded in 1/5 second intervals.
Back in the 1860s, Waltham made an "improved sporting watch" that was reportedly aimed at race horse owners and trainers. They are quite rare, but many of the ones I've seen have horse or horse racing scenes engraved on the case. The watch has a sub second hand at 6:00 that rotates once every four seconds, a sweep second hand that rotates once every four minutes, and then the hour and minutes on a small sub dial at 12:00. In any case, some dials I've seen have the four second sub dial delineated in 1/5 second intervals.
[doublepost=1463948299][/doublepost]By the way, I saw while watching the Preakness on Ebay yesterday that apparently NBC is going to start showing the Ascot Royal next year. I'm not sure I can warm up to racing where the horses run the wrong way
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Yes, furlongs are still used as a measurement to measure distances - though not the only one - in racing circles in the British Isles (both Britain and Ireland).
Then again, - and it depends on the actual race - sometimes - for some of the really old races - the prize money is measured in guineas. That is - for those who remember it - 21/-, namely, twenty one shillings, rather than the 20/- (twenty shillings) which made up an old imperial pound.
Well, my mother used to work in the equestrian world, so this is a universe and terminology I know a little bit about.
That is an extremely interesting detail about the Waltham watches used in the racing & equestrian industry.
Have you any pictures of those 'improved sporting watches' by Waltham - with the unusual second hand features?
I don't own one, but my friend Jon has a nice write-up about them on his website.
http://www.americanhorologe.com/Chronodrometer/chronodrometer.aspx
One has to deal with ridiculous measurements on the web every day.
Now, some things are the way they are: disk and screen size standards, for example.