My metric: rant

[Wulfman]

sorry, I always surf with mozilla & deactivated pop-up scripts - never noticed the problem.

sig changed.

mfg
wulfman

[Pace]

Another issue is the fact that metric units are pretty standard.

A metre is a metre around the world (except some funny places who call it a meter). A kilogram is always a kilogram.

Pints? Gallons? Feet? Miles? These vary across the Atlantic. What if it wasn't converting to metric that was the problem, but not converting from one old system to the other?

Bleh.

[Guru]

Originally posted by Pace
Another issue is the fact that metric units are pretty standard.

A metre is a metre around the world (except some funny places who call it a meter). A kilogram is always a kilogram.

Scandinavia for example!

[Novdid]

Yes, we always like to do it our own way!

[drslump]

IMO it'll be better to don't change anything. In the last century so many things have been "standarized". We are going too fast with this. 70 years ago we were killing each other and our countries were said to be completely different. Now we are all a big neighbourhood, soon we will become a family and you all know how many fights there are in a family.
I prefer to think that the countries are like "friends" not twin brothers. A person have lots of friends, ones are like you others are completly different but you still can learn things from them. If everybody thought and act the same it'll get really bored.

anyway, perhaps in few years we'll have personal electronic devices which will translate languages/currencies/meassures automatically to our own language. So why bother?

[Umfriend]

I don't get this, what are you saying? We killed each other before we standardised or because of it or what? Frankly, I do not see how one has got to do anything with the other, may be my bad...
Umf

[drslump]

sorry, it must be my english

what I mean is that 70 years ago every single country in occident had its very own culture. Now it's like those countries share a huge amount of its culture, call it politics, music, food, currency or whatever.
Under my point of view this is not bad but I think it's going way too fast.
It's ok if some countries use pounds and inches, it's part of their culture. They should change to another system when they need the change not because the rest of the world use another one. Maybe the rest of the world is wrong

When I went to london and I start to use feet and pounds it was a mess but then I got used to it and I really enjoyed. Otherways living in London would have been like doing it in Barcelona. For me those are the little things that build the "personality" of a country.

[Umfriend]

OK, I see what you are saying. You may have a point. I just do not think units of measurement are not as important cultularly as I think you think. BTW, I am not saying UK or US should convert to metric, I am onyl saying that metric is superior......
Umf

[Pace]

I say we should. I say we should all convert to metric, and further, that we convert to a big single currency. Doubt the US would've liked it, but the EU should've asked really nicely to put the US dollar into circulation.