Quote:excellent counterpoint, moneo
Highly irrelevant; soda manufacturers can and do create 355ml cans and 600ml bottles.
How's this for a good arguement FOR the metric system: I'm not sure if any of you have ever had to do fluid mechanics, but here's how it works: Every single imperial calculation has a "password" in front of it -- some completely arbitrary number to convert the random numbers to something that resembles each other. In metric? Nothing does. Want to know the mass of a liquid based on it's specific gravity? In Imperial, break out your lookup tables. In metric, specific gravity * 1000 kg/m^3(The number of kilograms of water in a square meter). From Reynolds Number to Bernoullis equation, you've got some different largely arbitrary obstacle.
Another major issue is that the Imperial system doesn't account for the local gravity. This is a major issue; a pound of force in New Orleans isn't a pound of force in Denver Colorado, because the local gravity is different.
Yes, America put people on the moon using their primative system of non-coherent weights and measures. Remember though, that Japan is now the technological powerhouse it is under the Metric system.
Anyway, If you want to talk about waste, every single auto shop in America and around the world needs two sets of tools; two different kinds of nuts; two different kinds of bolts; two completely different sets of equipment and infastructure for the two types of vehicles: American ones, and the ones from everywhere else. I need to spend extra time heading to a store to buy the metric fittings which would function just fine for 5.5billion out of the 5.8 billion on earth, except for the Americans. The Americans are costing industry literally billions constantly.
The worst part is that you already use metric for some things: Nobody complains about using Volts, Amps, and Ohms. Threaten to take away their furlongs per fortnight, however, or their scores per league, and they get huffy...
Anyway, on to the thread topic.
SJ Zero started out as "Sir Jason" when I first entered a chat room. I grew up a bit, and didn't like it anymore, so I changed it to SJ(Two letter names were the style at the time). Later on, I decided to slap the 'Zero' on the end because I thought it looked cool. I've been through a lot with this name, so I don't feel like changing it.