02-17-2006, 07:03 PM
If you live to 120, and tell your great grandkids about the world when your parents went to school, referring to inches, feet pounds, furlongs, yards and chains or even the acre for Pete's sake, they are going to look at you and think "WTF is he on about?" Imperial measurements are no longer taught in schools. Not even in cooking or textiles.
Metric is the (now) favoured way of measuring.
BTW a can of coke for example in Australia is 375mL. Some alcoholic drinks come in 440mL cans, just because they can.
It is often forgotten that an original Imperial yard is slightly different to the US yard. The same applies to a mile.
Go anywhere in the world that uses metric, and tell someone they need to be 5,448m from where you are. They will know how far to go.
As for time, it's a little more complicated than just switching to metric. It has taken thousands of years and countless civilizations to get the time right. The fact that our planet has a 365.254 day long year (a "day" being approximately 23 hours and 57 minutes or so) makes it god-awful problematic to keeping a metric standard. This is where your article holds up. Metric really isn't practical for time. But for distances and whatnot, it is.
90 degree angles, 360 degree circles. A hangover from imperial nautical times? Try telling the Naval forces of the world they must use metric to navigate.
Explained.
>anarky
Metric is the (now) favoured way of measuring.
BTW a can of coke for example in Australia is 375mL. Some alcoholic drinks come in 440mL cans, just because they can.
It is often forgotten that an original Imperial yard is slightly different to the US yard. The same applies to a mile.
Go anywhere in the world that uses metric, and tell someone they need to be 5,448m from where you are. They will know how far to go.
As for time, it's a little more complicated than just switching to metric. It has taken thousands of years and countless civilizations to get the time right. The fact that our planet has a 365.254 day long year (a "day" being approximately 23 hours and 57 minutes or so) makes it god-awful problematic to keeping a metric standard. This is where your article holds up. Metric really isn't practical for time. But for distances and whatnot, it is.
90 degree angles, 360 degree circles. A hangover from imperial nautical times? Try telling the Naval forces of the world they must use metric to navigate.
Explained.
>anarky
Screwing with your reality since 1998.