• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

As an American, why is America different when it is stupid to be different?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Two Words said:
Date.
Most of the world does a day/month/year method for the date. It is consistent. Days are smaller than months are smaller than years. But in America we do month/day/year. Why? Who knows?! Just cuz, apparently.
Click to expand...

I like it reflecting speech.

So when I see 4/4/2015, it means April 4th, 2015.

technically Canada does yyyy-MM-dd but I couldn't care less.
 
As a Canadian, I think we should adopt american spelling since it makes more sense. I think they should adopt metric since it makes a lot more sense.
 
Imperial seems significantly simpler in construction than metric units seeing as they're more easily divisible by three, and triangles are common in construction.
 
Two Words said:
Date.
Most of the world does a day/month/year method for the date. It is consistent. Days are smaller than months are smaller than years. But in America we do month/day/year. Why? Who knows?! Just cuz, apparently.
Click to expand...
As a unit the month sits on a scale of 1-12, the date 1-31, and the year sits on an infinite scale. This means that a month/date/year format arranges these pieces by scope while corresponding to the verbal read on a date (i.e. June Thirteenth, 2015).

All scales are made up. Fahrenheit is a really neat system that has serves more practical purpose when coupled with weather, which is very relevant to most people.
 
What confuses me is what in some places we have adopted metric, but not others, and they're similar things. We buy liters of soda, but gallons of milk. We run races in meters, but measure other sports in feet. It's weird.


It would have to be a gradual shift. Start having schools lean more and more on the metric system and making it more prevalent in every day use for adults. Slowly phase out the old system for a better one. Doubt it will ever happen tho because old people freak out over changes like this. I imagine the Republican Party would be against it too, because why not?
 
Krejlooc said:
We didn't come up with the name "Soccer." Soccer is actually a slang term for the real name of the sport, "Association Football." People around the world still use the term, although it's obviously fallen out of favor.

The term "football" doesn't mean what you think it means. Football is an antiquated term that refers to a working-class sports game. They are games you play on your foot, as opposed to the games nobility played, like Polo. "Football" as a term is synonomous with "sports." Baseball is a football game, hockey is a football game. Ironically enough, even basketball is a football game. We really didn't name our sport "football," it was more like an unnamed college sport, and all sports were called "football." As the practice diminished, the name stuck for that sport. The real name for the sport is "Gridiron Football."
Click to expand...

Shit, learn something new everyday.
 
Delta Assault said:
Most people's daily lives don't involve working in a ship yard.
Click to expand...
What is so valuable about inches instead of centimeters? The only value I see is height. 4 ft is super short. 5ft is hitting the short to normal range. 6 ft is hitting the tall range. 7 ft is hitting the super tall range. What else is there in its favor?
 
Dates should be written YYYY/MM/DD - it's the international standard and is great for sorting. It sucks that I work in a multi-national organisation and some reports are in dd/mm and some are in mm/dd. It's laughable on a shared Google doc we use when the Americans put down their own format, deliberately changing the format of the cells they use, because they're stubborn.

Metric is better in most cases - the US should adapt it purely to match the rest of the world (England should too, but they half-assed it). It's already used a lot in US industry, science and military, yet there are some sectors that stick with imperial.

There are a few sports called football.

American spelling is superior - everyone else should adopt it.
 
Ambient80 said:
What confuses me is what in some places we have adopted metric, but not others, and they're similar things. We buy liters of soda, but gallons of milk. We run races in meters, but measure other sports in feet. It's weird.


It would have to be a gradual shift. Start having schools lean more and more on the metric system and making it more prevalent in every day use for adults. Slowly phase out the old system for a better one. Doubt it will ever happen tho because old people freak out over changes like this. I imagine the Republican Party would be against it too, because why not?
Click to expand...

I think the issue is indifference more than anything. For daily life the imperial system works just fine and we already have tons of road signs written in that system. Switching over would require a large investment for something most people don't actually care about.
 
I have no issue with Metric. Hell, I'm a guy who prefers American cars, particularly Fords, and yet these American cars more often than not use Metric hardware versus Imperial hardware these days.
 
Two Words said:
What is so valuable about inches instead of centimeters? The only value I see is height. 4 ft is super short. 5ft is hitting the short to normal range. 6 ft is hitting the tall range. 7 ft is hitting the super tall range. What else is there in its favor?
Click to expand...

Base 12 is more neatly divisible by 3, 4 and 6 than base 10.
 
I knew this was going to be about metric vs imperial just by reading the title :P
And I agree with that part. The rest don't bother me, really.
 
Europeans need to remember one thing though, if it wasn't for us, you wouldn't have your precious Friends. That's right, no Monica, no Rachel, no Chandler, and sure as hell no Joey. What are you guys gonna do without Joey?
 
Krejlooc said:
We don't have 12 fingers, though.
Click to expand...

If someone is still using their hands for math then they're probably not to division yet.

Two Words said:
But what does that matter for daily life? Converting between measurements would be more useful than dividing.
Click to expand...

I mentioned it previously, but I find it easier for doing projects that require measuring and cutting due to triangles and squares having 3/4 sides which imperial handles better.
 
air jordans for dogs said:
With a scale its super easy to measure it. No wonder you americans are so fat, people probably think a serving is 5 burgers
Click to expand...

Our system really isn't that hard to figure out ,everything in my cupboard also has the weight of the serving in grams, and it often has another more specific version of a serving
For example a serving can be listed as a slice of bread, a slice of cheese, a cookie, three raviolis along with the weight
 
Two Words said:
What is so valuable about inches instead of centimeters? The only value I see is height. 4 ft is super short. 5ft is hitting the short to normal range. 6 ft is hitting the tall range. 7 ft is hitting the super tall range. What else is there in its favor?
Click to expand...

Inches are a significant chunk of a foot. When you say "five feet six inches", you get a good sense of how much that is until the next foot.

When you say "one meter 60 centimeters", it's not that clear. I mean, you know there's 40 centimeters until the next meter, but that length isn't something easy to grasp.
 
Because we are lazy is what I think. The rest of the world or at least the English speaking world used to use/say all that stuff and then at some point they changed, but we are Americans and we are too lazy to change if we don't have to. It also doesn't help that we couldn't give two shits what the rest of the world does most of the time. Benefits of being a global super power I guess.
 
NoblesseOblige said:
If someone is still using their hands for math then they're probably not to division yet.



I mentioned it previously, but I find it easier for doing projects that require measuring and cutting due to triangles and squares having 3/4 sides which imperial handles better.
Click to expand...
But what about when it doesn't divide evenly? Now you have to deal with inches stupid 1/16th scale.
 
I wish we would switch to metric/celsius since they are much more logical units than imperial/fahrenheit, but I don't like DD/MM/YYYY for dates. If listing dates from smallest unit to largest is so important, why don't those countries use Second:Minute:Hour to tell time?

YYYY/MM/DD would be my choice if we had to switch away for MM/DD/YYYY, since it's so convenient for file names and filing in general.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Stranger Things spinoff set in different decade in the works
38
912
efyu_lemonardo replied
D&D seems a bit different lately…
2 3 4 5
225
3K
The Fartist replied
Is going to the cinema alone a different level of lonely?
Opinion  2 3
130
5K
StueyDuck replied
Why isn't Windows 11 auto changing to the correct HDR/Monitor profile when I change which monitor I want to use? (It used to...)
2
504
YCoCg replied
  • Poll
American GAF- what is your favorite muffin?
37
2K
NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt replied
Top Bottom