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[Godslay]

Every fucking one has it wrong.

yyyy-MM-dd

Realistically it should be:

2016-Jun-14

Can't always represent it that way of course, but in a couple places I've worked that's the way you had to write it out so that there was no confusion or ambiguity between the month and day, and always with military time as the date stamp.

 

[Krejlooc]

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

That's precisely my point. You start with the easy math in base 10, because we have 10 fingers. By the time we are into division, we are firmly thinking in base 10. Thus, pointing out that base 12 is better for division than base 10 isn't much of an argument for switching to base 12.

Besides, if we're discussing other bases, base 16 is pretty damn useful overall.

 

[Stumpokapow]

The Internet. Where have you been the last 25 years?

The ISO is 70 years old and has nothing to do with the internet. *shrugs*

 

[makingmusic476]

In part because of idiots who respond like this to proponents of the metric system:

“Typical Democrat — wants to make America more European. Governor Jindal would rather make the world more American.”

 

[Two Words]

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.

I can grasp that pretty easily. It's slightly less than half a meter. I think you're making a claim that imperial is more intuitive and metric is not when you've simply lived your life with imperial.

 

[Tarkus]

I LOVE the metric system. I dislike British English spellings though. Realise, characterise, flavour, colour...come on. Use the fucking zed where it needs to be used and quit spelling things phonetically based on your accent.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

That's precisely my point. You start with the easy math in base 10, because we have 10 fingers. By the time we are into division, we are firmly thinking in base 10. Thus, pointing out that base 12 is better for division than base 10 isn't much of an argument for switching to base 12.

Besides, if we're discussing other bases, base 16 is pretty damn useful overall.

All bases have their uses. I didn't state base 12 is the end all be all base. I just stated it's more easily divisible by 3 and 4 than base 10. And maybe we should be teaching different bases earlier since it appears to absolutely blow most people's minds when they try to comprehend base 8 or 16.

 

[Sakura]

Come on OP. There are countries other than America that say soccer instead of football. Like Canada and Japan. Only inferior countries call it football.

 

[PeskyToaster]

Because it is also stupid to be the same. That's how we got Hitler.

Yeah, the european style of thinking produced hitler. where is your god now?

 

[Hypron]

The imperial system is really annoying, especially if you're an engineer.

While the vast majority of scientists use the metric system in the US like in the rest of the world, this is not the case for engineers and manufacturers.

Then you end up having to use imperial parts, read and convert imperial datasheets, reports and textbooks. It's just a pain in the ass of everyone (on both sides, if you work in imperial units you need to do everything the other way) and a waste of time.

I'm used to most of the imperial units by now but it's still a real pain in the ass that we have to do all this shit because of a single country.

It can even lead to accidents when people don't do their job properly.

If everyone used the same units (which just makes freaking sense), we would have one less thing to worry about.

Edit:

I can grasp that pretty easily. It's slightly less than half a meter. I think you're making a claim that imperial is more intuitive and metric is not when you've simply lived your life with imperial.

Yep, most arguments I see against the metric system boil down to "I'm not used to them therefore they are not practical". When you're used to the metric system, you can visualise roughly how long 1m (or 1cm or 10cm or ...) is (just like you guys in the US visualise how long 1 feet is), so if someone tells you "it's 1.6m" you just know it's a bit more than 1.5 times that length. It's super simple and it makes calculations a lot easier.

 

[Drensch]

Why is a soccer field measured in yards? I never understood that.

 

[woolley]

I LOVE the metric system. I dislike British English spellings though. Realise, characterise, flavour, colour...come on. Use the fucking zed where it needs to be used and quit spelling things phonetically based on your accent.

Why you adding extra letters to say a letter, that doesn't make sense. It should just be Z.

 

[teacupcopter]

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.

I don't think any of this is a big deal at all, especially the month/day one but you are really not understanding this one at all. For an Australian, we kinda get feet/inches only because that's how our parents tell height but there is actually nothing in 5 feet 6 inches that denotes how long it is to the next one, whereas in MM/CM/M/KM you can say "1500 metres" or "1.5KM" and people just know how much it is because it's a consistant amount to the next 'one up'.

 

[Krejlooc]

Why is a soccer field measured in yards? I never understood that.

Because Soccer is hundreds of years old and came into fashion when the imperial system was popular world-wide.

It's called the imperial system for a reason.

 

[timetokill]

Metric, okay, sure.

American spellings are right, though. Brits changed their language at some point to try and differentiate from the "commoners."

Also, soccer wasn't a word invented by the US either.

"Aluminium?" GTFO

 

[CaptainGyro]

That's because you grew up with it. But just look at the very phrase June 13, 2015....what is up with that? How did we get to that phrasing? If we didn't know that June was a month and that 2015 was a year, it might as well be a password or some cryptic code. If we heard it out loud, it would seem like June Thirteen was a person.

How does this change in any other order?

 

[DragonSworne]

Metric system is completely unintuitive for day to day life.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

It's called the imperial system for a reason.

This is the best reason I've heard for abolishing the imperial system. It comes from Dirty old British empire. America needs to come up with its own system. I propose we base our entire new length measurement around the barrel length of a Glock and AR-15. Area will be measured in Walmarts. Volume in the blood of minorities killed by police.

 

[Strangelove77]

The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.

 

[Hypron]

Metric system is completely unintuitive for day to day life.

Because you're not used to it. The rest of the world finds it intuitive.

 

[SuperEpicGuy]

I do like the argument for Fahrenheit of "100 means it's really fucking hot, 0 means its really fucking cold in Fahrenheit. In Celsius, 0 means it's pretty cold and 100 means you're dead so it's not as useful as a guide in day to day life."

Others, sure, whatever.

-40 C is really fucking cold and 40 C is really fucking hot. That's a really bad argument, just because you're used to it doesn't make it better.

Here's an actual argument for Celsius though: the units in C are the same as the units in Kelvin and 0 is based on the freezing point of one of the most common substances, water. F is pointless and about as useful as the imperial system (kind of like something out of the harry potter world with its 12 silver coins for a gold coin or something like that).

 

[Hypron]

-40 C is really fucking cold and 40 C is really fucking hot. That's a really bad argument, just because you're used to it doesn't make it better.

Here's an actual argument for Celsius though: the units in C are the same as the units in Kelvin and 0 is based on the freezing point of one of the most common substances, water. F is pointless and about as useful as the imperial system (kind of like something out of the harry potter world with its 12 silver coins for a gold coin or something like that).

Actually there's an imperial equivalent to the degree Kelvin (where the 0 point is the same for both). But I still prefer Celsius. I like that it's defined around the freezing and boiling point of water.

 

[Vengal]

So something that has always confused me is we use separate units for weight and mass. Yet the metric unit of mass is used for weight in metric countries. Should you all not be using Newtons for weight? How will you know how much you weight on the moon!

 

[Jacob]

Celsius vs Farenheit.
Celcius centers itself around the freezing and boiling point of water. Makes sense considering how we use temperature on a daily basis. Farenheit is based on what? It just seems like a random scale to measure heat.

Fahrenheit is useful because 0 and 100 are common minimum and maximum temperatures in temperate climate zones. Outside of cooking, it actually has more everyday usefulness than Celsius.

Sports.
Why do we call it soccer and the rest of the world calls it football? The sport is entirely played with your feet. Instead we call a sport football that has 99% nothing to do with anything with your feet and ball being related together. We should have called soccer football and we should have called football "blitzball" or something like it.

"Football" is not called football because you kick the ball with your feet. The word football was in use centuries before the sport began to be codified (mid-19th century), and in that era you could do almost anything you wanted with the ball. The name comes from the fact that it's played on your feet, as opposed to on horseback. Soccer and American football are just two codes of football that emerged from early versions of the sport during the 1800s. In most of the world, soccer is the most popular version, so it gets the generic "football" name. However, in countries where a different version is more popular (including the US, Canada, Ireland, and Australia), the most popular local version gets the generic "football" name.

Can't really argue with you about dates or metrication, although it should be noted that America does use the metric system for some things and that many countries which are ostensibly fully metric aren't actually and still use traditional local units for some purposes. Though America is one of the least metricated countries, certainly.

 

[DiscoJer]

I read a joke about this today. There are two kinds of countries in the world: Those that use the metric system, and those that have walked on the Moon.

More seriously though, American/Imperial/Fahrenheit measurements are more based around everyday life, not abstract or scientific concepts.

It's really kind of silly to use a temperature scale for every day life that basically goes from -20 to what, 45 over the course of the year when it comes to everyday weather. As opposed to one that basically covers the entire range of 0 in winter to 100 in summer, more or less.

But 100 is boiling you say. Well, maybe if your life revolves around boiling water, but most people's doesn't, I think.

Similarly, I don't think a meter is all that intuitive. Yeah, it makes more sense in how you have 1/10 or 10 and so forth, but a foot is basically the length of your foot (if you are an average man, at least). Still, I think their distance units make more sense, all in all.

OTOH, what drives me crazy about the Metric system is that they use mass instead of weight. Kilograms is a unit of mass. Newtons are the unit for weight. But no one uses them. But unless you happen to be in space, weight is what you are measuring when you use a scale, not mass.

 

[Hypron]

So something that has always confused me is we use separate units for weight and mass. Yet the metric unit of mass is used for weight in metric countries. Should you all not be using Newtons for weight? How will you know how much you weight on the moon!

It's not. People just use the wrong words. When they say it "weights 10kgs", they actually refer to the mass of the object. It doesn't make a difference in normal day-to-day situations (a scale reading 1kg just measures that there's 1*g Newtons of force applied on it — it works the same regardless of where you are on earth), but the metric system for mass/weight makes things easier for scientists (who are the only people likely to go to the moon).

 

[Slightly Live]

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."

Do you have any sources for even half of these claims? Sounds like a fairy tale of bullshit.

Football has generally only referred to the various code of ball games that involve kicking the damm thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word))

Basketball and Hockey are not football games. Nor has any sane person ever referred to them as such. Maybe some confused Americans?

To quote the wiki,

Conversely, in 1363, King Edward III of England issued a proclamation banning "...handball, football, or hockey; coursing and cock-fighting, or other such idle games", suggesting that "football" was in fact being differentiated from games that involved other parts of the body.

So even the King of England almost 700 years ago makes a clear difference between hockey and football.

So, where did you read about this nobility stuff?

 

[Slayven]

When other countries put a man on the moon then they can tell the USA how to measure stuff.

 

[Phat Michael]

Because America thinks it is cool to be different and every other country laughs at them. They're so far behind in the whole measurement thing as well as being adamant that their way of doing things is the correct way. There will be counterpoints in this very thread im sure to arguing AGAINST the metric system. Who the fuck argues against the metric system when it just makes much more sense!

Also, the gun laws are so fucking stupid and everyone else can see this except them.

The whole "I need a gun because if someone else has a gun then i can bring out my gun and shoot them" is perhaps one of the dumbest and most short-sited arguments that exists.

Also, being able to carry around assault rifles in public and selling them at malls is absolutely ridiculous - and the people who carry around these weapons say it's because it is their right to do so.

 

[Jacob]

Football has generally only referred to the various code of ball games that involve kicking the damm thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word))?

Your own link talks about the alternative proposed etymologies for the word football, inluding the non-nobility explanation. And considering the free-for-all that mob football was during the middle ages and early modern period, the idea that it refers strictly to kicking the ball is ludicrous.

That said, I have no idea where the whole "hockey and basketball are forms of football" thing comes from. All the modern sports called football can trace their origins back to mob football, usually by way of the English public school game in the early 19th century. American football, for instance, was derived from rugby, which was (along with soccer) one of the first two versions to be codified. Hockey and basketball have distinct origins from this tradition.

 

[BladeoftheImmortal]

As an American, metric system is better for everyday life. Everyone disagreeing with that has obviously never tried using the metric system.

I use it all the time now living in China, and it makes everything easier.

Recipes I need 500ml of something, not 2 and a half cups, but what's a fucking cup size again...and I only have a spoon that's a tablespoon. How much does that equal again in cup size?

Oh, here's a 50ml spoon. I just have to fill it up 10 times. Man that's so much less confusing.

Anyone arguing for the imperial system hasn't actually lived off the metric system. It's better.

 

[BeatnikGunsoo]

Because America thinks it is cool to be different and every other country laughs at them. They're so far behind in the whole measurement thing as well as being adamant that their way of doing things is the correct way. There will be counterpoints in this very thread im sure to arguing AGAINST the metric system. Who the fuck argues against the metric system when it just makes much more sense!

Also, the gun laws are so fucking stupid and everyone else can see this except them.

The whole "I need a gun because if someone else has a gun then i can bring out my gun and shoot them" is perhaps one of the dumbest and most short-sited arguments that exists.

Also, being able to carry around assault rifles in public and selling them at malls is absolutely ridiculous - and the people who carry around these weapons say it's because it is their right to do so.

Well we walked on the moon

 

[LQX]

Holy hell some of you make it seem complicated being an American. And why does our way have to be stupid? You have lived probably your whole life under this system. When did that light bulb go off that you have lived your whole life being stupid?

 

[Sutton Dagger]

I'm fine with imperial system, I don't measure huge numbers on a daily basis so the factors don't really matter to me. 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, not really complicated stuff.

And Fahrenheit works way better for day to day telling of the temperature for the weather than Celsius.

I don't like Celsius. When it's 35 degrees out that's supposed to mean it's fucking cold, not that it's manageable let alone hot out.

And putting unnecessary u's in words like color is just goofy.

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.

These posts and others like it are funny in the sense that you are basing your own experience as the standard and thus the other way is intrinsically harder, it's not.

Having grown up using Celsius it's very easy for me to roughly feel the temperature. The metric system is also very easy to understand, I can tell you roughly how many kilometres/metres/centimetres something is.

 

[shem935]

Because America thinks it is cool to be different and every other country laughs at them. They're so far behind in the whole measurement thing as well as being adamant that their way of doing things is the correct way. There will be counterpoints in this very thread im sure to arguing AGAINST the metric system. Who the fuck argues against the metric system when it just makes much more sense!

Also, the gun laws are so fucking stupid and everyone else can see this except them.

The whole "I need a gun because if someone else has a gun then i can bring out my gun and shoot them" is perhaps one of the dumbest and most short-sited arguments that exists.

Also, being able to carry around assault rifles in public and selling them at malls is absolutely ridiculous - and the people who carry around these weapons say it's because it is their right to do so.

These threads always seem to bring out the best in various posters.

Our scientists use the metric system and Celsius scale. Everything else to me seems arbitrary. Temp scale, speed measurements, spelling, are all down to the personal preference of the person using them. I'm not sure what the discussion is. At this point in industry and public knowledge there are things call conversion costs. Is the loss of this mystical extra productivity that we somehow lose when using stupid different systems worth the cost of everyone everywhere in the country needing to switch systems and all the inherent costs associated with that switch? All the tools that would need to be replaced, signage changed, textbooks in schools, general knowledge that would need to be re-coded in peoples brains, worth that cost to please the few who have nothing better to do than complain about something that is not that big of deal?

No is the answer.

 

[dejay]

Metric system is completely unintuitive for day to day life.

Of all the arguments from both camps, this is the one that annoys me the most, because it's wrong.

I know 0 C is freezing, I know 10 is chilly, 20 is mild, 25 is just about perfect, 30 is warm and starting to get uncomfortable if it's very humid, 40 is hot and 50 is like an oven.

180 cm is getting where you'd start to describe someone as tall, 150 cm is short and 190 cm is quite tall.

I know what a KM driven feels like, I know how far 100m is, I know how fast 60km/h feels like, I know what a cubic metre looks like, I can pick the size of a metric bolt head without trying more than two spanners, I know what a litre of water looks like and when I worked in a warehouse I could tell how heavy a package was to the nearest KG before weighing it 8 out of 10 times.

On top of that I can also instantly convert the 1020 mm my brother in law will talk about, who is a builder and expresses every length in mm, into cm and m.

 

[Dishwalla]

These posts and others like it are funny in the sense that you are basing your own experience as the standard and thus the other way is intrinsically harder, it's not.

Having grown up using Celsius it's very easy for me to roughly feel the temperature. The metric system is also very easy to understand, I can tell you roughly how many kilometres/metres/centimetres something is.

so you aren't "basing your own experience as the standard"? is our way not "intrinsically harder" for you?

also bringing up the gun debate in a thread that so far has had nothing to do with that is laughable, way to go guy.

 

[hamchan]

As an Australian I'm actually ok with the American date system. The only problem is when it's not obvious that someone is using the American way, can cause a bit of confusion there.

But yeah, Imperial system and Fahrenheit are nonsensical compared to Metric and Celcius. Why people choose to defend them I don't know, other than that patriotic feeling that they have to.

 

[Vengal]

It's not. People just use the wrong words. When they say it "weights 10kgs", they actually refer to the mass of the object. It doesn't make a difference in normal day-to-day situations (a scale reading 1kg just measures that there's 1*g Newtons of force applied on it — it works the same regardless of where you are on earth), but the metric system for mass/weight makes things easier for scientists (who are the only people likely to go to the moon).

Yeah I understand that fundamentally you can use mass and weight interchangeably anywhere on the planet but still seem like a bad habit mix units in wide practice.

Granted on a whole we are worse at science now so what do I know.

 

[Dishwalla]

why is america different? because our whole damn country is built on being anti-authority and different, it's the whole reason we exist.

 

[Ke0]

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.

Honestly I like MMDDYYYY. There are only 12 months, 31 days max and whatever year. It goes from smallest possible range of number to largest. It ends up looking better when written; 12-31-2015. That and that's how they verbalize it in America, December 31st, 2015, so it's not shocking they'd write it like that.

 

[numble]

so you aren't "basing your own experience as the standard"? is our way not "intrinsically harder" for you?

also bringing up the gun debate in a thread that so far has had nothing to do with that is laughable, way to go guy.

Actually, someone that uses both, like a scientist or someone has moved between locations, can be a good judge of what is intrinsically harder.

 

[soulassssns]

Who says it is "stupid to be different"?

America uses both metric and imperial

America uses the term soccer because we already have a sport called football.

And we do not have a standard for date as you claim. I have ran into a mixture through out my life and in the US Navy we use the format you said.

 

[Mik2121]

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 you're not used to it.
For me, you tell me you're five feet six inches and I have absolutely no clue what you're talking because nobody uses those metrics except for the inches when talking about TV and monitor sizes.

Meters and centimeters is just a matter of taking something and dividing or multiplying it in 10ths to get any other size.

The only reason for using feet and inches is that everybody in the U.S. is used to it so obviously it's not going to change or at least not in the near future. The reasons to use meters is that pretty much the rest of the world uses them and it's objectively easier to calculate.

 

[numble]

why is america different? because our whole damn country is built on being anti-authority and different, it's the whole reason we exist.

But to be different would mean rejecting the imperial system that imperial authoritarian England used...

 

[Professor Renegade]

Millimeters is the most accurate and consistent measurement for fluids.

 

[hamchan]

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.

Ahahaha what? Everyone who grew up with the metric system can grasp how long 40cm is.

 

[Tylyn]

Tl:dr for the thread

"I'm used to Imperial/Farenheit/m/d/y/ounzes,pounds that's why its more practical to me."

 

[EatinOlives]

When other countries put a man on the moon then they can tell the USA how to measure stuff.

Except for that a NASA Orbiter was lost because we were too busy being stupid with pounds/inches/whatevers.

 

[Novoitus]

I don't literally mean every single place.

yeah you don't, just the places that cause your xenophobic mind distress