Support NeoGAF

[Mik2121]

Every digital thermostat I've seen has 0.5 steps in Celsius. Just take a look at any car with I can tell the difference with ease in home heating and cooling between 0.5C steps, and use them often. I grew up with metric measurements btw. and still use them as they are drilled into my head. But I see some benefits of imperial and why people would prefer that.

I like the finer granularity of Fahrenheit scale, because its 0-100 range is optimized around livable human-centric temperatures, and not third of it 'wasted' on temperatures that would kill you in an instant.

I have barely ever seen an air conditioner where you can change the temperature in .5 Celsius, it's usually jumps of 1 degree.
Either way, weather forecast almost never gives you decimals, and when you say the temperature nobody is like "oh, today it must be like 28.5 degrees!". I'm only talking about everyday use for most stuff, not things like trying to boil something, cook or whatever, obviously

I see some people argue that you need the decimals with Celsius but that's outright false on most everyday uses.

 

[PillarEN]

I can live with all those things but even with spending most of my life in the states I still never used fahrenheit. Celsius is just perfect.

 

[Dilly]

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.

Except, you know, when you grow up with metric system and can actually visualise how long 40 centimeters is.

I can't imagine how long five feet and six inches is and it sounds ridiculous.

 

[kingkitty]

We stay different because it annoys Europeans.

 

[Pyramid head]

that makes you sound like a posh spaz


the military does it this way too.

so america is still winning.

'Born on July 4th' is a great movie.

Day>month>year makes so much sense it's crazy.

Most relevent to least relevent. Unless you're dealing with an enquiry from someone emerging from cryo-sleep.

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.

Like in 'ztimulate'?

 

[GavinGT]

I think Fahrenheit makes more sense for your everyday person that just wants to know the weather. There are more gradations in the zone of temperatures that everyday people care about (without resorting to decimals). Whereas with Celsius, where my room is too cold at 23 degrees and too hot at 28.

 

[Beren the Empty-Handed]

Isn't America's continued use of the Imperial system in part due to road signs?

American road signs list the upcoming street exits, highways, and cities by numbers of miles away. If America switches to metric, the government would have to pay to create signs and then switch them with the current ones. Because of how many roads and highways America has, the amount of money it would take to change all of it would be staggering.

I'm sure it will happen someday, but I think that might be part of the reason why the US government is dragging its feet on this. And it's an issue that other countries just wouldn't have due to the amount of roads America has over such a great distance. Couldn't that be part of the issue?

 

[Dilly]

I think Fahrenheit makes more sense for your everyday person that just wants to know the weather. There are more gradations in the zone of temperatures that everyday people care about (without resorting to decimals). Whereas with Celsius, where my room is too cold at 23 degrees and too hot at 28.

It only makes sense, because you grew up with it.

My room being 23°C or 23,5°C isn't going to make a difference.

 

[Chichikov]

With all the stupid stuff us Americans keep around like the imperial measurement system, spelling changes are one of the better things we've done. Colour looks stupid. Theatre is just silly.

Actually, theater is the original spelling.
Most of the differences between UK English and US English are changes that the English made to the language, in many cases artificially and for not a particularly good color the English decided that it's bastardized spelling that only uneducated fools in the colonies use and went with "colour").
Same goes for the accent by the way.

 

[Almighty]

Isn't America's continued use of the Imperial system in part due to road signs?

We could always do what the UK did and keep the road signs in miles and mph. Personally I kind of like that idea. Switching to metric but doing it half-assedly would pretty much be the American(and I guess the British) way.

 

[theusedversion]

Why do you hate America, OP?

 

[GavinGT]

Why do you hate America, OP?

He hates freedom is why.

 

[Mik2121]

I think Fahrenheit makes more sense for your everyday person that just wants to know the weather. There are more gradations in the zone of temperatures that everyday people care about (without resorting to decimals). Whereas with Celsius, where my room is too cold at 23 degrees and too hot at 28.

Your room is too cold at 23, too hot at 28 and good enough at 25 or 26 depending on the person. Do you need that many more units in between? If you are going to cook something and need a very specific temperature I could understand being bothered by it, but I don't think anybody in the rest of the world outside the U.S. has ever felt Celsius lacked granularity in their daily life.

 

[bachikarn]

I'm pretty sure I've read America was going to switch to the metric system due to ease of calculations, but then calculators got invented and that kind of killed it.

 

[DBT85]

Actually, theater is the original spelling.
Most of the differences between UK English and US English are changes that the English made to the language, in many cases artificially and for not a particularly good color the English decided that it's bastardized spelling that only uneducated fools in the colonies use and went with "colour").
Same goes for the accent by the way.

It's called English. We get to make the rules.

 

[Syriel]

What are some other people examples of our pointless American oddities?

We know how to boil water in a microwave, while the rest of the world is still stuck using electric kettles.

 

[Benzychenz]

The responses saying inches or fahrenheit etc are easier make me laugh. You realise it's only easier because it's what you've grown up using right?

 

[Pagusas]

It works for us, why are Europeans always complaining about us? Every country in Europe has problems, yet I see so many people act like Europe is something we should aspire to be like. Why would we want that?

 

[Htown]

We do these things differently because it just worked out that way over here, and there isn't any good reason to change it.

We all know that 0 Farenheit is really cold, 100 is really hot, and freezing is 32.

I also don't understand why anyone gives a shit whether we call it soccer or not.

I feel like people who aren't in America care more about what we call the sport than Americans care about the actual sport.

 

[daviyoung]

When the English fought themselves in the late 1700s I guess each side wanted to change some things to differentiate itself.

 

[Mauricio_Magus]

Everything is fine except for the Imperial system, now that fucking sucks.

 

[bachikarn]

Reading Wiki, it seems like there was progress to moving America to the metric system, but the Reagan administration killed it when they started cutting budgets

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States

 

[phisheep]

Actually, theater is the original spelling.

No it isn't. Theatre is.

Originally spelled theatre and teatre

Most of the differences between UK English and US English are changes that the English made to the language, in many cases artificially and for not a particularly good color the English decided that it's bastardized spelling that only uneducated fools in the colonies use and went with "colour").

Only if by "the English" you mean "Noah Webster".

Same goes for the accent by the way.

I'll grant you that one though - at least for some of the accents involved.

 

[Beren the Empty-Handed]

We could always do what the UK did and keep the road signs in miles and mph. Personally I kind of like that idea. Switching to metric but doing it half-assedly would pretty much be the American(and I guess the British) way.

Hmmm. That could work. Anyone growing up would just have to roughly know how far a mile is, and then cut the rest.

 

[Log4Girlz]

We would have never gone to the moon being like everyone else.

 

[DBT85]

We know how to boil water in a microwave, while the rest of the world is still stuck using electric kettles.

Our stupid kettles are much faster at doing it.

 

[daviyoung]

We would have never gone to the moon being like everyone else.

A worthy achievement

 

[machemachete]

We do these things differently because it just worked out that way over here, and there isn't any good reason to change it.

We all know that 0 Farenheit is really cold, 100 is really hot, and freezing is 32.

I also don't understand why anyone gives a shit whether we call it soccer or not.

I feel like people who aren't in America care more about what we call the sport than Americans care about the actual sport.

It works for us, why are Europeans always complaining about us? Every country in Europe has problems, yet I see so many people act like Europe is something we should aspire to be like. Why would we want that?

Because is a pain in the ass to us foreigners to convert measures all the time just for one country. Event as a south american we use the metrics/celcius and DD/MM/YYYY.

Is way useful to normalize in a single measure system that works for all and also can be applied in the scientific field.

 

[Atraveller]

It works for us, why are Europeans always complaining about us? Every country in Europe has problems, yet I see so many people act like Europe is something we should aspire to be like. Why would we want that?

lol

 

[davepoobond]

Because worldwide conformity is also known as fascism

Because is a pain in the ass to us foreigners to convert measures all the time just for one country. Event as a south american we use the metrics/celcius and DD/MM/YYYY.

Is way useful to normalize in a single measure system that works for all and also can be applied in the scientific field.

You "foreigners" don't live here.

Also, It's a pain in the ass for us foreigners to have to convert all of our English language to your gobbledygook Latin offshoots or whatever.

We don't go around telling you to convert to Imperial measurements so shove off!

 

[Chichikov]

I also don't understand why anyone gives a shit whether we call it soccer or not.

I feel like people who aren't in America care more about what we call the sport than Americans care about the actual sport.

English people used to call it soccer until like the 80s.

No it isn't. Theatre is.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=theater

Meaning "building where plays are shown" is from 1570s in English. Transferred sense of "plays, writing, production, the stage" is from 1660s. Generic sense of "place of action" is from 1580s; especially "region where war is being fought" (1914). Spelling with -re arose late 17c. and prevailed in Britain after c. 1700 by French influence, but American English retained or revived the older spelling in -er.

Only if by "the English" you mean "Noah Webster".

No I don't.
I mean he did pick to go with 'o' over 'ou', but in stuff like center/centre, defense/defence, Aluminum/Aluminium are all cases where UK English deviated rather than an American bastardization or whatever.
I'm sure you can find cases where it did happen, but by and large most of the differences between US and UK English are cases where the British deviated from the common dialect.
And for the record, I'm not a prescriptionist, I don't think there's a wrong way to speak or anything, and I like that we got different vernaculars (sheeeeit, without the British accent how the fuck am I supposed to know who the bad guys are at non-James Bond movies?) it's just that the idea that Americans ruined and dumbed down the Queen's English is not based on facts (I'm not saying you said that, just speaking in general).

 

[MGrant]

Feet and inches are simpler to use for estimating short distances than meters and centimeters. I'm six feet tall vs 182 cm. The desk is four feet wide vs 121 cm. The paper is 8.5 x 11 inches. It's not until you get to long distances greater than 4 meters or so that it starts to make more sense to me to switch to meters. Though mm are much more useful when I'm building computers.

 

[timetokill]

It works for us, why are Europeans always complaining about us?

The world complains about us because the US is so culturally dominant that they are ALWAYS running into our mannerisms and cultural preferences and having to remember, "Oh, yeah, Americans do it X way."

Same reason why Americans infrequently complain about others doing stuff their own way. It's just like, "Oh, that's cute."

 

[Two Words]

Feet and inches are better for estimating short distances than meters and centimeters. I'm six feet tall. The desk is four feet wide. The paper is 8.5 x 11 inches. It's not until you get to long distances greater than 3 meters or so that it starts to make more sense to me to switch to meters. Though mm are much more useful when I'm building computers.

That just sounds like bunk. I'm American and even I don't buy that. Metric is better because it is consistent. You don't have to rethink inches vs feet or anything like that. Centimeters are simply 1/100ths of a meter. So you can think of things as a percentage of a meter. When you're around 50 cms, that is about half a meter. Centimeters are perfectly fine for handling small measurements.

 

[daviyoung]

The world complains about us because the US is so culturally dominant that they are ALWAYS running into our mannerisms and cultural preferences and having to remember, "Oh, yeah, Americans do it X way."

It's because GAF is full of Americans. The world doesn't complain about you because these things don't affect their lives, at all. They complain about it on here because it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Same reason why Americans infrequently complain about others doing stuff their own way. It's just like, "Oh, that's cute."

Eh? Have you ever visited a Euro centric thread? Takes about 10 posts before the America comparisons flood in.

 

[sir_kevith]

Most people like farenheit more than Celsius after they get used to it as far as weather goes. 50-60-70-etc are all really descriptive and its easy to dress yourself around that scale.

 

[MGrant]

That just sounds like bunk. I'm American and even I don't buy that. Metric is better because it is consistent. You don't have to rethink inches vs feet or anything like that. Centimeters are simply 1/100ths of a meter. So you can think of things as a percentage of a meter. When you're around 50 cms, that is about half a meter. Centimeters are perfectly fine for handling small measurements.

Thanks for the percentage idea, that's great! I'll have to remember that (I'm an American living in a metric-using country). Still, for me, it's simpler for eyeballing purposes to subdivide into 12-inch units than it is to visually estimate the length of something as a percentage out of 100. But it is of course weighted more strongly towards whichever units you grew up with.

 

[VegiHam]

A key advantage metric actually has that makes it an objectively better system is that the measurements are all based off each other.

A cube of water measuring a meter on each side is 1000 litres of water, and weighs 1000kg. Heating it by 1 degree centigrade or one Kalvin uses 1000 kcal.

Or if you prefer, in imperial that's a 3.28 feet cube, which is 219 gallons, weighing 1826 pounds. In fairness to Fahrenheit you can heat it by 1F with 1826 joules of energy if you want I guess. Yay.

Also, I wish Americans would stop saying 'But you say October 3rd!' as if that applies to everyone. I'm English and I would say 'the third' if it was coming up, as in 'my appointment is on the third' and add an October on the end if the month was needed, as in 'my birthday is the third of october'

 

[neshcom]

Fahrenheit is nice for weather because it offers more degrees of detail and is more realistic when going between 0-100.

Imperial is whatever. Any good scientist uses metric and they're the only people who would be majorly affected by it.

For as much as people don't need to be reminded about the month, people also don't need to be reminded of the year. "June 14" is how we verbally say dates, and when you reduce dates to two units, dd/mm is opposite how we speak.

As to why: cultural attachment and the very marginal, long-term benefit of changing. It will not be worth it to educate the general public and change signs and units everywhere in all parts of our infrastructure and industries.

 

[demon]

It's called English. We get to make the rules.

There are no rules in english. You limey bastards fucked it all up from the start.

And as others have said fahrenheit is great for day-to-day use, particularly for the weather. 0 is cold as shit, 100 is hot as shit, and anything outside of that range can fuck off.

Metric is clearly superior from a practical sense, but imperial is much nicer to speak. Inches, feet, yards miles....so much nicer than millimeters, centimeters, meters, kilometers.....jesus christ what a syllable salad.

 

[MGrant]

For as much as people don't need to be reminded about the month, people also don't need to be reminded of the year. "June 14" is how we verbally say dates, and when you reduce dates to two units, dd/mm is opposite how we speak.

Just to clarify, people in America say "June 14th." People in other countries verbally say "fourteenth June" and similar all the time. Factor in other languages and it's even more common to say the day first.

 

[Wolfe]

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

Why, because you're used to it?

The measurement stuff is what gets me OP, the other stuff doesn't bother me as much.

 

[neshcom]

Just to clarify, people in America say "June 14th." People in other countries verbally say "fourteenth June" and similar all the time. Factor in other languages and it's even more common to say the day first.

Ah, interesting. It almost seems like a chicken-and-egg situation. Is the formatting first or did language dictate the format?

 

[waypoetic]

I agree! Fahrenheit is a stupid way to measure temperature! You're more than welcome to use the metric system OP.

 

[Dilly]

Fahrenheit is nice for weather because it offers more degrees of detail and is more realistic when going between 0-100.

That amount of detail is unnecessary for weather reports, so it doesn't matter. I wouldn't dress differently between 23 and 24 degrees Celsius.

It also isn't more 'realistic' when you're not used to it.

 

[cdyhybrid]

It's because GAF is full of Americans. The world doesn't complain about you because these things don't affect their lives, at all. They complain about it on here because it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Nah, they complain about it for the same reason people complain about anything else on the internet - it makes them feel superior because they think they're above something.

Too bad they can't do anything about it.

 

[CouchMaster]

Most people like farenheit more than Celsius after they get used to it as far as weather goes. 50-60-70-etc are all really descriptive and its easy to dress yourself around that scale.

I don't know what 60 or 70F means but if you tell me its going to be 20 or 25C I can instantly relate to that. Its not objective in day-to-day life.

 

[alekth]

I like the month/day order when it's written without the year actually. Mostly got used to that years ago with file names, and if the year has to be there, I'd go year/month/day.

The measurements are confusing if you're used to the metric system though, and I can't really do much with them aside from telling my height - that looks kind of neat. Human weight on the other hand looks absolutely awful to me in lb, I'm so used to kg that the numbers looks way too large.

Celsius/Fahrenheit is bleh. Don't think there's really much merit to either, just whatever you're used to.

 

[Calvero]

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.

What are some other people examples of our pointless American oddities?

Date makes sense to me if I think of it as least to greatest
1-12/1-31/2xxx

 

[hobblygobbly]

The only thing I don't understand as a non-American is why American English came about, the removal of U, the replacement of S with Z, the yse with yze, the ce with se, ae with e, and some words that are completely different.

Standardisation - Standardization.
Armour - Armor.
Offence - Offense.
Paralyse - Paralyze.
Scepticism - Skepticism.
Paediatric - Pediatric.
Archaeology - Archeology.

Shit can be confusing when you are not a native English speaker and learning/using English.