Examined in a vacuum, there is nothing obviously virtuous about the imperial system of measurement. If the United States were starting from scratch, \u00e0 la Thomas Paine, its people would almost certainly elect to conform to the global standard, if only because it would make it easier for scientists who work on collaborative projects. But this is rather beside the point, for we do not live in a vacuum, and the United States is not to be started anew. Instead, we are discussing the future of a well-established and extraordinarily successful country that is full of living, breathing, habit-forming people. Were Americans to follow Lincoln Chafee\u2019s counsel and, in a \u201cbold embrace of internationalism\u201d agree to \u201cjoin the rest of the world and go metric,\u201d it would almost certainly make Germany and Lithuania and San Marino feel a little better about themselves. It may help things on the International Space Station, too. But it would not, pace Chafee\u2019s blas\u00e9 claim, represent an \u201ceasy\u201d transition. Au contraire: To pull the roots out at this late stage in the game would be extremely tough. The imperial system developed as it did for a reason \u2014 to wit, it makes intuitive sense. To push people out of their intuitions is a hard task indeed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
I’m going to disagree with both sides.<\/p>\n
For starters, as the old saw says, there are two types of countries; ones that use metric, and ones that’ve been to the moon. \u00a0We clearly don’t suffer much from using metric.<\/p>\n
And beyond that? \u00a0Every American that\u00a0needs\u00a0<\/em>to use metric – scientists, doctors, soldiers – already does.<\/p>\nAnd seriously – is it really that hard to switch between the two? \u00a0A meter is about a yard. \u00a0There are three kilometers to two miles. \u00a0A kilo is 2.2 pounds. \u00a0A liter is a quart with a little change. \u00a0There are about 2.5 hectares to an acre, not that anyone in n a country that is actually self-sufficient for food measures land in hectares (except maybe Australian and Argentina). \u00a09 millimeter is the same as .38, .357 and .380 ACP.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The left, in its tireless search for crises not to waste, is going – some of them, anyway – back to that old warhorse, the Metric System. Charles CW Cooke: Examined in a vacuum, there is nothing obviously virtuous about the imperial system of measurement. If the United States were starting from scratch, \u00e0 la […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-western-civilization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53713,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53712\/revisions\/53713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}