Did We Really Ditch The Metric System

[cincygreg]

It seems to me that we did not leave it for dead a buried as many thought we did. We deal with it in everyday life and in many activities the some participate in.
Dont think so? Well think about this.
When you do a charlity walk or run they are usualy measued in...
Kilometers! Yep that K in that 5K or 10K stands for that old metirc measurement, the Kilometer.
When you measure how much fat or vitamins and minerals on a food nutricional lable, it's all in grams. When a whole lotta grams are added up they become a...
Kilogram!
We purchase soft drinks in 1 and 2 liter bottles as often as we do in 12 ounce cans.
Centimeters are marked off on all rulers and measuring tapes.
Though most major sports still use traditional foot and yard measurements, sports such as swimming and track and field use the meter are much as anything.
It seems though we all scoffed at the idea of using the metric system, we went ahead and incorporated it into our everyday lives without even knowing it.
Still I doubt any of us will be using the term "it's a country kilometer long" anythime soon, it's intteresting to note that we are in fact part of the metric community, even if we didnt know it.

[Raven Soul]

You fucking communist.

[Dulcinea]

Well, people apparently won't do it voluntarily so we had to sneak it in.

In the 1970s we had a bumper sticker on our car saying "GO METRIC". It is the only bumper sticker that was ever on any of my family's cars, including to date. It is STUPID of Americans not to accept the metric system. As a decimal based system, it really would be much easier to learn as a child. All you need is a basic gestalt of what they mean, and by now I think people have it. Someone says liter, and you KNOW it's just a little bit more than a quart, you KNOW how much two liters is. Someone says meter, you KNOW it's a little bit more than a yardstick.

My mom said, what about recipes? How will I measure things that are measured in milliliters? And I said, Mom, how do you measure a cup? And she said, I get my cup measure. And I said, then you get your liter measure, and fill it up to the 250 ml line or whatever it says. And she said, oh, that is not so hard.

It is stupid that we aren't there already. It makes the country look like stubborn idiots in the world view.

[travelinman]

Dulc,

It doesn?t matter if we accepted the metric system or not, it would not change how the world perceives us.

I can?t stand all this whiney ass shit that if only we did this or we only did that then the ?world? will like us. What a bunch of shit.

The ?world? will never like us because where bigger, richer and more powerful then they are. We could spend 50% of our GNP on humanitarian programs; we could open our borders to every terrorist/criminal that wants to be here, wait we did that, we could become that most socialist oops I mean progressive country in the world and they will still hate us.

They hate us because they are jealous and they feel inferior, the only way they will accept us is for us to be brought down to their level.

I love the fact that we don?t use the metric system. It?s a hoot sitting in a conference room with a bunch of British, Swedish or French engineers and forcing them to use inches. It doesn?t matter how much they yell, scream or ignore, by default the international standards for IT are US measurements. (Actually the Brits are the best because I can tell deep down they want their imperials back).

Communication equipment racks and cabinets come in 19, 23 and 35 inch mounting widths. All major manufactures such as Cisco, Dell, HP and others require mounting rails that conform to American universal hole spacing per section 1 of ANSI/EIA-310-D-1992.

Elevations of racks and cabinets are measured in rack units (RUs) 1 RU = 1 ? inches or 44.45 mm.

Standard rack cabinet heights are:

17 RU, 3 feet or 914.4mm
24 RU, 4 feet or 1219.2mm
38 RU, 6 feet or 1828.8mm
48 RU, 7 feet 0r 2133.6mm

One thing I love to do is give them my standard rack and overhead cable tray design. I normally use a 7 foot rack and require a 6 inch clearance from the top of the rack to the bottom of the cable tray to maintain proper radius bends when feeding fiber optic cables from the horizontal tray to the vertical rack. Fiber bend radius is 10 x the OD of the cable and of course the cable is manufactured in the US and measured in fractions of inches. So when I tell them that the cable tray must be mounted so the bottom of the tray is at 2286mm above the finished floor (AFF) they nod their head and smile behind their hands, but when I show up for the 1st inspection, take out my tape measure and measure the cable tray at 2200mm or 2400mm AFF and politely tell them they are out of spec and have to move the tray their humor seems to disappear. Now I tell them I am going to do this prior to the start of construction but they go on about their business thinking ?fuck the yank? then change their tune when they find out they don?t get paid unless I?m happy.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ May 19, 2006 09:21 AM: Message edited by: travelinman ]</font>