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Marc2b -> RE: What's *Your* Weather Like? (1/29/2013 7:31:19 AM)
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Okay, I had planned on responding to this soon but life got in the way.
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Lol, I think the reason Americans mostly don't embrace the metric system is because Americans didn't think of it first - simple as that. I understand anything in a context of it being what you're brought up on but still, wtf is hard to understand about a system where zero is actually called zero - rather than 32?
Bah! The nottion that Americans won't accept anything we havent invented is just a stereotype. After all, I like most Americans have been immunized against masny illnesses... and that was invented by a French dude. I'm sticking with my original theory... It weren't broke so we didn't fix it.
By the way, zero is also zero in the faren-however the hell you spell it-system. Any basis upon which to measure temp is arbritary.
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That said, I notice in American movies etc that more and more they're talking in kilometres rather than miles. LadyPact said 7.5 cms of snow rather than 3 inches. Lol, in Oz we'd say 75mm and that cms rarely gets used at all other than a person's height. I work in a metal engineering industry and, for example, a pump base might need 2 X 52mm holes drilled at 1860mm centre distance. That the decimal point that cms often require just becomes a pain in the arse and is thus dropped.
Actually, I think we are gradually (begrudgingly) accepting the metric system. Hollywood uses it more and more because the world market is bigger than the American market. You certainly have to know the metric system if you go into any of the hard sciences and most products list amounts, etc, in both the English system and metric.
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We do it correctly and drive on the right side of the road - which is the left side. Just like the Brits.... They didn't just give us their convicts, yanno! Or feral rabbits.... And speaking of feral, foxes too. And starlings - and sparrows - and lantana.... So far we've managed to mostly eradicate the imperial measuring system - that's it. lol
I guess I'm not going to go driving in Australia then (unless eveyone wants to get out of my way)!
Oh, by the way, England also sent many convicts to the American Colonies. I first learned this many years ago while researching my family history and found the arriving ancestor listed in an old book titled British Convicts Deported to the American Colonies.
That was a bummer. Oh well.
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