Nov 16 2009
Wars in the Desert, A Public Option, What’s Next, The Metric System?
Published by eric at 12:28 am under Lifestyle, Politics (1156 views)
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...It shouldn’t be such a far flung idea, switching to the Metric system. Right now we do have more important things to deal with, but can’t we get the ball rolling finally on this whole Metric system thing?
I was chatting with friends in Australia this evening (where it’s always tomorrow) and since they are in the Southern hemisphere, it’s getting warmer down there this time of year and colder up here. They asked what the temperature was, knowing they’re used to Metric down there I used the trusty calculator that comes with Mac OS X and used the “Convert” menu to convert my 45 degrees Farenheit to degrees Celsius, then proceeded to tell them “…it’s about 7 degrees here now.”
Not expecting me to have done the conversion for them, they asked “is that in degrees Celsius?”
This conversation started me thinking about how all American kids have been taught the Metric
system in public schools since sometime in the 70’s. So most 30 and 40-something adults in America are more than familiar with it. Let alone the generation X and Y’s that follow.
After being somewhat impressed and thanking me for doing the conversion, I proceeded to inform the Australians that all Americans have been taught Metric in school for some number of years now. They then asked “So how come you haven’t switched yet?” Good question Ozzie friend.
With lots of obvious reasons coming to mind, for example, laziness, priorities, etc etc…I then thought about our new President. With Obama representing “change” and “the future” and all that maybe after the wars calm down and the health care debate gets somewhat resolved, could it be possible in a few years, or the beginning of a second term, he could start a push to get this great isolationist country switched to the Metric system? After all, at this rate, it clearly won’t happen spontaneously, there will have to be Federal law to make it happen.
I’ve been living in Southern California now for almost 3 years. I moved from Phoenix, where I lived for 19 years. If you take the I-10 freeway out to LA from Phoenix, you will see some well intentioned “Metric/English” road signs indicating in kilometers as well as miles the distance to the next town. The first time I saw this I got excited, that someone started doing something about it. Then realized, those signs are THE ONLY signs of their kind. Seems like California may have tried to get the ball rolling some years ago and realized there may have been better things to spend tax dollars on. Tax dollars this great state is coming up short on these days.
Ultimately, the thing that binds societies together, brings people together, and even makes doing business more seamless is uniform communication. Without communication what do we have? This huge gap in standardizing units of measurement needs to be closed, once and for all. It may cost money. It may take time. But I believe it is worth the investment in the long term. Let’s do it for the kids!
