An illustration of how much sense the metric system makes to me.


i was always scared of the metric system.

back when i was in elementary and middle school, teachers spent a chapter or portion of the school year teaching me and my fellow students about... THE METRIC SYSTEM.  i remember being totally bewildered by the new calculations and units i was supposed to learn, but worse than that, i remember being told that the United States was soon going to adopt the metric system as its standard (as Europe had already done), and i was scared shitless -- because while i was a darn good student, i never understood the Metric System.

well, it turned out that America DIDN'T convert to the metric system as previously warned -- the distance of my work commute was to be measured in miles for many years (not in kilometers), and the smoked turkey i bought at the local deli was to be measured in pounds all my life (not in kilograms).  and i was glad.  when you fail a chapter of study that teachers swear you need to know, you hope like crazy that they're wrong -- that you'll never actually need to know it in real life.

well, they weren't wrong.  not exactly.  you see, as most of you are aware, i have moved to England.  and guess what:  they follow the f-ing metric system here.  in fact, i looked it up and it happens to be that as of 2007, only three countries in the WORLD (the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar/Burma) had not mandated the metric system upon their populations.  i bet that surprises a few of the Americans out there, eh?  i know it surprised me...

being 5 feet and three inches tall means nothing to people here.  my height, if taken, would be in centimeters, and i have no idea how many centimeters tall i am.  if i were buying gas (or "petrol") for a car, i would not be buying it per gallon -- i'd be buying it by the liter.  in fact, it's not even LEGAL to buy and sell goods by the pound, gallon or ounce here -- and we can thank the European Union for THAT little gem.

when i pull out an American family recipe that calls for "one pound" of ground beef, i now have to remember that that actually means i need .454 kilograms of meat.  if i need a 12-ounce can of kidney beans for chili, i have to know that i actually need 340.2 grams of beans.  if the store is a mile from my flat, it's actually 1.61 kilometers away.

and frankly, that's a giant pain in my ass.

metric conversions are all well and good if i'm sitting at home at my Mac, where all i have to do is press the F12 key to get a metric system converter, but when i'm out in the field (AKA the grocery store) i'm pretty much fucked.

it was wisely suggested to me before i left the States that i not think about metric units as some fraction of the American units and just start learning the metric units.  i know this was sound advice, but it doesn't help me much in these early months of trying to buy groceries and housewares.

what's my point?  i don't really have one.  but if somewhere out there one of my childhood teachers is reading this, they can rest assured that they did not lie when they said i was going to NEED to know the metric system one day. 

they were right.

and also?  today we had a high of 63 degrees Fahrenheit in London.  except in London it's not "63 degrees Fahrenheit" -- it's 17.222 degrees Celsius. 

but don't even get me started on THAT.

Captain Imperial
6/12/2008 09:27:51 pm

While it may initially feel like the aftermath of the destruction of the Tower Of Babel over here, and yes, Alejandro Iñárrit could have surely had Brad Pitt battling to survive, not in the rural farmland of Morocco, but Shepherds Bush, London, a good proportion of the population have had to make a similar change as you recently. Most English people are just as confused.

I am 28, reasonably educated, and have lived here all my life but have no idea what my weight is in KG, nor my height in meters. I couldn't tell you how far it is to the coast in kilometers, but I could in miles.

The website http://www.metric.org.uk/home.htm contains "an explanation of why it is in Britain's interest to complete the changeover to the international metric system as soon as possible". Except the metric system isn't truly international, as you so wonderfully point out. It's not used by the most powerful country in the world. Why we can't use whatever system we want too is, frankly, insane.

I believe in the free market. If traders feel it is in their best interest to trade in pounds and ounces (as many did pre 2001), or metric, or both. Then let them. If they want to sell cloth by the yard, or beef by the horse hoof, fine. Whatever they want. If it is too much hassle for them to have separate price schemes then they will make a choice, listening to what people want, and pick just one. Making it illegal to choose how to list produce prices, as the EU did, is plain stupid. And it is no wonder the Irish have probably rejected the new EU treaty today.

Love the picture, by the way.

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