Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Metric people. METRIC. It's called the metric system.

...wait a minute wait a minute. This is dumb.

Why do we have to keep using this ridiculous base-8, base-16, base-32 numbering system? It's just confusing.

I can't tell if this doodad is meant to be 1 9/16" or 1 3/8" long... and you know what? I don't even care any more. I mean - WHO can tell what we're talking about here?

Wouldn't it be great if there was some simple, base-10 unit of measurement we could all just agree to use? These imperial measurements are just screwy. Wouldn't it be great if we could just call it 40 _somethings_ and everyone would know what we're talking about. I don't want to have to do division of fractions just to figure out what half a 1 9/16" bolt is - if it were a 40 _something_ bolt, then a bolt half the size would just be 20 _somethings_. Doesn't that make sense?

I mean, 8.3 pounds of water in a gallon? What's that all about? I mean - it's such a standard thing. It's water fer chrissakes. It should be one _something_ per _something_.

...

I KNOW!!!

Let's use the METRIC system!

They've already got it worked out! It's ALL base-10 numbers! MILLIMETRES! Of course! We should call the bolt a 40mm bolt! PROBLEM SOLVED!

Density of water?!? Why, it's 1 kg/litre! How easy is that?

Wow. That's our entire problem solved!

Why didn't we think of this before?





Oh. Wait. I know.

Because we're American.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I lived in the States and was estimating US govt (construction) projects, they seemed to always be documented and reported in metric. It's the civilians need to get in line!

Rose of Sharon said...

Even England has gone metric! We may have escaped religious tyranny, but we still didn't learn to measure well!

Ceels said...

Oh please, if you have a litre, you can't have seven people round for a pint. That is why gallons are the way they are.

You with your science logic.

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