In an unintentionally ironic commentary on CNN, Republican John Feehery warns that now that the Democrats have a 60 seat majority in the Senate (with Senator Al Franken), we can expect such horrors as The Metric System (are you scared yet?)!
What will this lead to? Soft drinks sold in liter bottles? Oh yeah, they already are. In fact, pretty much all industry has gone multinational, meaning that even US companies are metric. But we still stick with our unique and bizarre system of measurement, which means that our science students have a big handicap versus their international peers, everyone in the US with a toolbox needs to have two sets of wrenches, and our remaining manufacturing companies are less competitive in the world market.
As evidence that the Democrats are going to push for metrification, he points out the last time Congress passed a bill trying to move the US to the metric system. It was signed by Republican president Gerald Ford. Oops.
But my favorite part is that at the top of the article, the editor gives a brief bio of Feehery. They list him as president of an “advocacy firm”. Translation? He’s a lobbyist. His clients include the News Corp. (i.e, Fox News), Ford Motor Company (whose cars are all metric anyway) and the US Chamber of Commerce (who under its current president, has become a cheerleading group for Republicans). Before that, he was a lobbyist for the MPAA (motto: not quite as evil as the RIAA).
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So, a Republican lobbyist for Fox News is goading us into irrationally being afraid of something simply because it’s foreign to us?
Why, CNN, oh why?
CNN’s amassing quite a list reasons not to trust it as a news source:
Legitimizing intellectually unsubstantiated debates…
Failure to fact-check the quotes and claims made on-air…
Substituting idiotic twitter ramblings and entertainment personalities for sober, serious, thoughtful journalism…
…
Nice fact-checking, by the way. Opensecrets is one my new favorite websites.
In all fairness, the English (or Imperial) system of measurement is not unique or bizarre. It’s an old system (established in 1824) and, in addition to the U.S., it is still in use by Liberia, Myanmar, and a few places in England. Although I suspect that now that Liberia is on its way to recovery, it will probably join the rest of the world in adopting the metric system.
This reminds me of the time when a JPL scientist working on one of the Mars missions forgot to convert some important numbers into metric. The entire mission was almost lost. I always wondered what happened to that scientist.
Our system *is* unique. US gallons are a different size than imperial gallons, and our pints are 16 ounces instead of the British 20 ounces. Believe it or not, even our yards are a slightly different length than Imperial yards.
On what basis do you claim that it (either our system or Imperial) is not bizarre? Quick, how many square yards are in a square mile? Do you realize that we have *three* different weight systems?
The English system was codified in 1824 (as you say), which was after American independence, so our system is based on an earlier English system (the one they got rid of!). For a complete list of differences, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems
There was a metric/US customary mixup that almost ruined the Hubble Space Telescope; is that what you were thinking about? That error caused lots of problems for Perkin-Elmer, the company that made the mistake.
No, I was thinking of one of the Mars missions. My husband isn’t around to tell me which one. I’ll ask him which one when he gets back. He knew people who worked at JPL and who knew the person who screwed up. No one really wanted to talk about it, though, because it was such an embarrassment. Can’t blame them. For scientists, who are trained to work exclusively in the metric system, that’s a pretty big f*k-up.
You’re right in that there are minor differences between the American system and the original Imperial system, but we still use the same language and the same base numbers. You’ll get a little more beer when you order a pint in London than in Boston. Seems to me that it’s a problem for English visitors to the U.S. but great for U.S. Americans going to England.
With that said, I think fear of the metric system is one of the dumbest things on the planet and it tells you to whom these folks are pandering. The reason I think it is dumb, though, is because there isn’t anything sacred about any particular system of measurement.
All systems of measurement are arbitrary and entirely dependent on historical context. Look at the history of the development of the three major systems of measuring temperature and you’ll see it is as much political as it is “scientific”. Can you really say that metric is better than Imperial or the American version of it? How would determine something is better?
I grew up in California where distances between places is measured in time. How far is East L.A. to Pasadena? Depending on the time of day, maybe 30 minutes. Here in Boston, distances are measured in relation to place. How far is Lynn to Salem? Lynn is 2 towns over from Salem. Why is distance measured differently? I couldn’t tell you. It makes more sense to me to measure distance in terms of time to get from one place to another, rather than the amount of land that I traverse. But people here look at it in terms of how many different places they have to go through to get somewhere. Neither is better than the other. Both places simply have a different way of doing it.
Personally, it would make sense to go metric. If only to save the money wasted on fixing stupid mistakes, like forgetting to make simple conversions on a space mission.
Three major systems of measuring temperature? I can only think of two “major” systems (Fahrenheit and Celsius) and two minor ones (Kelvin and Rankine, which are just shifted variations of F and C).
And yes, I can unequivocally say that the Metric system is much easier to use and makes much more sense than the Imperial system and its variations. Just the fact that it is used in the rest of the world is enough to say that metric makes more sense!
The Mars screw-up didn’t ALMOST ruin the mission. The probe/rover/whatever crashed and was destroyed due to the scientist(s) forgetting to convert metrics.
Americans are too stupid to convert to metric. I mean….we elected Bush…TWICE!
Ah yes, here’s a link to that story:
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/
The orbiter did crash but the mission wasn’t ruined. Just severely hampered. There were two other orbiters that continued to function until a few years ago.
You’re right that Kelvin (I don’t know much about Rankine) is not in use by the average person. Since one argument that everyone should use metric is that it is the major system of measurement in science, I thought it relevant. I have some friends who do high falutin’ physics work (something related to what they do at the Collider) and they explained to me that they work in Kelvin. Maybe it’s only important for certain areas of physics research.
I have to admit, I have no dog in this fight. In my area research, it doesn’t matter what system of measurement is used to understand/explain the physical world. We have our own ways of measuring things.
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