I don't understand while Europhiles think multi-lingualism is good, but multimetricism is bad. Is it because they are incapable of doing simple multiplication by any number other than ten? The English should insist that the Frence and Germans give up their antiquated and obsolete languages in exchange.

(And note the linguistic imperialism in the use of the term "metric" as if the French Measurment System is the only possible system of measurement. Maybe we should just say Language when referring to English.)

Raoul:

Indeed, they have it backwards. Everyone should speak English and no one use metric.

Smart move by the EUcrats. Pressure Britain, which is beginning to waiver on the whole EU concept, to accept a system it doesn't want.

Isn't Britain officially metric anyway? Their use of the imperial system is informal and colloquial, like when buying bananas at the shop or ordering beer in a pub.

Chris:

It's a mixture.

Using metric definitely made HS physics a lot easier.

We should all go metric, if for no other reason than to implement the decibet, as the Canadian Mr. Franklin (Aykroyd) explains below:

Joseph Franklin: Most Americans already know that the measurement of miles will be discarded in favor of kilometers - a system of measurement based on the unit of tens and already in use in most of the world. Few people, however, know about the new metric alphabet: the "Decibet"; "deci" from the Greek "ten", and "bet" from our own "alphabet". Let's take a look, shall we? [ holds up large poster of the Decibet ] Now, isn't that simple?

Now, let's take a look at some specifics.

[ shows Card 2 ] E and F, will be combined and graphically simplified to make one character.

[ shows Card 3 ] The groupings GHI, and..

[ shows Card 4 ] LMNO will be condensed to single letters. Incidentally, a boon to those who always had trouble pronouncing LMNO correctly.

[shows Card with black splotch] And finally, the so-called "trash letters", or P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z, will be condensed to this easily recognizable dark character.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten! Now, let's take a look at how this change will affect our daily speech habits.

[ shows card ] In the EF grouping addition, the word "eagle" would remain basically the same in character, but would be pronounced "efaglef". However, certain words previously beginning with the letter F, like..

[ shows xard ] .."fish", would be pronounced with an additional E sound: this, "efish". "I caught a big efish."

[ shows card ] Words beginning with I...as in "industry", will be pronounced "gindustry". The meaning will remain the same. LMNO's grouping is similar.

[ shows card ] "Mucus" will be LMNOucus".

[ shows card ] And "open" would then becom "LMNOpen", as in, "Honey, would you LMNOpen the door?" Finally, the "trash letters", or the letters from P to Z, would then make a stop sign appear like this: [ holds up stop sign with unintelligble blotch on it ] So there you have it.

It's also sweet to have the French insist on other countries using their measurement system, or else. For decades they resisted using Greenwich as the prime meridian for timekeeping, instead calling it "Paris Time diminished by 9 minutes 21 seconds." And that was after the Washington International Meridian Conference of 1884 agreed to their demand to include a call for decimalizing time and angle measurement.

The metric system has been a long time coming. When I was in grammar school in the forties, we were told it was right around the corner. They were wrong then and still wrong now. If God wanted us to use the metric system, he wouldn't have created inches and ounces.

And Raoul, What a great idea! Wouldn't it make everything so much easier (for us at least) if people stopped babbling and spoke Language.

Posted by: erp at August 29, 2005 12:56 PM

erp:
That's funny because when I was in grammar school im the seventies they told us the same thing!

Posted by: Governor Breck at August 29, 2005 2:07 PM

I remember the Fahrenheit/Celcius switch in the late 70s, and the switch back.

It is worth pondering how the U.S. resists metric so firmly, and how even Britain and the lesser Anglospherics continue to whine about it years after they've adopted it, with the casual casting off of centuries of tradition by the European countries in favour of the "rational" Euro".

Of course, if you guys hadn't foolishly adopted decimal currency in a fit of revolutionary francophilia and gone your own chauvinist way on the gallon, the Anglosphere might have made a united, successful stand against the evil metrics. In fact, I'd bet tuppence on it.

What does an EU carpenter use for a tape measure? Does anybody know? Here in the US, a tape measure will have the number in red with the word "stud" at 16, 32, 48... inches. I know Canadians use a standard tape measure and use wood 2 x 4 studs (actually 1.5" x 3.5").

There are no studs in Europe.

About 10 years ago, in Louisville, Kentucky, a new stretch of freeway was opened and the exit signs were printed in both miles & KM's. They caused outrage, laughter, confusion, and were removed within weeks.

Wasn't it that great American President, Jimmy "econ-wizard" Carter who sought to have the metric system implemented by 1979?

Peter:

Decimilisation was a great idea. How people tolerated the nonsense of shillings, farthings and ha'-penny's for so long is beyond me.

Reminds me of an episode of Dr. Who, where he brings the punk rock girl Ace back from the future to WWII-era Britain. "What a stupid system!" she cries when trying to figure out the money.

The problem with the metric system is that it is pseudo rational in the way that most goofy French theories are. One of the inventors of modern physics, Max Planck realized that a universal physical constant that he discovered, which is now known as (surprise) Planck's Constant, when combined with the speed of light (the fundamental constant of Maxwell's equations and Special Relativity), and G (the constant of Newton's theory of Gravity and the General Theory of Relativity), produces units of mass, length and time that are dictated solely by fundamental physics and in which the fundamental constants of physics are units or powers of ten times units.

These fundamental physical units are very small (the Planck length is 1.6*10^-35 meters and the Planck time is 5.391*10^-44 seconds), but they can be scaled up to produce human scale units that are suspiciously like old English units. E.g. 10^38 Planck lengths is ~1616 meters which is less than 1/2% longer than a mile.

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Posted by: Robert Schwartz at August 30, 2005 11:10 PM