walkinaround

>>>>>
Anyway, one of the reasons that I keep answering in metric is that it sounds patronizing to me if you convert everything for Americans (of which I am one) -- as though they were mentally handicapped and unable to grasp a different system.
>>>>>

that's very odd...i do not find it patronising if an american were to quote temp to me in celsius....as if i were too stupid to understand temp in his F system. i just really wouldn't give it much thought or look at it as some sort of statement.

logos999

Maybe this shows why metric is better
19th centuty Germany. 1 mile (1 Meile) equals:
5532.5 meters in Prussia
7500 meters in Saxony
7586 meters in Austria
8888.9 meters in Baden
7448.8 meters in Würtemberg
....

xyz123

Logos...

My German is awful (or really non existant)....zoll in German isn't it customs? (like in douance)

logos999

One word two meanings

Cimbrone

walkinaround--not living in the U.S., you are not surrounded by Troglodytes with a developmentally stunted version of patriotism. If you could be subjected to the insularity and smugness of many of my countrymen, demonstrated even on this thread, you might understand why many of us, particularly world-traveler types who realize that we are not the only free country in the world appreciate foreign cultural differences while we roll our eyes at some of our own.

Carrybean

Walkinaround, I hope you're male because I think I love you.

tomboy

Doesn't matter to me, an American.
20 C is 70 F; more than 20 C is hot, less than 0 C is freezing. 5 km = 3 miles, and vice versa. A liter is roughly a quart. Conversion vexes only those who flunked 3rd grade math.

KT

"it sounds patronizing to me if you convert everything for Americans (of which I am one...On the other hand, I have not seen much of an effort in the U.S. to make things understandable for the rest of the world..."

If I understand this correctly, you're comparing unlike things. On the one hand, you see the conversion from metric on this board as patronizing. You compare that to the lack of conversion to metric in the US at large, which means that Europeans aren't being patronized (or helped out, depending on the point of view).

But if you look in Europe at large, or even to most boards run and used mostly by Europeans (esp. those conducted in European languages), you won't see much conversion to US measures.

It would seem to depend upon the audience, and since the majority (though not all) of the posters here are American, it doesn't seem to many to be patronizing to use American measures, any more than it's patronizing to tell Europeans that the temperature gets up to 30 degrees in San Franciso on hot days, or that a hotel in New York is 2 kilometers from Lincoln Center. True, they won't find those measurements used in the U.S., but for their planning they'll use those measures. And chances are, when they see a sign saying "Chicago 40 miles" they'll mentally convert it themselves, because they're more familiar with what a kilometer "feels" like.

And the same goes for telling US travellers in advance that a trip in Europe is X miles long. They find it more familiar to conceptualize in miles, even if they won't see the road marked off in miles when they get there.

Or is all of this just a test to see how many of us are "sophisticated" enough to use metric?

nytraveler

I just always answer in F and miles since that's what I'm used to. If the questioner is another American the info helps. If not - they can convert to their own system.

(As to why not to do everything in metric - we simply don;t operate on that - and why put in a response that's not immediately clear to most of the readers.)

Marko

Isn't the only reason that the US keeps the dollar note is that dollar coins fall out of strippers G String too easily

...and before the wowsers jump on me ......that was a joke !

RufusTFirefly

"I'm guessing that at least 3 million Americans at least contemplate travel to Europe in any given decade..."

Did you mean 30 million? To the best of my recollection, somewhere around 12-14 million Americans travel to Europe each year, though some percentage of these are repeat visitors, most are not.

I think I read that about 3 million Americans visit France alone each year, not each decade.

Tries2PakLite

"it's just very interesting to me that american europhiles are so quick to embrace all differences around the world as sacred cultural characteristics yet anything done differently at home is disparaged."

walkinaround -- amen to that! Why do some American's feel compelled to apologize for their country? America was founded by people that wanted to do things differently. It's our heritage.

I think it's embarrassing. Why do we need to be better or worse? Why can't Americans embrace their own differences?

RufusTFirefly

The metric system is just so predictable and boring. 10 x 10 x 10 x10--blah.

kerouac

The most revolutionary change proposed at the time of the French revolution was never implemented -- the measurement of time. It was proposed to make the day 10 hours long with 100 minutes of 100 seconds. This meant changing the length of a second to fit the earth's rotation, and this went too far beyond what the 18th century mind could accept. But it would have been interesting...

flanneruk

"I've noticed that some people here, in their replies, go out of their way to convert "European" temperatures to Fahrenheit and "European" distances to miles"

Eh? What are miles and pounds and Fahrenheit if not European?

Rome to Milan is 400 miles. A big bistecca alla fiorentina weighs about a pound. What many Frenchmen or Italians call those values is none of our business. If the Italians continue to ignore their heritage by using the measurement imposed on them by a repellent little French bully, more fool the Italians. But most people who speak English as their first language use the measurements first developed by the Romans. Which isn't translating: it's using our language.

Using the Napoleonic system means ignoring Europe's heritage: just as vandalistic as the English Protestants' destruction of all their paintings and statues in the mid-16th century.

The extreme example of this cultural yobbery is in, of all places, the British Museum. There's a Roman distance template on display: one of those public signs showing the official definition of an uncia. What was an uncia? Well accorduing to the louts at the BM "a Roman measurement of distance equivalent to 25.4 millimetres"

It isn't. An uncia is an inch. The BM would like to pretend Rome's systems were a historical quaintness. For much of the world (including the overwhelming majority of the taxpayers who fork out for the BM's politically vacuous nonsense), those systems are how we measure today.

And to answer Kerouac's questions. I want my measurements in miles, my degrees how you like and my prices in those charged locally.

And most Europeans don't use the Euro anyway.

prolepsis

Interesting to see what diehard positions can come flaming through when one touches on a subject regarding cultural heritage.

However, I was trying to calculate what is 8 p.m. as per the French revolutionary time system. I think it comes to 8:33. Can anybody confirm this?

adeben

Australians speak a rough sort of English, and, in my lifetime, have converted from the English monetary system (pounds, shillings and pence) to dollars and cents, and later moved from the English weights and measures to the metric system. The world as we know it did not end. Certainly all the above systems are now easier to understand and implement, given they are based on 'ten' as the main multiplying and dividing unit. I never did understand 'pecks' and 'roods', to mention just a couple of arcane measurements. To my children, educated entirely on the metric system, 'pounds', 'stones', 'pints', 'quarts', 'gallons' and 'miles' are all equally ancient and quaint.

gard

Hi

I prefer the metric system and celsius. But it is quite easy to convert these days...you can use Google and just punch in the stuff directly and get the converted values.

Regards
Gard
http://gardkarlsen.com - trip reports and pictures

PatrickLondon

It's a question of your internal perceptions. I was brought up "imperial", but I am learning to equate 100g with a quarter-pound and so on (and Celsius temperatures are almost my first port of call these days). But "customary" measures still apply when you only need an approximation: a teaspoon of this and a splash of that when you're cooking are as inexact in any system. Which is why French people will still talk occasionally about "pouces", "pieds" and "livres" and Germans will use "Pfund" as a measure of weight.

wally34949

This helps me when I travel figuring out the temperature. If the temperature is 16 degrees in Europe, double it and add 30 and that will be the approximate temperature in Fahrenheit. 16 + 16 + 30 = 62 degrees.

Don't tell this to a science teacher. They most likely will have a fit.