Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for October 05, 2023

Converting to the metric system makes sense and can be done. It’s just that the vast majority of USians don’t wanna do it.

To be fair you can go through a litre of vodka pretty quickly if you look at the state of the world.

I swam 20,000 leagues under the sea for this?

It’s like LED bulbs they were first listed in number of lumens with equivalent wattage in small print, now they are listed by wattage only.

Using measurements simply because they divide by ten is much more arbitrary than using measurements that evolved because they were actually useful.

You know what a meter is? How far light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. That’s not arbitrary at all, is it?

Nobody uses the dekameter. Because it’s not useful. So there’s nothing between the tiny centimeter and something that’s about a yard. People still use the foot because it’s useful.

My foot is longer than 1 foot.

Metric rules. It’s much easier than the American (SAE) system.

This was inspired by the Mars lander that crashed because of a conversion error.

Globalist nonsense. How are you supposed to know a man? By walking 1.609344 kilometers in his shoes?

The “Eight Commandments” is the funniest thing in this strip.

I spent a year as an artillery forward observer. Kinda made learning the metric system well a priority. Happily we’d had it drilled into our heads from fifth grade on. Part of the STEM push for the space race in the ’60s.

Blame Sears – lol

I’ve always maintained that saying you weigh 100 kilograms sounds a lot lighter than saying you weigh 220 lbs. ( I’m down to a svelt 91k ! )

Making measurements using the metric system is far easier and less prone to errors than the antiquated English system. For example, what is 7/32" X 3/8"?

As the old joke goes, the only things America uses metric for are the two-liter soda bottle and the 9-millimeter handgun.

Metric conversion was only one part, but an important one, in the saga of the Gimli Glider: https://en.wikipedia.Org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

I’m still trying to remember the science-fiction story in which aliens invade Earth, and the all-Earth-countries counterforce is completely muddled by the conversions made necessary by the different measurement systems used by the different countries.

Does anyone remember when the NFL tried to convert to metric? I credit that with single-handedly ruining the complete conversion for the average person.

The US government wised up and required all projects to be in metric since at least the 1990s. Which is the second nail in the coffin (after the NFL) for most people. They won’t do it if the government says it’s useful, no matter how useful it is

Shouldn’t that pressure be expressed in Pascals?

When baking, using grams instead of volume measurements for dry ingredients like flour and sugar makes everything come out better. Plus you know the results will be the same every time (adjusting, as you do, for humidity and temperature.)

For temperature, check out today’s Looks Good on Paper

What I find upsetting is climate scientists giving their measurements and maths findings in the Metric system. The vast majority of folks in this country don’t use the metric system, much less understand it. Using the metric system without providing the American math systems can lead to serious mis- understanding. It gives the deniers a lot of room to work with.

Kilometer signs were posted on the interstates for a while. Wonder when that stopped. Not that they are missed.

The first real task for AI. Total conversion systems. Whether you use inches, centimeters or “about yea big”, they convert it to whatever the listener prefers.

I’ll say it again. Metric is easier. For example, what is the hole size for a 6-32 screw? Sure, look it up. What is the hole size for an M3 screw? Easy, 3 mm. M3 screws and 6-32 screws kinda look the same, but the hole size is slightly different, and the thread pitch is different.

Most fasteners in cars are metric, and everything you get at IKEA is metric (but they convert it to SAE units because us exceptional Americans don’t understand metric.