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Commemorate this Independence Day by going back to our Enlightenment ideal of reason and stop using the ruler from a 12th-century English king's ego-trip of creating measurements out of his body parts and his personal items. It is unpatriotic for Americans to use a ruler to measure. The word "ruler" is an obvious red flag for something antithetical to the American ideal of the republic virtue.
Blah blah blah whatever. I'll switch to metric when you stop speaking English.
The rules of this forum make it very difficult to express an honest assessment of the opinion of the OP, other than to say that imo further comment is a waste of bandwidth. I'm with Drover and Go Ne on this one.
I like the system we have now, why change to metric? Who cares what the rest of the world is doing? We are American, we march to the beat of our own drum.
Sure lets go back to the Julian Calendar and duodecimal currency (pounds, shillings, and pence).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fleet
Most Americans don't want to. The government tried to force it on the American people in the 1970s and it didn't work then. I doubt it would work now.
Fifteen years before, Martin Luther King warned of Gradualism in his "I have a Dream" speech. He warned "This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism."
Apparently some people didn't believe (or didn't remember) Dr. King's admonition of Gradualism. But some learned from the metrication adn the dollar coin mistakes of the 1970's, such as the DTV transition. Notice a short time for DTV conversion (5 years).
Let's take a lesson from Sweden's transition into the Gregorian Calendar.
Quote:
From Wikipedia:
Sweden's relationship with the Gregorian Calendar was a difficult one. Sweden started to make the change from the Julian calendar and towards the Gregorian calendar in 1700, but it was decided to make the (then 11-day) adjustment gradually, by excluding the leap days (29 February) from each of 11 successive leap years, 1700 to 1740. In the meantime, the Swedish calendar would be out of step with both the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar for 40 years; also, the difference would not be constant but would change every 4 years. This strange system clearly had great potential for endless confusion when working out the dates of Swedish events in this 40-year period. To make matters worse, the system was poorly administered and the leap days that should have been excluded from 1704 and 1708 were not excluded. The Swedish calendar (according to the transition plan) should now have been 8 days behind the Gregorian, but was still in fact 10 days behind. King Charles XII wisely recognised that the gradual change to the new system was not working, and he abandoned it.
However, rather than proceeding directly to the Gregorian calendar, it was decided to revert to the Julian calendar. This was achieved by introducing the unique date 30 February in the year 1712, adjusting the discrepancy in the calendars from 10 back to 11 days. Sweden finally adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1753, when Wednesday, 17 February was followed by Thursday, 1 March. Since Finland was under Swedish rule at that time, it did the same. [13]
Notice the parallel of reverting back to the old system. This is why gradualism doesn't work. King knew that segregation would still exist (to this day--the 2000's) if a gradual attitude was adopted amongst the movement, thus undermining it.
Another reason for the mistakes is that the movement promoted the now outdated tactic of restating the Metric measurements into the more familiar context of Colonial measurements. I didn't see Great Britain trying to keep 2 calendars at the same time (familiar Julian first/new Gregorian second) other wise we'd be using the Julian Calendar in the U.S. today and the biggest objection to Gregorian conversion is the church/state issue from its Catholic roots. (The objection in the 18th-early 20th century would've been the fear of some Protestants that the new calendar was part of a plot to return them to Catholicism.)
Otherwise, it's a Happy June 23/July 6 Independence Day today! Independence Day (July 4, 1776) was June 23, 1776 in the Julian Calendar.
I wish everyone a good Independence Day today! Happy June 23/July 6 Independence Day.
Sure lets go back to the Julian Calendar and duodecimal currency (pounds, shillings, and pence).
Fifteen years before, Martin Luther King warned of Gradualism in his "I have a Dream" speech. He warned "This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism."
Apparently some people didn't believe (or didn't remember) Dr. King's admonition of Gradualism. But some learned from the metrication adn the dollar coin mistakes of the 1970's, such as the DTV transition. Notice a short time for DTV conversion (5 years).
Let's take a lesson from Sweden's transition into the Gregorian Calendar.
Notice the parallel of reverting back to the old system. This is why gradualism doesn't work. King knew that segregation would still exist (to this day--the 2000's) if a gradual attitude was adopted amongst the movement, thus undermining it.
Another reason for the mistakes is that the movement promoted the now outdated tactic of restating the Metric measurements into the more familiar context of Colonial measurements. I didn't see Great Britain trying to keep 2 calendars at the same time (familiar Julian first/new Gregorian second) other wise we'd be using the Julian Calendar in the U.S. today and the biggest objection to Gregorian conversion is the church/state issue from its Catholic roots. (The objection in the 18th-early 20th century would've been the fear of some Protestants that the new calendar was part of a plot to return them to Catholicism.)
Otherwise, it's a Happy June 23/July 6 Independence Day today! Independence Day (July 4, 1776) was June 23, 1776 in the Julian Calendar.
I wish everyone a good Independence Day today! Happy June 23/July 6 Independence Day.
That is all very interesting, but it doesn't change the fact that most Americans do not want the use the Metric System.
That is all very interesting, but it doesn't change the fact that most Americans do not want the use the Metric System.
Do most Americans want Digital Television? The NAB learned the mistakes of the metrication proponents (and the dollar coin proponents but that could've been the backlash of Jerry Falwell and the anti-feminist movements) and heeded the warning of MLK by forcing it.
Ugh. Ten bucks says the reason for this post is because Mexico and Canada use the metric system and they want to integrate all three countries together. Just a guess of course.
Personally, I don't buy the "economy and disruption" excuse we've been using. All other societies had to experience the same thing when they converted. Though I do understand that there's much more at stake with the way the U.S. affects the global economy. Ah well... maybe we can do it when we're down in the dumps, and China and India rule.
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