“Here is an example of the logic flaw known as the “false dilema” aka the black or white argument.
A false dilema sets up the choice of A or B and does not consider that the answer may be neither A or B or both A and B.
The claim that Burma is a third world slum only because it uses miles and gallons etc. can easily be refuted by the fact that we could spend all day citing examples of countries that are hard metric yet are third world slums anyway.”
There is a direct inverse relationship between poverty and industrialization. The more industrialized a country is the greater will be its wealth. The less industrialized a country is the greater will be its poverty.
In the 21-st century there is a direct link between industrialization and level of metrication. A country that is metric has a greater chance of being industrialized (eg.: Europe & Japan) or becoming industrialized (South-East Asia, India, South America, etc.). Metrication only creates the opportunity, but not all answer the knock on the door (Africa).
However any country in the world that is not metric is either not industrialized, such as Burma or is de-industrializing, such as the US & UK. In all three examples there is either continuing poverty (Burma) or increasing poverty (US & UK). The US & UK increase in poverty levels was delayed over the past 25 years evan as de-industrialization intensified due to heavy borrowing on part of these countries and its citizens to finance decreasing living standards. However, since the crash of 2008, the level of poverty in the US & UK is on the rise due to the cessation of lending.
Burma is the only country in South-east Asia not experiencing any type of industrial boom. It is also not fully metric. This is hampering Burma’s ability to trade with its growing neighbours and is retarding any efforts to industrialize. In order for Burma to move forward like its neighbours and break the cycle of poverty, it must metricate. Being metric numerate is as important as being literate.
The analogy of Metric versus Customary/Imperial with Roman Numerals versus decimal/Arabic seems a little lopsided. As an auto mechanic I go back back & forth from one realm to the other (Metric versus Customary/Imperial) quite often. All it takes is a pocket calculator & a halfway decent conversion chart. A decent scientific calculator is even more of a breeze. Cheap, too.
Being metrically numerate may be as important as being literate, but think about it–how many American engineers, mechanical or otherwise–how many Americans who design widgets in our industry are not metrically numerate?
“In the 21-st century there is a direct link between industrialization and level of metrication.”
Go to any prison or jail and you will find that the number of inmates who are non-smokers is close to zero, so there is a direct link between smoking and criminal behavior. So does smoking lead to crime or are criminals just more prone to taking up smoking than law abiding citizens? Be careful about jumping to the conclusion that a correlation equals a cause and effect.
This is known as the “cum hoc ergo propter hoc” logic flaw. Latin for “with this therfore because of this”.
Both the US and Great Britain have experienced an industrial decline over the last 40 years and both the US and Great Britain have gone increasingly to metric units in that same period of time. Obviously, going metric is causing our industrial decline.
See! I can support a forgone conclusion with cherry picked data also.
Frankly if I were appointed in charge, one of the first things I would do would be to eliminate time zones. Then anyone anywhere will know what time it is anywhere else.
Yep, Greenwich Mean Time for everybody and how about a universal language also. English already is a de facto universal second language so we only need to convince other nations to adopt it as a universal primary language, and spoken properly also, not that awful New England accent.
And then we can consider universal currency.
As per Joseph_E_Mehan’s suggestion, maybe we could bring biblical Joshua back to life and “command the sun and moon to stand still”. In the absence of that, we will have lawn mowers with headlights and the sale of miner’s lamps will increase sharply.
Many corny Hollywood comedies have inexperienced kids over lunch in Europe calling their parents in California.
Most people still like work when its light and sleep when it’s dark.
" & UK. In all three examples there is either continuing poverty (Burma) or increasing poverty (US & UK). The US & UK increase in poverty levels was delayed over the past 25 years "
Do you actually follow the real news (you know the established ones like BBC and CNN rather than "ihateamerica.com)?
Thee is an are called the eurozone. It’s the bit that was daft enough to use the euro. We are not in it.
We could sit back and watch the euro fail bur guess what? We need those countries like Ireland Greece and Portugal to be importers of our goods and services. So we, voluntary, have given these countries a load of cash to attempt to keep them afloat.
What you say is akin to Mexico lending money to America.
And you honestly still think that the uk and us would be in the top 10 countries in the world…?*
I suppose afganstan is metric so they should all be rich!
Love the way you took my thoughts and twist this to shoddy economics based upon the Simpsons / beano !
we both are in that top 10 of course but taking old John p schweisthall (amerrika) as even one percent true then we could start to panic !
Ok p,ease remember my prediction as this goes on
And on
And on
I think the fears of football fans re: conversion to metric are probably unfounded. Football is governed by a very specific set of rules. Included in those rules are the dimensions of the field. These rules would not have to be changed even if we started to use metric for everything else. The way the game is played does not necessarily have to relate to anything else outside the game.
Changing a football field to metric dimensions would be like major legue baseball switching to aluminum bats. Every home run record from that point on would have to have an aluminum bat asterisk after it or the home run and other records would have to be frozen and a new record book started.
Besides. the sound of a bat going “ping” just aint right.
.>> Track and field has been “metrified” because less face it, fewer people care…sorry for the sports insult, just an opinion.
Track and field has sports that are performed around the world and most originated outside the U.S. Can the same be said of the American version of football? Seems they were able to overcome the insurmountable issue of legacy records in English units too…
Football is unlikely to change its field or measurements. Look at horse racing they use furlongs.
Quick without looking it up how long is a furlong?
220 yards, 660 feet an 1/8 of a mile 40 rods, or 10 chains. or 201.168 m (in Canada and the United Kingdom) in the US it’s 1200 ⁄ 3937 meter, or approximately 201.1684 m.
Did horse racing suddenly change, No they kept the old measurement in most places, no harm no foul. Record and and people into the sport know how long it is and even if they don’t, it really doesn’t matter. If you know a horse can run 8 furlongs in a set amount of time, and the race is 8 furlongs long, you have a good idea how that horse will preform. So even if the US were to suddenly fall in love with metric, the odds are football wouldn’t change, a return kick of x number of YARDS would be just so far down the field, with the yard marks on the side of the field anyone could count it out. The distance isn’t that important as far as the viewer goes, so like horse racing you’ll see yards in football for a LONG time, but don’t be surprise if sometime in the future you hear and announcer say he’s about a meter short of a first down.
I’ll bet of we tried, and we included weight, solid volume, linear, liquid volume, and angles, and included the large (like a Buick) and the small (like a lightwave), and we include international trade measurements such as bushel and barrel, we could come up with no less than 100 different measurement systems, all of them good for their applications.