Magnus Manske wrote:
I personally think it's only a matter of time until the rest of the world catches up to the U.S. and returns to using the English system in all the cases where it is more sensible to do so. So we have a responsibility to use both, to help them get ready for the change.
I think you forgot the ";-)" at the end of the paragraph. You don't honestly think so, do you? (Of course, everyone can have an opinion, it just strikes me as rather unrealistic)
Yes, I forgot the ;-). I don't really think that they'll be switching back.
But I do think that the United States will not be changing anytime in the next 50 years, at least. When I was a child, we were taught both systems, and we were told that the U.S. would be switching within a few years to metric. But it didn't "stick".
And I do think that the metric system is inferior to the English system for the sorts of measurements that ordinary people make all the time. It has the advantage of simplicity, to be sure. But the quirks of the English system are there for good reasons.
The foot, for example, is evenly divisible into inches by 2, 3, and 4. That sort of division comes up all the time in carpentry.
Cup, pint, quart, half-gallon, gallon -- binary! More rational than decimal, if you're likely to be multiplying and dividing by 2. (As in, doubling or halving a recipe.)
The English system is not as simple as the metric system. But intelligent people recognize that simplicity is not always the only virtue. :-)
--Jimbo