>There is nothing wrong with going metric. In fact the Congress of the United States approved a bill in 1866 to allow the metric system to be used. We are just a bit slow in implementation!
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>Perhaps because the system was developed by the French we refuse to implement it!
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>In my previous life I was a Metrology Engineer. Metrology is the Science of Measurement. We used several measurement systems. A fact is that metric screw threads do not have the holding power of the American Standard (ASCII) threads. This gives credence to the belief that Europeans have a loose screw! :)

I presume the metric screw is the BA metric or Whitworth? Believe it or not, I learned about these in 6th grade, just had to look up the spelling :). And I remember that the 60 degree was better than the 55 or 47 or whatever, which makes sense to me as a mathematician :). But then, the first-glance intuition may fool me; I figure various angles were tried out before any standard could have been set. But then again, we know quite well that it's not always the best standard that wins.

Interestingly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication says this:
"Today only the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar have not officially switched to the metric system (although Liberia and Myanmar use it in practice) and the United Kingdom is currently in the process of conversion."