>>Here is an interesting case of a "martyr" who suffered for upholding his convictions:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2004/03/15/383251-ap.html>
>Holy cow. I'm accustomed to the metric system both from my work and my hobbies here in the US, but I like the freedom to use either metric or non-metric, for various different things. (And if I'm selling certain items on eBay, I may use *both* measure-systems to attract customers worldwide (for small items, anyway.) Looks like the Brits wised up on this too.
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>I see the world as "all-metric" someday, but maybe we shouldn't force it too fast, I guess I would say.
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>The one real problem metric has is Time. Yes, there are ways to measure time in metrical units, but not so easy to do - and we already have so many various calendar systems around the globe...
The official unit in SI (Système International) is the second, but it is not customary to express time in Megaseconds, for instance... BTW, the second used to be defined as 1 / 86400 of a day, but it is currently defined independently of a day. This means that if days gradually get longer, "leap seconds" have to be inserted.
Another problem I see in SI is the definition of the kg. (but this doesn't affect the end-user much). Second and meter have been defined in terms of fundamental constants, but for the kg., a "prototype" is still used for the definition.
Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire... (from Gulliver's Travels)