Hey what ever happened to Metrification?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Decimalization isn't all it's cracked up to be.  There's a reason the Babylonians went with base 60.  However, that's a minor quibble.  The main quibble is that the Celsius/Kelvin temperature scale has a unit that is less conveniently sized than Fahrenheit/Rankine does, so °F is superior to °C since both scales are arbitrary.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The Achilles' heel of the metric system was its adoption of the meter as the basic unit of length. That, when combined with a decimal system for derivative units, makes the metric system positively painful to use when estimating lengths of about 1 to 10 feet—which is to say, the very things we are more likely to estimate than to measure.

The metric system should have been based on some variant of the foot, which has been in use since ancient times. The Roman foot (pes) differs from ours by only about a third of an inch.

What's so painful about estimates of 3 to 30 decimeters?

The really painful bit of the metric system is the mass unit.  The base mass unit was always intended to be the kilogram, so you might wonder why they didn't give it a name of its own.  They did, the grave, named after gravité, but the name was judged too similar to a title of nobility, so they axed the name, but kept the gram which had originated as a alternate name for the milligrave to be used with small quantities.  (Volume also had two base units, the litre and the stere which was equal to a kilolitre and expected to be used for such things as firewood, ore, or timber.)

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

It's sold in pints, though there will be a litre measurement on the bottle as well.

     Isn't a pint close to a half-litre, though?

US and Imperial pints aren't the same size.  The imperial pint is 20% bigger than the US (wet) pint.

473.176473 mL = US wet pint
550.6104713575 mL = US dry pint
568.26125 mL = Imperial pint

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I really don't see why the metric system is so inherently superior in non-scientific use. That implies that when someone drive from one city to another they care about what fraction of the Earth's circumference they are driving.

In non-scientific use, it doesn't really matter.

The main advantage/disadvantage of the metric system is its consistent use of base 10 arithmetic.  (Usually an advantage, but not when you want to divide something by a multiple of 3 which is fairly common.  It's one reason why time remained with base 60 for the fractions of the hour.)

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

     I mean, folks talk about how the smaller degree size in Fahrenheit is more convenient (like Ernest earlier in this thread). Except, one degree makes no difference either way. So it doesn't really matter.

Hah!  Tell that to my thermostat.  Partly it's because it's in the central hallway well away from all the windows, I have to adjust it constantly during the day. (What it needs setting to depends on time of day, how sunny it is, and the humidity,)  It's not uncommon for one degree F to be the right adjustment and two degrees F (approx 1 degree C) to be too much.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

     I mean, folks talk about how the smaller degree size in Fahrenheit is more convenient (like Ernest earlier in this thread). Except, one degree makes no difference either way. So it doesn't really matter.

Hah!  Tell that to my thermostat.  Partly it's because it's in the central hallway well away from all the windows, I have to adjust it constantly during the day. (What it needs setting to depends on time of day, how sunny it is, and the humidity,)  It's not uncommon for one degree F to be the right adjustment and two degrees F (approx 1 degree C) to be too much.

     Must be a Southern thing, then. I've only ever set my thermostat to one of two things: 70 degrees and off. It has always gotten the job done.

This house could really use a dehumidfier to keep the humidity constant.  However, I never set the thermostat as low as 70. Today it was set to 80, which is fairly low because of the high humidity and clouds.  On dry sunny days, I'll set it as high as 86.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

     I mean, folks talk about how the smaller degree size in Fahrenheit is more convenient (like Ernest earlier in this thread). Except, one degree makes no difference either way. So it doesn't really matter.

Hah!  Tell that to my thermostat.  Partly it's because it's in the central hallway well away from all the windows, I have to adjust it constantly during the day. (What it needs setting to depends on time of day, how sunny it is, and the humidity,)  It's not uncommon for one degree F to be the right adjustment and two degrees F (approx 1 degree C) to be too much.

     Must be a Southern thing, then. I've only ever set my thermostat to one of two things: 70 degrees and off. It has always gotten the job done.

This house could really use a dehumidfier to keep the humidity constant.  However, I never set the thermostat as low as 70. Today it was set to 80, which is fairly low because of the high humidity and clouds.  On dry sunny days, I'll set it as high as 86.

That's 30 C.... if we did that here, the heater would be on for almost the entire year.

The thermostat is a poor location, and this house has some interesting temperature gradients to say the least.  Actual air temp in the rooms I try to keep in the 78 to 80 range in the summer. Around 26 C.