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Comment by kennyadam | Hacker News Reader

The lengths people will go to to avoid using the metric system!

They go in increments of 50m. If you asked the width people go to, it would be 25m.

So your comment about avoiding the metric system is not really accurate. We don't say the Earth is approximately equal to 150 million kilometres from the Sun, we say one AU. We just use numbers that can be comprehended.

93 million miles you mean

No, I mean 3 million Olympic size swimming pools, you "do anything to avoid metric system" person

OK then about eight light minutes. Not sure there is any 31 mile long olympic swimming pool, though, but there are plenty of units out there so I can admit the possibility.

No, you mean 3 billion Olympic sized swimming pools.

oops, you're right. i forgot the units. i always forgot to normalize my units in school. at least i'm consistent which makes finding the bugs easy

Funny how we went through the monumental effort to build and adopt a whole new system of units just because a few people were bad at grade-school arithmetic and mental math.

It's especially weird because 12 is so much more useful than 10.

Oddly enough, it's still possible to have 12 metres or 12 tonnes within the metric system. I realise this is baffling and confusing to Americans but it's really true!

I think most people can understand what a meter is, or what a kilometer is, but would have no idea of what a kilojoule is, or what the energy inside a barrel of oil is.

I'm Canadian, and have never traveled to Europe but, every imported piece of food I've ever seen has the energy measured in kilojoules.

Actually it is both in kj and ccal

double-decker buses are clearly imperial units.

I think the Tsar Bomba was designed metric (unlike the contemporary US bombs and space program) so perhaps it was chosen for that reason?

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