Our dumb calendar. Daylight savings time. Hell, time zones themselves. How many more dumb decisions of the past will we have to continue enduring just for the sake of, well, keeping things the same?
Maybe some time zone borders are dumb, but mostly they follow the necessary complexities of political boundaries, geography, history, etc.
Only on timezone.
From the eastern border with Russia, to the border with Afghanistan.
You could just have the same time everywhere. The only thing that changes is that 12 o’clock isn’t midday anymore, which doesn’t match with the current system almost anywhere.
Nothing will change for a very long time.
I’m confused. Everyone understands what 12 tonnes are here. Besides, is your average car really 2 tonnes? That sounds like an awful lot, and it varies depending on location.
> SI is nice because you can attempt to change 12 Mg into something like 12 kL of water (since every L of water weighs a kg) or the amount of water in a pool of size 1m by 1m by 12m.
SI is nice because it does not depend on your cultural background. A gram is a gram regardless of your daily experience. So you can be sure that it will be understood the same way by anyone on Earth, contrary to overly heavy cars.
> Still, 6 cars is much easier to reason about.
I think this is highly culture dependent. As a matter of fact it is very rare to see this sort of analogies here (it’s more common to see football pitches for large areas, for example).
That's the entire point of my comment. Everyone "knows" what 12 tonnes, 12Mg, 12,000 kg are but they are internally recalculating to something they actually know. The Imperial system basically emerged from how people actually perceive things which is why every conversion is wonky. For instance, a bushel is about how many apples someone can carry, a cord of wood was originally an amount of wood bundled with a cord which has since changed definition, some for pecks, fathoms, and knots. If this still isn't convincing, consider that mach is basically the go to unit when talking about aeroplane speeds because thinking in multiples of speed of sound is internally what many would instinctively do anyway.
(inb4 link to mars reconnaissance orbiter wikipedia page)
"A 5-feet tall monster ...". As a reader I have no idea if that's big or small.
How long is a literal meter? However long whoever says, by definition.
No one's mad.
It's just mildly amusing in a tragic way, like a slow motion train-wreck.
The USofA standard foot has been officially defined in terms of the SI International System of Units since 1893.
Since 1866 if you date it from the specification proposed by US Congress.
The primary length standard at the time of US independence appears to have been the length of a physical yardstick, which first appears to have come into existence sometime in the Middle Ages. What was used to determine the size of the various yardsticks is extremely unclear, but at no point does it seem to have been based on anybody's foot (although an arm is one of the suggestions).
I dunno. When do you predict all national, ethnic and religious identities will go away? I'm going with 100,000 years.