Metric or what?

[Geoff]

I can't be doing with it in Australia. Too much bloody metric. How tall am I? 5' bloody 10". Whaddya mean how tall am I in centimetres? Do I look like a dwarf?

Noticed recently that UK MTB magazines started putting bike weights in Kilos. Oi, NO! Bikes are weighed in lbs goddammit.

After nearly four years however, I can just about manage kilometres.

 

[shovelon]

How tall am I? 5' bloody 10". Whaddya mean how tall am I in centimetres? Do I look like a dwarf?

Depends. Are you a giant among Aussies?????

 

[barry2017]

This never occurred to me until recently, but imperial lives on because it's so much more useful for rough measurement. A foot is about the length of a man's foot, and a man's thumb joint is about an inch. Halve that measurement, then halve it again, and again, and again and you have 1/16 inch. True, it makes no sense if you just see a table with measurements in imperial and their metric equivalents, but it's much easier to see why they lived on if you think of it in the real world.

 

[bryan555]

It does really bother me sometimes that we mix up metric & imperial, it would be SOOOOO much simpler to use one, and that's gotta be metric, it just makes more sense.

But of course it's hard to get past tradition. I drink pints. No other name would seem quite right. 550ml is just plain weird. it's a pint. The Aussies can keep their schooner, but I do like the way the Europeans do it. They order a beer. They know it will be 500ml ish, and aren't too bothered by what it's called.

But generally I think Imperial is antiquated & we really should move on! Not sure if this will go down on a retro forum, but the past IS the past, celebrate it, admire it, but leave it in the past! Having a crazy assortment of measuring systems is not helpful, it just confuses everybody.