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It blows our hivemind that the United States doesn’t use the ISO 216 paper size standard (A4, A5 and the gang).
Like, we consider ourselves worldly people and are aware of America’s little idiosyncrasies like mass incarceration, the widespread availability of assault weapons and not being able to transfer money via your banking app, but come on - look how absolutely great it is to be European:
The American mind cannot comprehend this diagram
[Diagram of paper sizes as listed below]
ISO 216 A series papers formats
AO
A1
A3
A5
A7
A6
Et.
A4
Instead, Americans prostrate themselves to bizarrely-named paper types of seemingly random size: Letter, Legal, Tabloid (Ledger) and all other types of sordid nonsense. We’re not even going to include a picture because this is a family-friendly finance blog.
The US also doesn’t officially use the metric system sigh.
The US officially uses the metric system…to define the US customary system of measurements.
E.g. 1 foot is defined as 0.3048 meters.
That was just ONE aspect of the adoption of the metric system. And that was done to make backwards compatibility easier because of long lasting legacy systems. Because some systems, like say plumbing in a home or city, last for a very long time before they get replaced or repaired. New plumbing installations often use Tubing like PEX which is metric. I designed and fabricated a dozen brackets for a US customer over the weekend for delivery today. They were made using millimeters as specified.
And if you actually pay attention to how the metric systems compares to the US customary, you would see just how closely they are related from the start. Which makes sense since what we call Imperial measurements predate the metric system by several hundred years.
Plumbing is still described in customary in Europe. You have 1/2 or 3/4 fittings etc.
Imperial is actually just a couple years older than US customary, it was predated by the “English units”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_units
You are correct. But Imperial is pretty much abandoned and the US only kind of sort of followed it. There have always been some differences between US Customary and Imperial. The gallon is one of the most obvious differences.
Yes, yes we DO use the metric system officially. In the early 1970’s the metric system was made the official standard for weights and measures.
What we didn’t do was force everyone to use it at 3:11AM 11/21/1974. It was decided to take a longer approach and let the change happen naturally and it has happened.
Everything in the grocery store is marked with metric weights and volumes. We buy butter by the gram, soda pop by the liter and whisk(e)y buy the milliliter. And everyone is looking for that same missing 10mm socket/wrench. (Where does do those things go anyway?)
How much more metric do we really need to adopt?
Well, milk is still sold by the gallon, butter is still divided into tablespoons, nutrition facts are still defaulted to cups and ounces. Wood is still sold by the foot or yard, cars still measure speed in miles per gallon, people still know their height and weight in feet and inches and pounds.
Could be worse but could be a lot better, too.
The American system really is something huh
Sorry I totally meant fuel efficiency there, brain fart.
The gallon of milk makes it incredibly easy to divide it into quarters. That makes it easy to simply double things - 2 pints = 1 quart. 2 quarts = 1/2 gallon. Two 1/2 gallons makes 1 gallon. This dates back to the days when you went to the market and told the seller that you want 1/2 or 1/4 of that container of whatever was in that container. Simple math for simple needs.
Your 1/4 of a pound of butter or one stick, (again simple divisions for a simple use), is marked with rough marks of tablespoons for cooking if you are using such measurements. But you are quite free to ignore them if you are using a scale. Not really any issue.
Yes, in the US travel distances are measured in miles. But that slowly becoming meaningless also. People, (no matter the units used to measure the psychical distance), care more about “how long does it take to get there” rather than the actual distance traveled. But, you are free to push a button and switch to kilometers if you choose.
Measuring height and weight in feet and inches and pounds is pretty much the only thing the medical system uses US Customary for. And I can’t imagine the sheer number of man hours and cost it would take to go back and convert all those medical records to centimeters and kilos. Somethings are just not worth the effort and cost for a minor data point that only matters only as a long term trend. (just like a single blood pressure is a meaningless data point but over a year may reveal a trend or not)
Each measurement system, US Customary or Metric, has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. To think one is better than the other is a chauvinism based on what you are most familiar with and nothing more.
I mean, a liter is very close to a quart, so it’s not like we’d be asking people to adjust their mindset completely. And ditching US measures means we could finally, once and for all, dispense with the nonsense of having a dry and a wet “cup” measure.
As for converting records, well, it would be trivial to display a converted value in whatever EMR system a practice uses while noting the values are converted and allowing display of the uncoverted data for validation. (Which brings us to the EMR discussion.)
How did you reach the conclusion that liters can’t be halved or quartered? You could call 250ml a ‘quart’ if you wanted to.
Metric butter also has markings on it.
Those medical records should be stored digital anyways, and then it’s a matter of a few man hours to tell the computer to convert them.
Imo metric can do everything US customary can, but not the other way around, because it’s missing the simple conversions. But that’s it. Everything else is same same but different
I never said that you can’t divide liters into fractional parts. Reread the quote again.
But for demonstration - what’s easier to think about 250ml or 1 quart, (a whole unit number or if you prefer 1/4 of a gallon)? A fractional based measurement system was the first type of measures invented by people precisely because it WAS simple for everyday use between sellers and buyers. The US has just kept using it for simple everyday needs. It’s neither better or worse than your 250mls, it’s just different than what YOU are probably used to. To me, it doesn’t matter. I’m fine with either measurement.
The majority medical records are available electronically. But that does not provide the base security of also storing written records. Networks go down, networks get hacked and not all places in the US can have or trust that those records will be available electronically 100% of the time. Paper ain’t going away anytime soon.
I suppose we could go off into the weeds a bit and talk about how US Customary thread pitches made for fast to produce, smaller, and cheaper machine tools vs their same metric counter parts. And how it helped make the US into the manufacturing powerhouse it became. And how those same US Customary threads are a just a little bit stronger than their metric counterparts. But you would probably not understand much of it and your eyes would glaze over pretty quickly anyway. But these days it’s merely a matter of G20 or G21 - The machines don’t care, why should you?
Both measurement systems can do exactly EVERYTHING the other can do. Somethings can be easier in one system than the other, but it’s far from a universal idea that one is 100% better than the other. Personally, I prefer using the metric system. But I don’t get hung up on it. I will use whatever measurement system best meets the needs for the job at hand or is requested/required.
In the end, the metric system IS the official system of the US. We just didn’t force a hard adoption date on it. But we use it everyday all day and don’t even think about it. Now if you will excuse me, I need to buy a 750ml bottle of Old Grand Dad bourbon Bonded, so I can myself an Old Fashioned cocktail later today while I’m smoking a pork loin…
The 10s are being held hostage by the 12.5/48.78 wrenches
There must be some invisible 10mm black hole just vacuuming up all the 10mm sockets and wrenches in the world. I can’t even tell you how many damn 10mm sockets and wrenches I’ve bought and I still only have one of each. Probably none. I haven’t needed to wrench anything in a couple weeks.
It’s probably part of the great filter.
It also goggles up tape measures.