AH Challenge: More Standarisation

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Have the entire world use the Metric system.

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Make the idea world use a YYYY/MM/DD.

I had other ideas, but I can't think they're too likely, ie, language.
 
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archaeogeek

Banned
Metric is easy: the US and Britain signed metrication agreements in the 19th century: have them stick by them and make the treaties ratified by the senate and it will be law of the land. A misadventure in Iceland during the war could easily have led to this: barracks were to be built, they gave specifications, the barracks came wrong: the icelandic contractors had used danish customary units in the construction, and the danish inch is about 2,62cm. Have a few more of these and I could see the military going "damn this, we go metric" - it helps if somehow US customary and British customary differ ever so slightly even on length like they do in volume.
 
The PoD needs to be before the rise in automobile availability. Even in Britain, it has reached the point that we will now essentially never switch from measuring road distance in Kilometers rather than Miles as it would be too expensive and dangerous. And TBH Britain dosen't really use the Metric system with most things from motorways to kitchen cabinets being measured in miles, feet and inches, drinks measured in litres or pints depending on whether it's Pop of Milk, and the capacity of cars often being measured in 'miles per gallon' while the price of petrol is 'pence per litre'. It's pretty silly really, but not particularly worthwhile the hassle that would result from trying to iron everything out.
 
If you are involved in a technical or engineering job in the US, you do use metric. Sometimes alongside Imperial, as NASA will tell you.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
The PoD needs to be before the rise in automobile availability. Even in Britain, it has reached the point that we will now essentially never switch from measuring road distance in Kilometers rather than Miles as it would be too expensive and dangerous. And TBH Britain dosen't really use the Metric system with most things from motorways to kitchen cabinets being measured in miles, feet and inches, drinks measured in litres or pints depending on whether it's Pop of Milk, and the capacity of cars often being measured in 'miles per gallon' while the price of petrol is 'pence per litre'. It's pretty silly really, but not particularly worthwhile the hassle that would result from trying to iron everything out.

Official use is what we care about; also I'll just note that the pound was decimalized and people don't measure in Guineas and Shillings anymore, give it a generation or two for the disonaurs to go.

And finally there are "metric customary units" - the pound is 500g, the cup is 125mL, etc.
 
Official use is what we care about; also I'll just note that the pound was decimalized and people don't measure in Guineas and Shillings anymore, give it a generation or two for the disonaurs to go.

And finally there are "metric customary units" - the pound is 500g, the cup is 125mL, etc.

I wouldn't really be too sure about that. I've had an up-to-date metric education, yet due to the cultural effect of the family I still refer to my height in feet and inches and weight in stone, would probably ask for a half-a-pound of bacon and am probably more likely to weigh out ingredients for a recipie in pounds and oz than grammes. Heck I probably use Imperial units more often at home than Metric and this is coming from someone who does mainly sciences for A-Level.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
I wouldn't really be too sure about that. I've had an up-to-date metric education, yet due to the cultural effect of the family I still refer to my height in feet and inches and weight in stone, would probably ask for a half-a-pound of bacon and am probably more likely to weigh out ingredients for a recipie in pounds and oz than grammes. Heck I probably use Imperial units more often at home than Metric and this is coming from someone who does mainly sciences for A-Level.

You've obviously never been to Canada, right? We're metric for all that matters but still measure people non-officially in foot and pound.
Also the french use pounds and feet still, the metric customary thing I mentioned. 30cm is a foot, 500g is a pound.
 
You've obviously never been to Canada, right? We're metric for all that matters but still measure people non-officially in foot and pound.
Also the french use pounds and feet still, the metric customary thing I mentioned. 30cm is a foot, 500g is a pound.
The French, French? No they don't.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
The French, French? No they don't.

Used to; my grandparents still do, and get confused when I explain that "a pound is not half a kilogram" because that's what it means to them. It's just to say an expression can last for centuries even with a system switch and evolve within the new system outside of little england panics from the british yellow press.
 
You've obviously never been to Canada, right? We're metric for all that matters but still measure people non-officially in foot and pound.
Also the french use pounds and feet still, the metric customary thing I mentioned. 30cm is a foot, 500g is a pound.

Nope. Never come across these customary feet and pounds either.

Though I still think Britain isn't going to switch to measuring distances in Kilometers any time soon.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Nope. Never come across these customary feet and pounds either.

Though I still think Britain isn't going to switch to measuring distances in Kilometers any time soon.

The french referred things in league for a century.
Insisting on "any time soon" as a goalpost is laughable; you're already a country under the metric system for everything that really matters.
 
The french referred things in league for a century.
Insisting on "any time soon" as a goalpost is laughable; you're already a country under the metric system for everything that really matters.

I shall tell you this now:

Every road sign in the country uses Miles. Every map of the road network works on a scale of miles:inch, every time any documentation issued by government or independent sources refers to a distance it uses Miles, all cars place the Miles/hour scale on the speedometer in the more dominant position, all driving tests refer to imperial units primarily, using metric only in the context of driving in a foreign nation (and even then mainly to point it out) and just about everything else related to driving in the country uses Miles. We even use Miles/Litre as the alternative to Miles/Gallon despite the former being a muddle of Imperial and Metric units. In order to change to Metric distancing, all road signs would need to be replaced, everyone would need a refresher test on their licenses and fatal road accidents would rise for a short while. The consequential costs would run to the billions and from current experience (such as the aforementioned situation where even people who have grown up learning only metric in school still refer to room sizes, recipies and other everyday things in Imperial, to the extent that the period for displaying Imperial units alongside the Metric has been extended so many times it is now simply an indefinate period) it would be at least another 50 years before the country was approaching full metric useage for the road system. There is currently no government directive or timetable for making such a switch, merely a vague generalised commitment to follow through with the agreements made back in 1965.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
I shall tell you this now:

Every road sign in the country uses Miles. Every map of the road network works on a scale of miles:inch, every time any documentation issued by government or independent sources refers to a distance it uses Miles, all cars place the Miles/hour scale on the speedometer in the more dominant position, all driving tests refer to imperial units primarily, using metric only in the context of driving in a foreign nation (and even then mainly to point it out) and just about everything else related to driving in the country uses Miles. We even use Miles/Litre as the alternative to Miles/Gallon despite the former being a muddle of Imperial and Metric units. In order to change to Metric distancing, all road signs would need to be replaced, everyone would need a refresher test on their licenses and fatal road accidents would rise for a short while. The consequential costs would run to the billions and from current experience (such as the aforementioned situation where even people who have grown up learning only metric in school still refer to room sizes, recipies and other everyday things in Imperial, to the extent that the period for displaying Imperial units alongside the Metric has been extended so many times it is now simply an indefinate period) it would be at least another 50 years before the country was approaching full metric useage for the road system. There is currently no government directive or timetable for making such a switch, merely a vague generalised commitment to follow through with the agreements made back in 1965.

You're telling me nothing I didn't know. It's the same teething problems every state adopting the metric system has had, stop acting like it was so fucking special and unique.
 
You're telling me nothing I didn't know. It's the same teething problems every state adopting the metric system has had, stop acting like it was so fucking special and unique.

I'm merely pointing out that if you look at the situation here at the moment, the road system is basically stuck in pre-metric, and there isn't enough support or momentum for it to actually get going.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
I'm merely pointing out that if you look at the situation here at the moment, the road system is basically stuck in pre-metric, and there isn't enough support or momentum for it to actually get going.

You should seriously reread what I said.
It took more than a century for non-metric customary units to drop out of common parlance in the country that created the system. Momentum will be a matter of the same dinosaurs who 20 years ago still remembered guineas either dying or stopping to care about it.
The british government pegs the entirety of the british customary system on metric units.
It runs on metric.
The fact that miles/L has been adopted just illustrates how your conceit doesn't work.

Also my father is 50 and remembers learning both systems and all three gallons in college for engineering. Canada is moving towards a situation where metric is more used in a social context, but it's only been thirty years. Again, you're insisting in seemingly complete ignorance of real world examples outside of Britain.
 
You should seriously reread what I said.
It took more than a century for non-metric customary units to drop out of common parlance in the country that created the system. Momentum will be a matter of the same dinosaurs who 20 years ago still remembered guineas either dying or stopping to care about it.
The british government pegs the entirety of the british customary system on metric units.
It runs on metric.
The fact that miles/L has been adopted just illustrates how your conceit doesn't work.

Also my father is 50 and remembers learning both systems and all three gallons in college for engineering. Canada is moving towards a situation where metric is more used in a social context, but it's only been thirty years. Again, you're insisting in seemingly complete ignorance of real world examples outside of Britain.

I'm not saying that all Imperial units will go on, but given that there hasn't even been a start on switching the roads to km from miles it seems unlikely that that switch is going to happen in the near future.

And it's been 45 years since Britain agreed to switch to Metric, and about a month shy of 40 years since the currency was decimilised. We started before Canada, but are now behind Canada in terms of switching over. Essentially, we're reaching a situation where in some cases there is a third generation of people who have grown up being taught nothing but metric, but who will still be using Imperial units for the road network. Miles/L demonstrates entirely the opposite of all Imperial units being soon to go, it demonstrates that it has essentially become commonplace to continue to consider road distances in terms of miles, even if we use metric for volume.

And anyway, is it really that confusing for people to have the road network in miles rather than kilometers?
 
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