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The most recent candidate under the DNC banner is Lincoln Chafee who interestingly, besides being the lone Republican (he switched parties) to vote against the Iraq war, is vehemently pro-metric system. I remember when I was a kid, the freeway signs for distance and speed were printed in both English and metric. Converting all those signs from miles to km (again) would cost money, but then, using the English measurement system costs money too, forever -- according to a random guy I googled up without putting any real effort into it because I'm not that interested in proving myself wrong (Paul Naughtin), somewhere between six billion and a trillion. There are without a doubt, critics who might call that somewhat of a wide margin but as one witty commenter noted: "It is probably impossible to give an upper bound on that, however I can give you a lower bound: 500 Million Dollars for the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter by NASA".
Now, I'm neither a firm GOP nor DNC voter... but I'm tempted.
takyon: Former Governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee joins a number of other candidates seeking a 2016 U.S. presidential nomination.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @08:37PM
US has been metric since 1893! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendenhall_Order [wikipedia.org]
Do not forget Carter trying in the 1970's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
Get over it all. Using metric is common public systems it dead. The population has voted.
Just like using IPv6, there is no need, Hell if you really want to push back, then we all should just us MAC addresses!
Just like using circuit number for phone #..
Just like using ISO8601 common world date formats.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Saturday June 06 2015, @09:38PM
You mean the population of the early 80s voted. That was 30 years ago and an entire world away in terms of technology. Maybe the kids of today will tire of for example, having to figure out the decimal equivalent of 5/32 when working with whatever 3D drawing program they are using. So much easier to just say 4mm, so much easier to divide it, so much easier to multiply it, and maybe, all these kids messing around with 3D printers will look at those in 80s who killed metric and think "fucking morons!"
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:03AM
And primary school teach in metric? if not, when was that halted?