4 ms·

I don't know what do you do, but most people need to know how many yards (or inches, or feet, or chains, or whatever) in a mile as often as they need to know ho

I don't know what do you do, but most people need to know how many yards (or inches, or feet, or chains, or whatever) in a mile as often as they need to know how many seconds, minutes, or hours in a quarter i.e. never. Yet it's the strongest point proponents of the metric system have, so makes me wonder why are they so agitated? For the record, I am from a metric country and immigrated to the US as an adult. I still find American system to be more adjusted to human needs. E.g. temperature in F does not need decimals unlike temperature in C, tool sizing in inches is simpler (look at the sets of drill bits in different systems for example), tire pressure in psi (e.g. one of my bikes is 53 psi rear and 51 front, or 3.65 and 3.51 bars, you could say I could remember just the decimals, but another bike is 33 and 31, or 2.27 and 2.13 so no, it's 3 digits with bars vs 2 in psi), house dimensions are in even number of feet so much easier to find furniture, which is designed with this in mind, obviously. Miles are great to estimate time of travel by car, take 1 minute per mile of distance on a highway and 2 minutes in the city and you will be pretty close. But, of course, the reason the American system is never going away is because it would be insanely expensive: you either will have to rewrite all building codes/standars/recipes with stupid conversions e.g 50.8x101.6 instead of 2x4 even though the lumber dimensions are not really 2 and 4 inches or scrape them and write the new ones using the more sensible metric dimensions but then you will need to scrape all the tooling you had and buy new, metric tools. All so you could say how many micrometers in a kilometer and feel smart?

iggldiggl 9mo ago
> Miles are great to estimate time of travel by car, take 1 minute per mile of distance on a highway and 2 minutes in the city and you will be pretty close. That might be true where you live, but it's hardly a universal constant. 1 minute per mile might be sort-of-universal for long distance Interstate driving, but then again, you can just as easily phrase that as ~1 hour per 100 km in metric. I'm rather doubtful about your 2 minutes per mile (= 30 mph average speed) figure for "city" driving, though – how's that even possible when urban maximum speeds are usually in the 25 – 40 mph range, and that's not counting time lost for traffic lights and other intersections, general congestion and parking? Checking a few destinations around where I live in Germany, non-Autobahn cross-country driving is closer to 2 minutes per mile rather than 1 minute per mile (and highly variable depending on your exact destination, so no point trying to estimate driving times to the nearest minute, anyway), and never mind actual urban driving.
- pandaman 9mo ago
  >That might be true where you live, but it's hardly a universal constant. I have not said it's a universal constant, it's true in the US, where we use miles. ~1 hour per 100km is not as easy. I cannot say I care much if you are doubtful, especially if you live in Germany and not in the US, I doubt many people in the US will care about your doubts too.
  - iggldiggl 9mo ago
    Even in the US I'm doubtful about 2 minutes per mile being true for actual "city" driving if you live in a bigger conurbation.

iggldiggl 9mo ago

> Miles are great to estimate time of travel by car, take 1 minute per mile of distance on a highway and 2 minutes in the city and you will be pretty close. That might be true where you live, but it's hardly a universal constant. 1 minute per mile might be sort-of-universal for long distance Interstate driving, but then again, you can just as easily phrase that as ~1 hour per 100 km in metric. I'm rather doubtful about your 2 minutes per mile (= 30 mph average speed) figure for "city" driving, though – how's that even possible when urban maximum speeds are usually in the 25 – 40 mph range, and that's not counting time lost for traffic lights and other intersections, general congestion and parking? Checking a few destinations around where I live in Germany, non-Autobahn cross-country driving is closer to 2 minutes per mile rather than 1 minute per mile (and highly variable depending on your exact destination, so no point trying to estimate driving times to the nearest minute, anyway), and never mind actual urban driving.

pandaman 9mo ago
>That might be true where you live, but it's hardly a universal constant. I have not said it's a universal constant, it's true in the US, where we use miles. ~1 hour per 100km is not as easy. I cannot say I care much if you are doubtful, especially if you live in Germany and not in the US, I doubt many people in the US will care about your doubts too.
- iggldiggl 9mo ago
  Even in the US I'm doubtful about 2 minutes per mile being true for actual "city" driving if you live in a bigger conurbation.