Le Globe and Mail détruit Montréal...

[MTLskyline]

mtlskyline,

 

you often provide a valuable perspective here, a kind of conservative counter-balance that i've come to appreciate.

 

in this instance, though, you have departed into self-parody.

 

You can't always knock it out of the park.

[ToxiK]

Touché.

 

However, why do we necessarily need to be different than the USA in this category? Why not be different than the rest of the world instead?

 

 

Its true that using a thumb or a foot can be imprecise. Although most people don't carry rulers around. They can roughly guess the size of something using their thumbs and feet. You can always compensate a little afterwards if you know the ratio of your foot/thumb to a foot/inch. If you're a metric type, you need to have a ruler handy. There isn't really much room for rough estimations using the metric system. As for memorizing the number of feet in a mile, etc. it is not like it is hard to do. When someone says something is "the size of a football field", they mean 100 yards=300 feet (once again measurable with your own feet more or less). If kids can memorize the multiplication tables, they can memorize a couple of figures. Especially when it is something they will use their whole lives.

 

 

Why do we need to be different of the world, especially when the world is right. Measure units are a for efficiency, if the United States want to be less efficient to be different, let them be.

 

You listed the metric system as a failed socialist system. How is the metric system a failure? It works great!

 

As for the kids learning the imperial system, I think they should be aware of it, but not waste to much time on it. They have so many things they should learn to waste time on the imperial system. Things like maths, History, geography, computers, science, arts, languages. You can argue that the imperial system is cultural and is as important to learn then a foreign language, but when you learn a language, you can read, watch movies and talk to people in that language, while when you know the imperial system you can, well, measure things in a different system...

 

By the way, if the United States and Britain had invented and were using the metric system and Canada was using the imperial system (or an equivalent), would you be in favor of moving to the metric system?

Modifié 20 juillet 2010 par ToxiK

[Cyrus]

Why do we need to be different of the world, especially when the world is right. Measure units are a for efficiency, if the United States want to be less efficient to be different, let them be.

 

You listed the metric system as a failed socialist system. How is the metric system a failure? It works great!

 

As for the kids learning the imperial system, I think they should be aware of it, but not waste to much time on it. They have so many things they should learn to waste time on the imperial system. Things like maths, History, geography, computers, science, arts, languages. You can argue that the imperial system is cultural and is as important to learn then a foreign language, but when you learn a language, you can read, watch movies and talk to people in that language, while when you know the imperial system you can, well, measure things in a different system...

 

I'm in engineering... all the kids in university got thwacked with imperial and customary units and were perplexed and it caused them trouble, they had never seen them before at school. I had no issues since I was familiar with them for various reasons...

 

The situation is such that I have to work in both systems since sometimes you need to make something for a machine designed in customary units or sometimes metric... Starting from scratch, sometimes imperial is easier or not. I am familiar with both well enough not to care very much, it is typical of the Montrealer to speak two languages So instead of one complex system, we have two complex systems

 

All the fasteners on my 70's Firebird are in inches, but my newer cars were pretty much 100% metric. Even American cars are pretty much every bolt in metric. I have a socket set that is several years old, all the metric sockets are dirty, greasy and grungy and the inch sockets, except for the typical 1/4, 1/2 and 5/8 look like they've never been used, which is probably true

[JFrosty]

L'URSS n'est pas socialiste mais communiste. Importante différence. J'espère que je n'ai pas besoin de préciser la différence pour vous.

 

Try again.

 

L'URSS n'a jamais été communiste. Le communisme est un système où il n'y a pas de leader dirigeant. En fait, le terme "état communiste" se contredit lui-même, si on se fie à l'idée originale de Marx, considérant que la dernière phase du communisme serait celle où l'état et les classes sociales disparaîtraient.

 

On a appelé l'URSS ainsi pour simplifier les choses, c'est tout, mais ça ne rend pas l'expression plus valide. "Socialisme dictatorial" ou quelque chose du genre serait plus approprié.

 

[uqam+]

Réponse à Mtlskyline, message 72,

 

Vous vous défendez bien... On croirait un vieux film de Zorro, un coup d'épée à gauche, une esquive à droite : beau spectacle. Sincèrement, j'apprécie beaucoup les gens qui tiennent leur bout, surtout quand ils sont minoritaires.

 

Message plus bref, cette fois, pour ne pas vous accaparer.

 

Je ne vous ai jamais traité d'idiot. J'ai dit que l'équation métrique = socialisme était idiote. Vous me dites maintenant que vous vous étiez mal exprimé...

 

Il reste tout de même un point important. Tous les systèmes de mesure étant des conventions, ils ont tous été imposé. Le système impérial britannique a dû un jour être normalisé par l'État anglais et cette normalisation a dû être imposée. Était-ce du socialisme ?

 

Par ailleurs, les Anglais ne sont pas le seul peuple commerçant de la terre et d'ailleurs ils le sont devenus après d'autres. Au Moyen-âge, c'était les Italiens qui dominaient le commerce et la banque, à Londres. (De là le nom de Lombard street, par exemple.) De bons catholiques italiens... qui ont inventé la plupart des pratiques qui mèneraient aux banques modernes. Plus tard, les Hollandais ont joué un grand rôle aussi dans le commerce anglais.

 

Bref, il n'y a pas de zoologie des peuples qui donnent à celui-ci une fonction et à un autre une autre fonction. L'Angleterre dominait l'industrie mondiale vers 1820. L'industrie anglaise n'est plus aujourd'hui que l'ombre d'elle-même, même quand on la compare à l'Allemagne ou la France.

 

Les choses changent et il est toujours risqué de se faire des images figées et simplifiées des peuples.

[Cyrus]

L'industrie anglaise est simplement inexistant aujourd'hui, l'inefficacite, les nationalisations successives par Labour, les greves et sabotage de la produit par les ouvriers l'ont detruit completement. Il existe seulement quelques usines controllees par des corporations etrangeres multinationales.

 

Par contre, j'ai lu le notion "anglais" du Mtlskyline de dire plutot l'Anglosphere que l'Angleterre elle-meme. Notamment les Etats-Unis, qui ont demontre un caractere de travail et d'affaires impressionant.

[MTLskyline]

Why do we need to be different of the world, especially when the world is right. Measure units are a for efficiency, if the United States want to be less efficient to be different, let them be.

How can you decide who is right and who is wrong? If the evidence of the superiority of the metric system was as overwhelming as some claim, the greatest power in the world wouldn't still be using an inferior form of measurement. The main reason most of the world is on the metric system is because they all want to be on the same page.

You listed the metric system as a failed socialist system. How is the metric system a failure? It works great!

I included it in the brackets as a failed socialist system, and I explained in a later post to uqam+ that I poorly chose my words. I oversimplified the metric system as a socialist system since it was imposed on us by the socialist government of Pierre Trudeau. I wouldn't say the metric system is a failiure, lots of people like it, but it doesn't exactly match up to the imperial system's practicality (in being able to estimate more accurately).

 

As for the kids learning the imperial system, I think they should be aware of it, but not waste to much time on it. They have so many things they should learn to waste time on the imperial system. Things like maths, History, geography, computers, science, arts, languages. You can argue that the imperial system is cultural and is as important to learn then a foreign language, but when you learn a language, you can read, watch movies and talk to people in that language, while when you know the imperial system you can, well, measure things in a different system...

They didn't teach the imperial system to us in elementary school. Instead they taught metric. I never admittedly grasped the concepts very well. The imperial system, which my engineer father taught me, seemed a lot simpler. That's the system that most non-teacher adults referred to when I was a kid. The metric system never really left the classroom too much, unless it was measuring weather or speed.

 

By the way, if the United States and Britain had invented and were using the metric system and Canada was using the imperial system (or an equivalent), would you be in favor of moving to the metric system?

If Canada didn't have the metric system (in this case) to begin with, that would seem to imply that we weren't under the rule of Her Majesty the Queen. That would likely mean that Canada would have had little British influence, and my ancestors likely would not have come here.

 

However, if Canada's tradition was using the imperial system, that was Canada's tradition, even if my second and third favourite countries used another system. Real tories are traditionalists, after all. Why change what's not broken and confuse people?

[MTLskyline]

Try again.

 

L'URSS n'a jamais été communiste. Le communisme est un système où il n'y a pas de leader dirigeant. En fait, le terme "état communiste" se contredit lui-même, si on se fie à l'idée originale de Marx, considérant que la dernière phase du communisme serait celle où l'état et les classes sociales disparaîtraient.

 

On a appelé l'URSS ainsi pour simplifier les choses, c'est tout, mais ça ne rend pas l'expression plus valide. "Socialisme dictatorial" ou quelque chose du genre serait plus approprié.

 

 

Merci pour la précision. En tant qu'homme de gauche, je suppose que vous pouvez classer plus efficacement vos collègues de gauche que moi.

 

Question: Est-ce un vrai pays communiste ait jamais existé? La Corée du Nord peut-être?

[Cyrus]

If Canada didn't have the metric system (in this case) to begin with, that would seem to imply that we weren't under the rule of Her Majesty the Queen. That would likely mean that Canada would have had little British influence, and my ancestors likely would not have come here.

 

However, if Canada's tradition was using the imperial system, that was Canada's tradition, even if my second and third favourite countries used another system. Real tories are traditionalists, after all. Why change what's not broken and confuse people?

 

Don't forget that Canada used pretty much the same units under the "ancien regime" era, I mean it was pouce, pied and livre and maybe a bit different but the same things

[JFrosty]

Merci pour la précision. En tant qu'homme de gauche, je suppose que vous pouvez classer plus efficacement vos collègues de gauche que moi.

 

Question: Est-ce un vrai pays communiste ait jamais existé? La Corée du Nord peut-être?

 

Non, ça n'a jamais existé pour de vrai. La Corée du Nord a Kim Jong-il et encore ce culte de la personnalité, qui existe aussi à Cuba avec Castro, en Chine avec Mao, etc. Peut-être que Cuba est ce qui s'en rapproche le plus, par le fait que le peuple n'est pas dans une misère aussi exécrable que dans les autres systèmes du genre qui ont existé.

 

Voilà pourquoi le communisme c'est super sur papier, mais en vrai, c'est très utopique. L'homme qui atteint le pouvoir en est un qui le voulait probablement plus que tout à la base, et donc par conséquent fera tout pour le garder. Le problème avec le communisme, c'est qu'il devrait travailler pour que le pays se gère sans sa présence à sa tête. C'est à ce point de la transition que ça semble toujours avoir échoué.