Odd things they do in other countries...

[Sjealand]

In north america people just crossed whenever they could. I felt like an idiot standing there and waiting for green

[NERVUN]

In Japan, the way restaurant staff thanks you for every little thing. I am the one receiving the service; I should be thanking you.

It's a Japanese thing. You're either thanking, apologizing, or noting that it's hot, cold or you're tired. Some 99% of Japanese conversation is that.

[Vince Vaughn]

In north america people just crossed whenever they could. I felt like an idiot standing there and waiting for green

That's usually just in dense urban centers where people barely follow traffic laws anyways.

[AiliailiA]

Pedestrian crossing lights that show how many seconds remaining to cross the road before the lights will change.

OK, that's something that DOES make sense, OP was asking the opposite.

Well, any country that doesn't at least TRY to make its people use Metric. I can't understand that.

[Galloism]

Pedestrian crossing lights that show how many seconds remaining to cross the road before the lights will change.

OK, that's something that DOES make sense, OP was asking the opposite.

Well, any country that doesn't at least TRY to make its people use Metric. I can't understand that.

The metric system is socialism applied to mathematics.

[The Blaatschapen]

Pedestrian crossing lights that show how many seconds remaining to cross the road before the lights will change.

OK, that's something that DOES make sense, OP was asking the opposite.

Well, any country that doesn't at least TRY to make its people use Metric. I can't understand that.

The metric system is socialism applied to mathematics.

The only good thing about Imperial is their March.

[AiliailiA]

Pedestrian crossing lights that show how many seconds remaining to cross the road before the lights will change.

OK, that's something that DOES make sense, OP was asking the opposite.

Well, any country that doesn't at least TRY to make its people use Metric. I can't understand that.

The metric system is socialism applied to mathematics.

First adopted by Revolutionary France ... OK, that's close enough to "socialism" I guess

[Bombadil]

In Vietnam, don't they have that raw egg food with the chick still in it?

balut?In Philippines Balut is boiled with the chick still inside, don't know if Vietnam does a raw version.

I was there last month and they served it, but it was boiled similar to Philippines.

[USS Monitor]

In north america people just crossed whenever they could. I felt like an idiot standing there and waiting for green

I actually liked the way Germans don't walk in traffic. It got on my nerves when I came back to Boston and everyone was just crossing the street whenever and wherever they felt like it, with no regard for the walk signals.

[Sjealand]

In north america people just crossed whenever they could. I felt like an idiot standing there and waiting for green

I actually liked the way Germans don't walk in traffic. It got on my nerves when I came back to Boston and everyone was just crossing the street whenever and wherever they felt like it, with no regard for the walk signals.

I was in Houston on vacation and i was like the only person not crossing the road. There weren't any cars but i'm just so used to not crossing until green.

[Galloism]

The metric system is socialism applied to mathematics.

First adopted by Revolutionary France ... OK, that's close enough to "socialism" I guess

Ever notice every measurement has the same number of units?

10mm to a cm, 10cm to a decimeter, 10 decimeter to a meter, etc?

Compare that with the imperial system, which each type of measurement has earned its number of units. 12 inches to a foot. 3 feet to a yard. 5280 feet to a mile.

Your way eliminates our measurement differences and forces all the measurements to behave the same. It's socialism.

[Bombadil]

First adopted by Revolutionary France ... OK, that's close enough to "socialism" I guess

Ever notice every measurement has the same number of units?

10mm to a cm, 10cm to a decimeter, 10 decimeter to a meter, etc?

Compare that with the imperial system, which each type of measurement has earned its number of units. 12 inches to a foot. 3 feet to a yard. 5280 feet to a mile.

Your way eliminates our measurement differences and forces all the measurements to behave the same. It's socialism.

In the 12th century, King Henry I of England fixed the yard as the distance from his nose to the thumb of his out-stretched arm.

Frickin' genius..

"I'd like my garden to be a good 24 yards long please"
"Alright, let's get the king over here then"

[USS Monitor]

I actually liked the way Germans don't walk in traffic. It got on my nerves when I came back to Boston and everyone was just crossing the street whenever and wherever they felt like it, with no regard for the walk signals.

I was in Houston on vacation and i was like the only person not crossing the road. There weren't any cars but i'm just so used to not crossing until green.

In Boston, some people will go even if there are cars, as long as there's enough room for the cars to brake. Of course, people drive like idiots too, so I guess they're just taking the way they drive and applying the same principle to walking.

[Sjealand]

I was in Houston on vacation and i was like the only person not crossing the road. There weren't any cars but i'm just so used to not crossing until green.

In Boston, some people will go even if there are cars, as long as there's enough room for the cars to brake. Of course, people drive like idiots too, so I guess they're just taking the way they drive and applying the same principle to walking.

If that's the case i'd most likely be standing in place for the duration of my stay

[New haven america]

Pedestrian crossing lights that show how many seconds remaining to cross the road before the lights will change.

OK, that's something that DOES make sense, OP was asking the opposite.

Well, any country that doesn't at least TRY to make its people use Metric. I can't understand that.

The metric system is socialism applied to mathematics.

It's true, the USSR used it, and so does China.

We don't need commie math, thank you very much.

[USS Monitor]

The metric system is socialism applied to mathematics.

It's true, the USSR used it, and so does China.

We don't need commie math, thank you very much.

Sometimes in China they still use jin instead of kilos to weigh stuff. Now you know why Chinese communism failed.

[Esternial]

Not dipping fries in mayo as the country of cultural origin demands.

Refusing to dip your fries in mayo is cultural appropriation.

[Alvecia]

In Japan, the way restaurant staff thanks you for every little thing. I am the one receiving the service; I should be thanking you.

It's a Japanese thing. You're either thanking, apologizing, or noting that it's hot, cold or you're tired. Some 99% of Japanese conversation is that.

Huh, and here I thought us Brits had the monopoly on small talk about the weather.
Guess we're no so different after all.

[Esternial]

The metric system is socialism applied to mathematics.

It's true, the USSR used it, and so does China.

We don't need commie math, thank you very much.

You never know, with Trump in power that might change.

[New haven america]

It's true, the USSR used it, and so does China.

We don't need commie math, thank you very much.

You never know, with Trump in power that might change.

Trump would just force us to measure with Quarters and $100 bills.

Except for the poor, the poor don't get to measure things.

[The East Marches II]

The metric system is socialism applied to mathematics.

It's true, the USSR used it, and so does China.

We don't need commie math, thank you very much.

Did they put a man on the Moon? I didn't think so. Imperial confirmed for best.

[Risottia]

In Japan, the way restaurant staff thanks you for every little thing. I am the one receiving the service; I should be thanking you.

It's a Japanese thing. You're either thanking, apologizing, or noting that it's hot, cold or you're tired. Some 99% of Japanese conversation is that.

Basically Brits except for the tired part.

[The Interstellar Federation]

Australians don't ride kangaroos to school.

(Yes, I had a friend that told me he had met some Americans who actually believed that we Aussies ride kangaroos to school.)

[AiliailiA]

The metric system is socialism applied to mathematics.

It's true, the USSR used it, and so does China.

We don't need commie math, thank you very much.

Yeah? Can you tell me off the top of your head, how many pounds make a ton? How many yards are there in a mile? And what a standard gravity (sea level) is in Imperial units?

What you DO know about the Imperial measuring system had to be learned by rote, in your first years of school, and right there is why Americans are so BAD AT MATHS.

Mathematics in its pure form is beautiful and inspiring. The assurance that (even if you don't get it at first) mathematics is internally consistent and fundamentally logical is essential to developing thinking skills, and those thinking skills serve a person well even if their later field of study is politics or fine art. Think consistently, you get the Correct answer, think inconsistently you get the Incorrect answer, that is a fundamental in thinking which serves well whatever the subject.

Mathematics teaches consistent thinking which is ALWAYS better than vague and interstitial thinking to reach a conclusion. Even in the vaguest and least scientific fields, where all the precepts are arbitrary and disputable, consistent and logical thinking leads to sounder conclusions, and from that better business decisions, better advocacy of whatever cause they champion, better contributions to society and fundamentally a better person. The unique quality of a human, over all other animals, is the ability to think abstractly. "I think, therefore I am".

School education is not the only source, in no way is it the only source: parents or whatever elder passes for a parent in the child's early years teach the child to think by teaching language (even accidentally just by using language, which infants have enormous propensity to learn). There is a mass of media, which for many children nowadays fills as much of their time or more than the deliberate efforts of school teachers. Not even the best school can level the playing field and give every child equal opportunity in this fundamental of being a good and worthwhile person; the ability to think consistently. But schools are the leveler, catching up the children whose parents (perhaps just by being poorly educated themselves) have failed them in providing early childhood teaching in thinking skills. Schools provide opportunity to all children, and by doing so they serve all of society because when all children have an opportunity to express their talents and profit from them, mediocre but privileged children are out-competed, and the more talented but less privileged children take their place. Better scientists, better entrepreneurs, better doctors and lawyers and artists and politicians, better specialists of all kinds. Widening the intake from early childhood, for all the most important careers, isn't just a social justice thing ... it serves all of humanity.


Early, too early, in mathematics teaching is this arbitrary rubbish about measurements. Everyone has to learn it, but it is not mathematics. Get that shit out of the way early, with a measurement system that was designed to be simple and internally consistent, and move on to real mathematics which develops logical and consistent thought in students. The longer it takes to teach them measurements, the more of a boring chore mathematics will appear to them later, when the fundamentals are out of the way and actual mathematics (and logic) is presented to them.


The nail in the coffin of the "standard" or "traditional" measurement system (aka Imperial measurement), is that those who learned them have to unlearn them again, starting again with Metric, if they want to pursue a STEM education and career.

Well I won't say that teaching the Imperial system is wholly responsible for why Americans suck at mathematics and suck at STEM. Those are hard ways to make a living (anywhere) and in the US where luck-and-style ways to become a billionaire are paraded and celebrated (as a dream for the masses who want to believe that they could someday become rich, that the farce is actually a lottery) all that hard work is not attractive to intelligent children. Being the next Einstein is hard, much harder than a century ago, and there's pitifully little financial reward for coming close.

But it really does not help that public education is narrowing the field of talent from the first years of school by obfuscating mathematics with all that medieval merchant cruft you call a measurement system. Fuck that. Go Metric!

*

. I was taught only the Imperial system in kindergarten (yes, kindergarten in 1960's: I was a privileged child) and in Infant school (year 1 and 2), then I was taught both systems, then by High School it was all Metric. It was horrible, frankly: though I was good at pure mathematics from the start, I always had a sense of inadequacy because I could not memorize to three significant places the conversion factors between inches and centimetres, pounds and kilograms, and so on. Being expected to learn both systems is far worse than being expected to learn either one. And how about that: if you want to specialize in hard sciences in the US you have to master Metric, yet most schools only teach the Imperial as basic knowledge from the start. To get into STEM you have to change systems mid-way, and right there is part of the reason the US is having such trouble graduating enough STEM students from high school, adequately educated to take up tertiary study.

†

The word Mathematics is a plural noun, it should be shortened to Maths or else the abbreviation breaks the grammar of the sentence it is used in. Generally I do not object to abbreviations, providing they do not create a new homophone or homograph, but math instead of maths really gets my goat.

[Aethrys]

Australians don't ride kangaroos to school.

(Yes, I had a friend that told me he had met some Americans who actually believed that we Aussies ride kangaroos to school.)

Well, obviously not anymore. After the interspeciea incident in which that guy punched a kangaroo, everyone with sense could see that the marsupials would abandon the longstanding peace accord with the human convicts and go on strike from their transportation jobs in protest.