Just coming back from a nice evening with two japanese sales people from my company, where the following happened:

(Talking about a ferry)
Murakami: "Well, the distance is about 20mil..."
Tsumashima: "no, 40 miles...wait..."
Me: "How many kilometres ?"
Tsumashima: "35 kilometres. Ah, it's so easy to communicate with you Europeans..."

Both of them were in their mid-30s and showed no discontent about "having lost" their native way of measuring things.

Ralf

So what?! They were Japanese - they weren't exactly American. They're BOUND to know the distances in kilometres rather than miles if they're from a country that's largely metric.

You're not trustworthy in any case - you claim to be neutral when you are a metric advocat. You still haven't put forth any sound reasons for metrication.

I think that the reason is obvious:

When the Japanese are in any country in Europe (apart from the UK), they understand what is meant when distances are quoted in metric units. This is in contract to the USA where distances are quoted in miles (at least I believe that they are).

Furthermore when they are in any other country in the world (apart from, I believe one or two pocket states that they are inlikely to visit), the same applies.

Frederick, the whole thing happened in the US, not in Europe (since I live in the US).
They were both obviously happy that they could use kilometres instead of miles, so isn't that a sound reason to go metric ?

Ralf

Erm, no ralf. You still aren't giving any real reasons for metrication. It is all a matter of 'I knew someone once and asked them to guess the weight of my shopping, and you'll never guess what, they said it weighed 12 lbs and it really weighed 5!!!!!"


Actually, that's Stevo isn't it? Much the same difference in the end, though.

>You still aren't giving any real reasons for
>metrication

I slowly get the impression that for you there *can't be* a good reason for metrication, meaning that you categorically deny the existence of a good reason.
Which of course would reduce this "discussion" to monologues from both sides.

Ralf

Going back to your point about where this 'nice evening out' took place, THOSE WERE NOT AMERICANS WHO YOU WERE DEALING WITH!!!! They were Orientals. Don't ramble to ME about this happening in America: if a Briton tried to talk metric in Germany or somewhere to a visiting American and the American asks what it is in imperial, the Briton would find 'gosh you Americans are so easy to communicate with' just like the Japanese people found you Europeans easy to communicate with. By the way, 35km is 20 miles - the one who came out with 40 miles comes across to me as an idiot.

Which means that, even taking Ralf's story at face value, the one who answered fastest gave the right answer in miles, but the one who answered in metric was slow and stupid. Therefore: metric is for slow and stupid people; imperial is for fast and clever people! Is that really what Ralf wants to say?

{They were both obviously happy that they could use kilometres instead of miles, so isn't that a sound reason to go metric ?}

By that logic, both me and my friend Joe are more than happy to use miles, therefore we should stay Imperial.

Under the assumption that you don't want to talk to anyone else in the world, then yes.

Ralf

Like the 2/3/4 hundred million people who prefer English measures.

The word "you" in my post was *obviously* a group "you", not a one person "you".

Ralf

Paul Birch wrote: "Therefore: metric is for slow and stupid people; imperial is for fast and clever people! Is that really what Ralf wants to say? "

Paul Birch, you're not stupid, so stop posting such crap.

If I go to Japan and find an American or British person, I would find it easier to communicate with them in English rather than struggle in Japanese.

Do you you get my point metric-boys?

It was Ralf who seemed to imagine his story proved something. I was demonstrating that it didn't. If you don't understand reductio ad absurdum go and learn some logic.