I'm 10 stone, 5 foot 9 and l live 25 miles away. My baby is 7 lb 8 oz

CelticRambler

<smug mode>:D Where I live, everyone's weight is expressed in kilos, our heights are in metres, we drink by the litre, and all the distances are in kilo-metres (none of your kill-measuring kill-ometers, thanks very much :mad: ).

Life is good!
</smug>

Frankie19

The rotunda refer to weight in KG.....as I had to ask them what it was in lbs so I could understand the baby's weight :-)

dxhound2005

Eleven Benevolent Elephants wrote: »

FFS the amount of people under 40 still using these ridiculous antiquated units baffles me.

The unit for counting people is number, not amount.

.anon.

The only thing I use imperial measurements for is dick size. I prefer to describe it as 10 inches, rather than 25.4 centimetres. I think it rolls off the tongue better. As it were.

cdeb

I'd say the people who argue we should use the same measurement system as everyone else are probably the first to argue that diversity and multi-culturalism is great. But not our culture/traditions. We can chuck that.

Archeron

littlevillage wrote: »

I'm 10 stone, 5 foot 9 and l live 25 miles away. My baby is 7 lb 8 oz. and there's a bear outside the door.....what colour is the bear?

Trick question, it's not a bear, it's two midgets in a bear suit.
Purple.

saabsaab

Most shopkeepers are still using the imperial system for weight alright but they are slow to take my old shillings and pence!

looksee

I was measuring stuff yesterday and was using the nearest handy number - if it measured at 10 inches I'd take that rather than try to remember 25.3 cm (or 253mm which confuses me). This was just short term measuring.

If I am doing serious measuring I'd use metric, but if I am measuring a room to more-or-less I would use feet - I can visualise 10ft better than 3.something meters.

I know my height and weight in imperial but can't do my weight in pounds, it has to be stones and pounds.

Timber is funny because you buy 2by1 or 3by2 (if you can get it, its all gone a bit scarce at the moment) by 4.5 meters long.

But as I complain every time one of these threads comes up, inches divide into halves, quarters etc. You cannot do inches in decimal. Its immoral.

Eleven Benevolent Elephants

Allinall wrote: »

It was a tea leaf.

?

.anon.

cdeb wrote: »

I'd say the people who argue we should use the same measurement system as everyone else are probably the first to argue that diversity and multi-culturalism is great. But not our culture/traditions. We can chuck that.

Imperial measurements aren't 'our' tradition. The clue is in the name.

cdeb

They are our tradition given they've been used here for far, far longer than metric.

"Tradition" doesn't mean we invented it.

peasant

I grew up in a metric country and my mind is calibrated to metric.
I've only learned imperial units to communicate with people here.

I know that I'm 6ft 1, because I had to translate when people asked me.
But it still means nothing to me ...1meter eighty six however does.

Watching documentaries where they mention the height of mountains in feet...means absolutely nothing. If I'm really bothered I pause the video and translate to meters ..then it makes sense.

Liter/100 km is a funny one. I understand it without thinking ...mpg ...not a clue.
But really, it should be km / liter (like they do in SA and Australia(it think)) that really makes sense ...even though I don't understand it.

Another motoring related one is PS / KW. Here I'm old fashioned myself. KW is the official metric unit ...but I understand only PS, because that's what I was calibrated to.

Pound foot on the other hand ...useless, has to be Newtonmeter

saabsaab

Imperial may be Roman origin?
As in Lsd


L Librus(pound of silver)
s Solidus (Gold coin of a certain weight 4.5g)
d Denarius (Small silver coin, 4.5g)

.anon.

cdeb wrote: »

They are our tradition given they've been used here for far, far longer than metric.

"Tradition" doesn't mean we invented it.

It's an outdated and unnecessarily complicated system of measurement, vastly inferior to metric in every possible way. Historically interesting though, so it's nice that elements of it (pints, for example) continue to survive.

cdeb

"Outdated" is a meaningless, subjective term with no real evidence for it in reality.

It's not inferior to metric in every way - it's actually quite useful in practical terms because you don't get lost in zeroes, the numbers tend to be smaller which aids mental calculations (ie after x number of feet, you switch to a yard, whereas in metric you're off multiplying increasingly large numbers of metres), you can measure off your thumb (inch), foot (foot), etc, and because it helps you with maths. Maths skills would increase if people used imperial measures more.

cdeb

saabsaab wrote: »

Imperial may be Roman origin?
As in Lsd


L Librus(pound of silver)
s Solidus (Gold coin of a certain weight 4.5g)
d Denarius (Small silver coin, 4.5g)

Yup. And the word "mile" comes from "mille passuum", or a thousand paces, which is how the Romans calculated a mile. Other examples too I'm sure.

saabsaab

Prefer the metric myself but I'd find it hard to order a pint in metric. What would you call it?


Half litre (a bit less)


Litre, grand but harder to hold in your hand.

Ten of Swords

Unless you measure liquid volumes in Hogsheads, and measure distance in Smoots, I have no time for you

Esel

saabsaab wrote: »

Prefer the metric myself but I'd find it hard to order a pint in metric. What would you call it?

568 ml of your finest porter, my good man.

saabsaab

Esel wrote: »

568 ml of your finest porter, my good man.

Must try that the next time I'm in the pub. Then again maybe not the landlord might get annoyed and bar me.

CelticRambler

peasant wrote: »

Liter/100 km is a funny one. I understand it without thinking ...mpg ...not a clue.
But really, it should be km / liter (like they do in SA and Australia(it think)) that really makes sense ...even though I don't understand it.

You'd probably understand it better if you used litres instead of liters.

But I use l/100km all the time for pricing journeys - much more practical when you're buying fuel for a given journey. If you already know you're going to do a 600km round trip, and your car does 7l/100km, then you need 42l, which is the unit dispensed by the pump.

I have friend, exactly the same age as me, who does a lot of driving and burns through thousands of mental calories converting his l/100km dashboard figure into MPG, then converts his journeys from km to miles, does the necessary calculations to figure out how many gallons he'll need, then converts back to litres so that he can calculate the cost of the trip ...

Allinall

Eleven Benevolent Elephants wrote: »

?

It’s rhyming slang -:)

Half inched (pinched) by a tea leaf (thief).

I was only having a giraffe.

rainbowtrout

Wibbs wrote: »

I grew up as a child in the 70's during the changeover and so still use both to some degree, and odd to myself... I think in metres and millimetres on the one hand, but revert to inches and feet either side of that. One thing just in my humble mind that's missing from metric is the foot. It's a handy human sized measurement that's been around in some form for millennia(the cubit varied but was usually just over a foot, or the length of a forearm) and there's a gap in metric at that size level IMHO. A third of a metre(mixing again there ) doesn't cut it. I could drop inches for centimetres handily enough though. I would usually think in litres and rarely enough in fractions and the imperial nonsense at the sub inch scale of eleventy thousands of an inch I could not be dealing with. Centigrade goes without saying really. Height and weight in people I'd still be imperial all the way. I have zero idea what I weigh in kgs, though in fairness I've zero idea what I weigh in stones either so...

I tend to still think in miles as many people do and I reckon that's down to the fact that the kilometre on signs and speedos officially came to Ireland quite recently. 2006 IIRC? So for most unless driving an imported Japanese car say, they'd be thinking in miles and miles per gallon up to fifteen years ago. l/100km and KPH is quite "new". Hell I've been driving Jap imports since the 90's and still do the translation in my head to some degree. Certainly with MPG. I've only recently even worked out what my jalopy does in metric and that was only because of a phone app that talks to my car's ECU with GPS in the mix. Than again I'm a middle aged fart, so there's that.

Most kids carry a 6 or 12 inch ruler around with them for their school years, so intuitively know how long a foot is whether they realise it or not.

Rulers still have inches on one side and centimetres on the other side...

CelticRambler

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Rulers still have inches on one side and centimetres on the other side...

Mine don't ... :pac:

I'm working on a carpentry project this week. Before my very eyes at this moment, I have a metre-stick (hey - remember those: we had them in school 40 years ago!) which folds into four, giving me a handy 25cm measure. One 5m tape with cm on one side and nothing on the other. One 50cm steel ruler with cm and mm along both edges, and 0.1mm marks for the first 10cm. Square with cm from 0 on one side, and from 4cm (width of the handle) on the other. And a regular "school" ruler - 30cm along one side and reverse 30cm on the other. Extra-long adjustable T-square - 90cm along one side and the other. Two set squares from my days in the Christian Brothers, cm only on them.

Not an inch in sight.

Cee-Jay-Cee

I’m 50yrs old.

I use MPG as that’s what I used when I started driving and so it’s the measure by which I judge a cars economy. L/100kms is pure nonsense to me. I buy petrol in litres.

I use meters/Km for distance as that’s what I was taught in school and it’s easier however my height is 5’11” and I often refer to yards when talking about shorter distances.

I vary between stones and kilo for weight but my own weight is always measured in stones/lbs.

There’s no harm in using both metric and imperial. It does no harm and both have their pros and cons.

Man with broke phone

If you cant do both and it upsets you thats on you. They all convert to each other.

gozunda

I have a ruler. It is 12 inches but also 30 cms long. I never knew this was a problem. It's going in the bin tomorrow.

For anyone affected by these issues - I recommend this or Google. It will be your friend.

igCorcaigh

Imperial measurements made for better poetry.

Terrible for computer memory though.

Wibbs

cdeb wrote: »

you can measure off your thumb (inch)

Cdeb, if your thumb is an inch long I'd be worried. A yard and I'd be calling the authorities.

Frankie Machine

the beer revolu wrote: »

Can you show me a metre?

I'm not quite sure.