If god had wanted us to be metric he would have given us ten fin... uh... well...
We're supposed to be beyond counting on our fingers, right?
What's the metric value of Pi? Or of Avagadro's number? And how come even the most fanatic of metric freaks still use degrees and radians, instead of grads, if "just move the decimal place" is supposed to be so cool? If the angle is 30 degrees, then is 33.3333333 grads REALLY any easier to deal with? What about when you push the Tan or Cos button on your calculator?
And if we want a REALLY "natural" way of measuring things, and one that's truly appropriate for intergration with the technology of the future, then we should all be using binary dimensions on our prints, or hexadecimal micrometers, and we should all be multiplying and dividing by TWO, instead of ten. Now THAT would make things easier.
And typical units of mass should be expressed in "picoterras" - based on the most natural "basic" mass of all (from a human perspective, at least): the mass of the Earth itself. Yes, we could also use tera-AMU's, indexed on the mass of a (non-heavy) Hydrogen atom. That way, the hydrogen folks and the Earth-first folks would still have something to argue about, and some conversions to get wrong once in a while.
And I want metric time units, too! Who in hell decided that the moon should go around the Earth every 28 days, ferchrissakes? What kind of number is 28? And we need to change the length of a year to something that's divisible by more than just two primes. Criminy! That one makes no sense at all! And if we try to make minutes and seconds work as 60ths of 60ths of 24ths of those goofy astronomical numbers, we'll NEVER know how long anything takes.
The next time somebody asks you what time it is, just tell them it's
83.3 milli-hours till 2^3 o'clock. I'm sure they'll appreciate it, especially if you're calling across three or four time zones.Bottom line: If it ain't English, it's crap!
Now, where in heck did I put my .472 box wrench?
KG