Between Deadlines

Is this country heading into a recession? Perhaps not. So all this talk of gold and devaluation doesn’t benefit anyone.

Let’s all make an effort, therefore, to stop hitting the panic button and follow the example of Asia’s four dragons (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea) which added numbers without actually devaluing their currencies. Yes, all four countries have switched completely to the metric system.

So what? Let me explain the effect that going metric may produce apart from boosting numbers.

Sarah Miles may become Sarah Kilometers, Michael Foot will be Michael Thirty-point-four-eight Centimeters, and 10-gallon hats will become 37.85-liter hats.

Some traditional poems and songs also will need adjustment and The Charge of the Light Brigade may be an early casualty: 2.414 Kilometers, 2.414 Kilometers, 2.414 Kilometers Onward, Into the Valley of Death Rode the Gallant 600.

Folk songs would likewise suffer: 500 Miles Away From Home would change to 804.67 Kilometers Away from Home.

So, do you like or despise the metric system? Let’s look at Britain.

Never one to give an inch in matters European, Britain nevertheless has followed a mandate from its European Union partners and reluctantly banished its 800-year-old imperial weights and measures system in favor of metrics.

The result could have left most Britons crying into their 0.5683 liters of beers, but the nation’s beloved draught beer will still be sold in pints, road signs may remain in miles and precious metal probably will be measured in troy ounces.

But under such legislation, it is a criminal offense to sell most packaged or loose products in imperial measures. One pound of butter now weighs 0.45 kilograms. A 2-by-4 plank of wood is now a 5.08-by-10.16 centimeter plank.

Britain had been inching toward metrification since 1965, but the recent changeover marks the most ambitious overhaul of the system.

Americans got a nasty reminder in September 1999 of how the rest of the world measures weights and distances when NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter stumbled disastrously off course because of a small mistake: One team of flight controllers had programmed the spacecraft with English units (pounds and feet), while the other had entered numbers using a metric scheme (newtons and meters).

Back in 1964, the U.S. National Bureau of Standards officially endorsed the metric system, with its convenient multiples of 100. Not much happened. In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter pushed for national metrification. Not much happened again.

Scientists and technologists now deal in centimeters, while everyday life still chugs along inch by inch.

The resistance to going metric in America is not just laziness. America’s common English units often fall into convenient sizes that do not have simple equivalents.

There is no easy metric substitute for a cup or a gallon — who wants a 3.785-liter milk container? A shot of whiskey rolls off the tongue, but 3 cubic centimeters doesn’t. America’s customs, from 45-caliber pistols (0.45-inch-diameter barrel bore) to recipes calling for tablespoons, are awkward at best to metrify.

Joe Joshi PhD, also known as Doc Joe, is Editor of The Observer