Coins and Daylight Savings
The attempt to go metric is often brought up when discussing the new one dollar coins. Not surprising as they're both areas in which a small group of folks are holding the US back. http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2007/03/14/local/columns/21873480.txt While arguing that daylight savings should be abolished as they have a huge cost to the economy, Alastair Dallas of Los Gatos points out that our continued use of metric is "another dumb thing":http://losgatosobserver.com/los-gatos/Article.php?article_id=0225
Education
Grand Haven Science Olympiad includes metric measures as one of the events:http://www.grandhaventribune.com/paid/288509926931237.bsp Pottawatomie County science fair students get an award by the USMA:
http://www.countywidenews.com/articles/2007/03/15/news/11sciencefair.txt Contra Costa teachers complain that students are behind and their failure to grasp metric units is a "killer":
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/16881726.htm Des Moines third grade students learn metric:
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070315/NEWS/703150319/1001/NEWS Someone asks why an acre is 43560 square feet and gets a lot of history with the answer:
http://denver.yourhub.com/Boulder/Blogs/Home-Improvement/Blog~258172.aspx
International
New Zealand celebrates 30 years of metric:http://rcd.typepad.com/rcd/2007/02/30_years_of_the.html Tesco (a large UK retailer) plans to get rid of calories (maybe there's hope for us yet):
http://www.metricviews.org.uk/2007/03/15/calorie-farewell-20070307/ The Guyana National Bureau of Standards encourages vendors to use metric only as visitors for the cricket world cup will "have long forgotten about pounds and ounces and gallons and pints.":
http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article_general_news?id=56516363
Blogs
The mess that is land measurement in US customary gets this blogger to understand why people prefer metric:http://www.boredathenians.com/2007/03/im-starting-to-understand-why-they.html Scooter answers the question "Why hasn't the USA gone 100% metric?":
http://scooterchronicles.com/2007/03/24/ask-scooter-anything-the-answers-3/ Carolyn Bickford discusses the advantages of metric clothing sizes:
http://daftmusings.stattenfield.org/?p=140 This blogger notes the irony of OH metric roads and our conversion rate:
http://sophiks.com/?p=308
Misc
Thomas Nolan of Purdue writes a satirical piece on the lack of adoption of metric:http://www.purdueexponent.org/index.php?module=article&story_id=4696 While talking about converting to using a Mac instead of Windows, Bruce Kratofil shows us yet again why it's important to know metric natively instead of as aconversion from imperial:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/03/18/164104.php Life In The USA has an article on the mess that is cooking with customary units:
http://www.lifeintheusa.com/food/measurements.htm It's been around a while, but I feel the need to note that there's a MySpace group dedicated to the metric system:
http://groups.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=groups.groupProfile&groupID=101372992
