There's something wrong with the board this weekend. Keep on getting that "Cannot find server" thing. Anyway
Walter, you are correct regarding Burma and Liberia. I just thought it was funny that they're the only countries together with the US that haven't switched to metric.
Regarding your point that imperial is more precise than metric; I will have to humbly disagree. Yes, one meter is a longer distance than a foot, but one millimeter (1/1000 of a meter) is 0.03937 inch. So, metric is a more precise unit. There's a reason why the industries that deal with small quantities, say the drug industry, use metric units rather than imperial, even in the US. Check your 500mg aspirin.
Now regarding the importance of switching from feet to miles. First thing first, it's probably not very important. There are many more important issues, like for instance, the 1200 political prisoners in Myanmar (that's the new name for Burma)
Imperial is just frustrating, impractical and a source of errors. I'd like to explain why.
A kid in a metric country learns 3 basic measures at school: the gram, the meter and the liter. That's it. Not inch, foot, or mile for distance, not ounces, pints, quarts or gallons for volume, etc. you get the idea. With metric, we don't have to switch to a different and unrelated (as rightfully so pointed out by Walter) unit depending on the size of what we have to measure. In Walter's beer example, a pint of beer is a pint of beer. It'll fill my glass and I dont need to know more than that. But say I have a bigger bottle, a bottle of wine maybe. It is .75 liter and my glasses are 125 milliliters, well I know right away that my bottle that there is 6 glasses per bottle. Now, unless I use a converter, I have no idea how many 8 once glasses I can fill with half a gallon of OJ... Again, it's not very important. It just can make our day-to-day life is easier. The fact that I can't do that with the imperial system is frustrating. But I'll live.
Metric also allows handling pressure (bars) and distance (meters) and their impact on volume (liters) without the use of a calculator. Not only does the metric system uses one unit per measure, it also offers bridges between measures: 2 bars at 10 meters, 1 liter of water weights 1 kilo, etc. So, the metric system can also make my diving easier, thus slightly safer. Now, if you have a good computer, it doesn't really matter. Does it?
Finally, the debate about Fahrenheit and Celsius is probably not a big deal. I'm still not sure why 20° Celsius is 68° Fahrenheit and 30° Celsius is 86° Fahrenheit unlike 1 foot, which is 30.48 centimeters and 2 feet which is just twice as much (60.96 cm). But I don't think that one is more precise than the other; each uses fractions when a more precise measurement is need. The only thing I know is that water freezes at 0°C (32°F), it boils at 100°C (212°F) and I don't have a fever if my body temperature is 37° (98.6°F). Seems simpler and more logical to me. But it really isn't that important
