Again, that universalist argument could be applied with equal vigor to language.

English is by FAR the most widely spoken language in the world (Chinese is of course the highest NATIVE language, but as far as people who speak *some* of it, English is nearly 3/4 of the planet).

So as soon as the world dispenses with the silly particularism and ethocentricity of languages, I'll be on-board with dumping the US measurement system.

I'd only also point out that 0.5% of the world states are superpowers, and 100% of them use the US measurement system. Coincidence?

First, not everyone needs or cares to convert units. If I need to know how far it is to the next town, I don't care that "miles" is hard to convert to feet or yards, because I'm not GOING to. I use the unit appropriate to the scale I'm working in, and conversions are largely irrelevant in general life.

Second, base 10 is useful for computers and digital applications, but in fact it's a rather inconvenient number system. 10 can't be divided into integers twice, nor can it easily be divided into integers of 3 or 4. Base 12 (ala the foot-inch relationship, the one place where conversions are fairly common) can be easily fractionalized by 2, 3, 4, and 6. If the base 10 system is so universally perfect, how many hours are in your day? Minutes in your hour? Days in your year?

Finally, your universalist argument could be applied in toto to languages. Why have all these silly little national languages, when by *far* the bulk of the world speaks English? So why don't we just universally adopt English and dispense with all that native-language particularism?

OK I must be COMPLETELY misunderstanding something.

First I keep hearing about "the Chinese have a monopoly on rare earths".
Now NASA is talking about people mining rare earths on the moon?
(Both the article, and it's original referent at Phys.org refer to 'rare earth elements', although I'm inclined to believe that Phys.org *may* have been using an unfortunately-confusing term for 'elements that are indeed rare on earth' like He3.)

RARE EARTHS ARE (largely) NOT RARE AT ALL.
They simply don't exist in concentrated veins. The processing is dirty and polluting, which is the only reason China might be considered to have a 'corner' on the market - they don't give a shit about their pollution.

As much as we NIMBY rare-earth refining, it can't be so bad that we're seriously willing to go to the MOON to do it?

Oh yeah. My parents did a huge job of that. I had complete "freedom". Between a bicycle that I'd take out with friends for full-day runs at age 12, and a car at 16, and suburban neighbourhoods throughout, they never held me back.

But man, the sheer number of lectures, and the length of those lectures, in the event that I did anything that they didn't wind up liking. Sheesh. The only discipline was the lecture, and it was always after-the-fact. I'm not talking about an hour in the kitchen either. I'm talking about four hour lectures in chairs and couches with the two of them and me in the sitting area off of their master bedroom.

I can't even count the number of stupid things that I didn't do purely because I didn't want to spend four hours listening to my parents about it after.

Monitoring, supervision, and being watched are three very different things.

Alexa says /. is 37% Indian-origin, 27% US - I find that hard to believe, given the amount of time they spend on bullshit US political issues. Their total % only reaches about 70-some percent.

Celsius merely replaces one set of 'arbitrary' reference points (human warmest/typical =100 and coldest/typical = 0) with another (the freezing/boiling points of a hypothetically-pure water in a specific set of pressure circumstances = 0/100 respectively).

Aside from that, it's what people grew up & are comfortable with.
Well, the only other difference is that I don't see Americans being evangelical about trying to convince anyone to use their system. (Shrug)

It's probably hard for people in other countries to understand, but the Metric Conversion Act merely indicated that the metric system was the PREFERRED system, not the "required" system.
Further, Executive Order 12770 is relevant only to government agencies.

This was back when the US government had fewer abilities to simply order its citizens (you know, the ones laughably in charge?) to do what it wants on a whim.

American website reporting largely to Americans is going to use American measures.

You want to report in Celsius, start your own?

Anyway, people who want a genuinely objective temperature scale use Kelvin.

It's much scarier than that.

The NSA has all the official certs, the exploits, and the technical ability (along with the ability to coerce/force ISPs, phone carriers, etc to help) to forge and place an email or any other digital evidence on pretty much anyone's system that they wish to, and have it appear forensically to have been created/saved/received on any past time/date they wish.

Throw in a little "parallel construction" and you're suddenly a convicted felon on the way to a new, very "friendly" cell-mate for a few decades, all legal-like. This is a tool the Stasi would have wet-dreams about.

It's too much power for *anyone* to have.

Strat

Those of us raised by good parents have always felt that way. It's never been a problem.