Monday, August 17, 2015

American Exceptionalism





Hmmm!

I never knew that the rest of the world had all gone Celsius.



Thanks to Fascinating Maps @BestWorldMaps on Twitter for the map.


9 comments:

Bruce Taylor said...

It's a Cold War it seems. Here's one of countries that don't use the metric system... (you may have to paste the link into your browser) http://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/map-of-countires-that-use-metric-system-vs-imperial.jpg?w=800&h=352

JP said...

Isn't it the case that that map could also be used for those countries that write date as MM/DD/YYYY ?

Tillerman said...

Probably JP. And another reader emailed me and said the map could be used to show all the countries that have a navigation buoy convention of Red Right Returning.

Is that correct? Is the US the only country that does it that way?

Anonymous said...

This makes me think of something....ah yes.

Fahrenheit
0 ° Really cold outside 100 ° Really hot outside

Versus

Celsius
0 ° Fairly cold outside 100 ° Dead

Versus

Kelvin
0 ° Dead 100 ° Dead

Tillerman said...

LOL Joe. I will try and remember that.

I did a bit of research and it turned out that the reader who suggested to me that only USA has the "red right returning" convention for navigation marks was wrong. The split is actually a bit more even than that.

Region B has "red right returning" and Region A has the opposite.

Region A comprises nations in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, parts of Africa and most of Asia other than the Philippines, Japan and Korea.

Region B comprises nations in North America, Central America and South America, the Taiwan, Philippines, Japan and Korea.

R1 said...

I was in town for Houston's record hottest day a week or so ago. It was like a hundred and ... uh, something point uh, something. The metric system is so much easier. It was 42C. But what happened to Centigrade?

Tillerman said...

Centigrade went out in the 1950s along with the hula hoop and sideburns.

Pandabonium said...

Since most of my readers are in "Amerika" I have to dumb down my posts and report temperatures as ºF. Sigh. And distances as feet or miles. Double sigh. Perhaps I should stop enabling them and make the readers "man up" and learn the metric system.

Andrew Burton said...

That could just as easily be a map showing countries that have landed a man on the moon and those that haven't. I notice that something of a correlation...

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