Nothing is more boring than having to defend our imperial units against metric bores. There are only two species of the latter: people who, bless them, grew up with the metric system and simply don't know any better; and faux-sophisticates, people who F—ing Love Science but don't understand that astrophysicists and NFL players require different things from their systems of measurement.
The first group needs to be indulged. We all pray for a happier tomorrow when American cultural imperialism becomes a vehicle for something besides porno and Bud Light; who says the day may not come to pass when, like the Parthians and Medes and Elamites and dwellers in Mesopotamia of old, Canadians and Portuguese and Koreans may not find themselves all together in one place marveling at their understanding of our inches and pounds?
It is the second sort—the enemy within, so to speak—that needs to be shaken from its refined complacency. Anyone who says the metric system is better suited for workaday, as opposed to scientific, purposes should try to imagine Them's immoral "Gloria" with metric lyrics:
Like to tell ya about my baby
You know she comes around
About a hundred sixty-two point six five cm
From her head to the ground
Until very recently, everyone in the English-speaking world had a built-in sense of what it meant to be "five foot seven" versus "six foot two." In the metric system, there is no equivalent for these practically inborn faculties and their offhand exercise: centimeters are too small for 170 and 187 to mean anything, so metric people end up rounding—so much for accuracy!
Worse even than units of length and weight and mass, however, is Celsius. It is preposterous that anyone thinks a scale that, so far as temperatures that have any bearing on the normal course of man's sublunary existence, runs from roughly -28.8889 to 48.8889. The wonderful thing about Fahrenheit, meanwhile, is that 0 is very, very cold and 100 is very, very hot, with temperatures ideal for pretty nearly the whole range of worthwhile human activity somewhere in the middle.
If you have the misfortunate of having been born outside the United States—or Micronesia, Belize, or the Caymans—and feel that Celsius is perfectly suited to the needs of the average person going about his business, I invite you to consider the following thought experiment. Imagine visiting Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic to find out whether a film was any good and seeing that, say, Don't Breathe had earned a 30, while the new Ben-Hur was coming in at -3. Of course you recognize that one is better than the other—but what about gradations? How much worse, exactly, is 5.555 (Morgan) than 15.5556 (Bad Moms)? If you hear that Pitchfork has awarded a reissue of one your favorite albums a 2.7 out of a possible 3.7, should you be dismayed?
There is a tiresome sort of person who will argue that one could in fact become accustomed to a scale for film or record reviews like the one I have hypothesized about, on the tedious grounds that we are all capable of becoming accustomed to just about anything. This line of reasoning is as unpersuasive as it is slavish. Why waste the effort? Anyone who is numerate will recognize immediately that 2 or 3 or 4 is pretty bad; 5 and 6, middling; 7 or 8, good; and 9 and up, superb.
Fahrenheit works the same way. When my wife tells me it's going to be 65 on Saturday and we sigh together with relief, noting that it's been in the 90s all week, we are speaking in humane, reasonable terms. I really wonder what it's like in metric households.
"Oh, hey, dear, you know it's going to be 18 this weekend?"
"Oh, gosh, honey, that's wonderful. I really couldn't imagine another day above 32.2222."
"It really is, isn't it, dear?"
"Indeed."