Interesting measurement units

I had a pretty interesting discussion with a couple of friends over Twitter last night regarding measurement units. I'm born and raised with the metric system and celcius so that's what I know. Needless to say I had no clue about anything when I came to USA in 2003 and everything was in ft, miles and Farenheit! Same goes for my trips to UK in 2004 and 2006 when they were talking yards all the time. The imperial measurements just don't make any sense to me at all! And what's even worse has to be when people are driving on the wrong side of the road! RIGHT is right, left side is just... wrong.

But what started the discussion then? Well, such a simple thing as diabetes awareness and the different measurement units used between countries to measure the concentration of glucose in the blood. Most countries use something called mmol/l, while USA together with very few other countries uses mg/dl. To convert between them is simple enough, divide by 18 from mg/dl to mmol/l, or multiply with 18 if converting from mmol/l to mg/dl. Comparing the two of them made me think about how accurate they are. Both are accurate, but I do feel mg/dl is more easy to understand in a way, even if mmol/l is the system used here. I guess it has to do with mg and dl being common measurements, while mmol is a bit more difficult to get the hang of as it isn't as frequently used outside science class.
It will be highly interesting to see if in the future, there will be only one system used for measuring glucose and other medical values.

On Sunday it's international Diabetes awareness day. I'm already wearing blue and hoping people around me will get the point ;)
If you have a couple of minutes to spare, do watch this video and help save a child with diabetes!