USMA: Going the Extra Kilometer For Metrication 909
EagleHasLanded writes "The U.S. Metric Association has been advocating for metrication since 1916 – without much success. In the mid-1970s, the U.S. government passed the Metric Conversion Act, but now it seems the time for complete conversion has come and gone. Or could U.S. educators and health & safety advocates put this issue back on Congress' radar screen?"
Cut out the intermediary step. (Score:5, Funny)
Cut out the intermediary step. Adopt the units of the future world superpower now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_units_of_measurement [wikipedia.org]
The US likes being different (Score:5, Funny)
Pissing the rest of the world off is just a bonus.
You have to have the right selling point... (Score:5, Funny)
Boggle (Score:5, Funny)
Are the Colonies really still using Imperial units? - thought they must have stopped doing that yonks ago, after losing all those space probes to erroneous conversions between foot-slug-poundals and furlongs-per-fortnight.
Or is it like their refusal to use global standard paper sizes, or basically follow any other international standards - if it was invented in Europe it must de facto be Communist and therefore can't be touched with a barge pole?
Re:0.001km = 0.01hm = 1m = 10dm = 100cm = 1000mm (Score:2, Funny)
"Does the BIBLE say that the lenth Noahes' arc was 137 meter's long? Or hiding you're light under 35 cubac centermeter's? Noah way. Feet and Yards and Cubics and Furlow's are GOD's units."
Your spelling hurts my wiener.
Re:You have to have the right selling point... (Score:5, Funny)
Yet another step towards godless communism (Score:4, Funny)
First the United Nations, then Darwinism, then Galileo. If they force us to use litres, we'll all be living in the USSR before the decade ends.
Re:Boggle (Score:5, Funny)
2- You can shove your commie paper sizes up your "arse".
Yes, far more easily. See, when I cut or fold my A4, I get an A5. And I cut or fold that again, and get A6. Then A7. All the same shape, with no bits and pieces leftover to be cut off. So I end up with 16 nice wipes of A8 and no shit on my hands.
Re:Boggle (Score:5, Funny)
Good point.
I come across this when calculating how much fuel to put in an aeroplane - the bowser dispenses litres, I need to know what that is in pounds for the weight and balance calculation, and the fuel burn (and thus how much fuel I need) is specified in the POH in gallons per hour ... ... but these are indeed American gallons, not Imperial ones, and getting that sort of thing wrong can kill people.
Well that makes my example of a quiche baked from an English cookbook turning out kind of dry seem rather trivial in comparison.
Re:Boggle (Score:4, Funny)
That's OK, I don't think I've ever seen an A4 sheet of paper. In fact, I can't even tell you its dimensions. I know a piece of Letter paper, which is what I would use to write a letter (if such things still exist), is 8.5"x11". Maybe it's not nice round numbers, but it's 2 significant figures (like all ANSI paper sizes), easy to remember, and can be measured with any ruler.
The ISO paper sizes, OTOH, are completely irrational. And I say that because they're based on the square root of 2, which unfortunately is not a rational number. So you end up with an A4 size of 210mmx297mm. Of course if I don't remember that, I can always just calculate it if I remember the formula: An A0 sheet of paper is a square meter with a 1:1.414 aspect ratio, so its dimensions are the 4th root of 2 by the 4th root of 2 divided by the square root of 2 (2^(1/4) x 2^(1/4)/2^(1/5)). I don't need a calculator to tell you that's 1.189mx0.x841m. Then you just fold it in half 4 times and round down, so you get 2^(1/4) / 4 * 1000 = 297mm by 2^(1/4) / 2^(1/2) / 4 * 1000 = 210mm. See? Easy as pi!
dom
Re:The US likes being different (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Long Live Roman measurements (Score:5, Funny)
I did a little fact checking before posting
Sacrilege.
Re:Long Live Roman measurements (Score:5, Funny)
Alright, but apart from better sanitation, medicine, education, irrigation, public health, roads, a freshwater system, public order and an automobile suspension... what have the Romans done for us?
Re:Cut out the intermediary step. (Score:5, Funny)
Your height in cm.
I prefer mm. 1820mm sounds pretty damn impressive.
Your weight is in kgs.
I prefer tonnes. 0.105 sounds far less depressing.