Found this (excerpt): "If you think in pounds and miles instead of kilograms and kilometers, you're in the minority. Only the United States, Liberia, and Burma still primarily use English units -- the rest of the world is metric. And now the Moon will be metric too."
The full article:
Starting a metric / imperial flamewar ... on the moon! ;-)
That bloke Napoleon has a lot to answer for. Pity he based the metric system on a wrong calculation of the earths circumferance ! Working in decimal figures is much easier than fractions and it doesn't really matter what the unit is but I regret the passing of feet and inches, they are 'natural' units - especially as I am blessed with feet that are exactly one foot long (in shoes). Makes estimating room sizes etc much easier.
The basis doesn't matter. And who introduced it neither.
I too have many built-in references: My arms span nearly 2m, a long step is
1m, my forearm is a bit over 0.5m, my fingers span 25cm, my thump is 30mm wide, my thump's fingernail is 0.5mm thick, my ... uuups, sorry!
Reminds me of a story I read in the newspaper: In front of court, a witness was asked for a distance (was a car accident) and he answered 17m. The judge -knowing how "good" people are in estimating distances-, asked the witness for the length of the room. He had a quick look and answered "13.46m". The judge accepted all his estimates from that moment on. He was just 2cm off. The witness was a painter by profession. That estimate would work in feet and inches as well.
And exactly *what* does all this have to do with metalworking ? For as much as you flog others about OT posts , you should be ashamed of yourself , Nick . At least others have the common decency to post "OT" on the subject line , you didn't even do that !
That reminds me of another court room story in which a man saw a crime in the rear view mirror. The defense attorney asked the man just how far he could see in said mirror. The reply was "Well last night I saw the moon in it." Steve
Nick. I am glad to see you can post items not strictly on topic.
What on the moon is ACTUALLY metric? Are there road signs that say "blimmel crater 17 Mi"? Are there signs that say "Speed Limit 25 MPH"? I think there might be a couple flags up there that might have imperial measure stripes on them....
Nothing! It only shows how far metrification can reach. :-)
No, the article (a _NASA_ article) is quite ridiculous. And for a world-leading nation a shame to have to admit that they are the last one (minus some not so superduper important nations) to use the metric system. But only because others asked for and just for the moon.
Remember the crash and burn Mars lander ? - command in Metric, software in Imperial...
I, for one, was surprised to hear any, any Imperial measurements used in Space. Science in the U.S. has long been in Metric. Engineering in some places isn't...
Likely it was calculated. His mind was already in Liters of paint and meter^2 for walls.
Martin
Martin H. Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net TSRA, Life; NRA LOH & Endowment Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot"s Medal. NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.
Funny how they never got there on their own, with all their nifty metrics and everything. It took a country that uses the Imperial system to figure out how to do it. Now the Metricizers want to come along for the ride.
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