| General > General Technical Chat |
| why is the US not Metric |
| << < (235/291) > >> |
| rstofer:
--- Quote from: Mattylad on January 20, 2020, 09:22:04 pm ---The answer to this quandary is actually very simple. They prefer working in feet and inches because there are 12 inches per foot. And we all know that Americans have 6 toes on each foot so they find this one the easiest to count. :) They will catch up with the rest of the world one day. --- End quote --- 47 pages of well reasoned arguments and the US STILL hasn't changed. I'm shocked! Just remember: There are two types of countries, those who use metric and those who have left footprints on the Moon. I don't see us changing any time soon! If 47 pages won't force a change, what will? |
| Gyro:
--- Quote from: rstofer on February 03, 2020, 05:50:52 pm ---47 pages of well reasoned arguments and the US STILL hasn't changed. I'm shocked! Just remember: There are two types of countries, those who use metric and those who have left footprints on the Moon. I don't see us changing any time soon! If 47 pages won't force a change, what will? --- End quote --- I refer the honourable member to my reply #309. Nothing has changed, least of all, the member's attitude. ::) If a bunch of Nazi scientists (with their metric calipers!) had run in a different direction at the end of the war, is search of a clean slate, there wouldn't have been an American footprint on the Moon. It would have been a Soviet, metric one! EDIT: to quote from my post #309: --- Quote ---Lest you forget (or don't even realize) the father of the US space program was Werner von Braun, a member of the German Nazi Party and the SS, secretly smuggled out of Germany, together with around 1600 fellow scientists and stocks of V2 missiles. In his time as head of the V2 program, he was an active party to the deaths of up to 20 thousand people (slave labour) not to mention the people killed by his weapons. All conveniently swept under the carpet and forgotten in the interests of the US race to the moon. As you say, The Germans always did have the superior scientists! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun Presumably von Braun had to convert from the metric system to the American customary system when he was recruited to pioneer the US space program. Now that really is irony! --- End quote --- |
| bsfeechannel:
I love this thread not only because of its many hilarious arguments but also because I've learned a great deal about the metric system, which made me respect it even more. So I think it is time for a little quiz to test our knowledge about metrication. The people you see floating in the pictures below are orbiting around the earth's center of mass (at least at the moment the picture was taken and considering the earth's mass much greater than the orbiting people's). Try to spot which of them is using metric and which is using imperial units. |
| rstofer:
Of course we snagged up as many German scientists as possible. Germany has always had a superb educational system and world class scientists. They were far ahead of the rest of the world. There is no debate about that, it is fact. There's a reason my parents had me take 4 years of German in high school (graduated '63) and perhaps this led to my being stationed in Mannheim, Germany rather than Viet Nam. It was interesting, the young people in Germany (Boomers) all spoke English. Or at least the ones I encountered and their English was far better than my German. The US should keep combing the planet for talent and do whatever is necessary to bring them to the US. We do quite a bit of that with our Doctoral and Post Doctoral education/research system and the associated visas. We need to expand that! And we need to make it easier for those scientists and engineers to bring their immediate families. The H1B visa is not the way to attract high skill talent. Need a foreign scientist? Try a million dollar signing bonus! It's worth every penny! We do grow a few of our own at places like Cal Tech, Stanford, MIT and Berkeley but it's probably cheaper to import. |
| rstofer:
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on February 03, 2020, 07:26:40 pm ---I love this thread not only because of its many hilarious arguments but also because I've learned a great deal about the metric system, which made me respect it even more. So I think it is time for a little quiz to test our knowledge about metrication. The people you see floating in the pictures below are orbiting around the earth's center of mass (at least at the moment the picture was taken and considering the earth's mass much greater than the orbiting people's). Try to spot which of them is using metric and which is using imperial units. --- End quote --- Guess which ones are paying taxes for the other group to take a paid vacation! In any event, the imperial unit woman is smokin' in any system. |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |