We went metric on government highway jobs in NYS. It’s totally ridicululous because we wind up showing both systems. There’s a battle on. It’s absolutely stupid.
Slowly us British are rolling back the bureaucratic carpet of socialist/liberal EU, inch by inch, yard by yard and mile by mile...
What with all the talk of diversity, as if it were the 21st century god, it sure is interesting how some areas of individuality are treated like poison.
I understand the need for trade, and measures that are similar between nations, so I’m not completely against the metric system, but I do like our measures and think Britain SHOULD be allowed to keep theirs as well.
I still say Britain should hitch it’s chain to American and let the rest of Europe collapse in on itself. Oh well...
I read where they’re also not going forward with the metric watch. 10 “hours” with 100 “minute” hours each consisting of 1000 “seconds”. It would have been so simple but for those darn “traditionalists”.
Eat that, metric nazis!
The Imperial System is human-based. The Metric System is mathematics-based.
The Imperial System works like the human mind works, dividing things into halves, quarters, eighths, etc. This is the natural way for humans to do things. This makes things good for the carpenter but bad for the accountant.
The Metric System works like an computer works, with decimal fractions, breaking things up into tenths. Actually, not even computers work this way, but they have a front-end built on to work in decimal units rather than binary. This makes things good for the accountant but bad for the carpenter.
I see the conflict between the Imperial System and the Metric System as indicative on where people stand on basic human freedom and dignity. The freedom-loving individual naturally prefers the system that works like his own mind, dividing things and measuring things, and will prefer the Imperial System. The statist naturally prefers the system that works like the state, keeping track of lots of individual things, totalling them up into columns and controlling them, and will prefer the Metric System.
The Imperial System is the system of the Individual and the Metric System is the system of the Totalitarian. As for me, they can pry my 12” ruler out of my cold dead hands.
The metric system was imposed on Europe by the Ninteenth Century’s great Dictator.
Imposed by the sword, that is.
“It is proposing to allow the UK to continue using pounds, miles and pints as units of measurement indefinitely.”
But - but - how is The Beast going to unite the whole world, then? England is holding up the fulfillment of prophecy.
The reporter -- clearly a EU-loving, globalist -- sniffed that the U.K. was practically the only place in the world that does not use the metric system.
We Americans are not France or Canada so we don't have to get our panties in a wad everytime someone seems to "overlook" us. But the fact remains that given the U.S. footprint in the world economy, it is absurd to make such a statement, pretending not to notice that we are not metric.
Of course, BBC readers are not "reporters" at all. They work for the ministry of propaganda.
It would have been easier to re-define the quantities.
1 Pint = 500 milliliter (ml)
1 Quart = 1 liter
1 Gallon = 4 liters
PINTS IN PUBS FOREVER
(and yes I know pints were exempt from the original metric dictates)
Still, the decision should be up to the people--in this case, the British people.
Here is a link to a related thread from the UK ping list.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1894442/posts
Announcer: And now, Mr. Joseph Franklin of the U.S. Council of Standards and Measures.
Joseph Franklin: Thank you. Tonight I'd like to talk to you about how the new metric system of conversion will affect you. This is one in a series of public reeducation programs designed to make Americans aware of the metric conversion to take place in the next ten years. Most Americans already know that the measurement of miles will be discarded in favor of kilometers - a system of measurement based on the unit of tens and already in use in most of the world. Few people, however, know about the new metric alphabet: the "Decibet"; "deci" from the Greek "ten", and "bet" from our own "alphabet". Let's take a look, shall we? [ holds up large poster of the Decibet ] Now, isn't that simple? Only ten letters. Twn fingers.. ten letters.
[ holds flip cards ]
Now, let's take a look at some specifics.
[ shows Card 1 ] A, B, C, and D: our first and most popular letters will remain the same.
[ shows Card 2 ] E and F, however, will be combined and graphically simplified to make one character.
[ shows Card 3 ] The groupings GHI, and..
[ shows Card 4 ] LMNO will be condensed to single letters. Incidentally, a boon to those who always had trouble pronouncing LMNO correctly.
[ shows Card 5 ] And finally, the so-called "trash letters", or P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z, will be condensed to this easily recognizable dark character.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten! Now, let's take a look at how this change will affect our daily speech habits.
[ shows card ] In the EF grouping addition, the word "eagle" would remain basically the same in character, but would be pronounced "efaglef". However, certain words previously beginning with the letter F, like..
[ shows card ] .."fish", would be pronounced with an additional E sound: this, "efish". "I caught a big efish."
[ shows card ] "Goat" would remain "goat".
[ show
shows card ] "Hotel" will carry the G letter addition, but as in many words beginning with the GH sound, such as "Ghana", the G would remain silent; thus, "hotel". However, words beginning wih I..
[ shows card ] .. as in "industry", will be pronounced "gindustry". The meaning will remain the same. LMNO's grouping is similar.
[ shows card ] "Mucus" will be LMNOucus".
[ shows card ] "Light" would remain "light".
[ shows card ] And "open" would then ne "LMNOpen", as in, "Honey, would you LMNOpen the door?" Finally, the "trash letters", or the letters from P to Z, would then make a stop sign appear like this: [ holds up stop sign with unintelligble blotch on it ] So there you have it. We hope to eventually establish the Universal Metric Alphabet in America by 1979. Join me next time, when we explore the changes you'll be seeing in alphabet soup and spelling bee contest rules. But now, let's sing the old favorite, the childhood "Alphabet Song", as we will hear it in the future..
[ singing ] "A, B, C, D, EF.. GHI.. J, K, LMNO.. [ blotch ]"
Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were designed by English expatriates. Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts. So, who built these old rutted roads?
The very first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for, or by, Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's back end came up with it, you may be exactly right - because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Now the twist to the story: When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol, at a factory in Utah (very near Promontory Point!). The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line to the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined by the width of a horse's rump!
(Note: That was an intriguiging - and scary - fact about the longevity of bureaucrats and specifications!)
Ironically, the Americans were the early enthusiasts and promoters of the metric system, and one of the original signatories of the Treaty of the Meter (1875). Ten years before that the Congress authorized the use of metric system and supplied each state with the standard metric weight, etc. Then something happened at the end of 19th century, and the English system somehow became a part of American identity.