OT The metric conversion of the US would happen if they taught it in school.

[Harry K]

Back to the days in the 50s and 60s when a mechanic did need three sets of wrenchs, Imperial, Metric and the British Whitworth.

Harry K

[krw]

You hang around with really stupid people.

Are you married? Have you ever gone shopping with her?

Wrong! It costs real money to change. ...not worth it at this point.

[Ed Pawlowski]

It would probably take a century or two for a full change. While soda comes in one and two liter bottles, it is also in 12 ounce cans. I cannot imagine the cost of retrofitting or replacing vending machines to take the 500 ml cans.

Some things are easy, but still costly, like road signs, maybe the newer gas pumps. Fasteners can be phased win with new models as they come out. In the interest of a world economy, many already have changed.

My Buick had a switch that changed the speedo and gauges to metric.

[Frank]

Science fiction series, Chung Kuo, had world ruled by Chinese and these units came up. It was interesting to see what they converted to. I see the Chinese li is now officially a half kilometer.

I strongly suspect that world will eventually shift to all metric/SI as older units interrelated all all over the place, e.g. 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 8 furlongs in a mile, etc.

[Attila.Iskander]

Must be hard using headstones . Bada-Boom :-)

[Harry K]

Why would I bother with 1/7th when all machine tools are calibrated in decimal? If you didn't notice (and you probably didn't) I am a _proponent_ of doing away with the Imperial measures.

Your example is idiocy.

Harry K

[Harry K]

ups.com...

True but as a desperation measure only as the aircraft will most likely be totalled. That aside it is not in play in the Gimli Glider incident. The side slip referred to was _in the air_.

Harry K

[krw]

.1 (to the same significance).

[krw]

Right, and *very* costly. It's too easy to convert now. There's no point.

Metric and Imperial fasteners can be made on the same tools. Cheap.

My Vision TSi had a metric speedo (km in big numbers). No big deal, there were still the little numbers for the conversion impaired. Funny thing, when driving in Canuckistan I was constantly doing a double-conversion. ;-)

[krw]

Dummy, if you're worried about "making a crash survivable" you aren't much worried about totaling the aircraft.

[Attila.Iskander]

Oh wicked...

Maybe they're called "Stone holders"

[Attila.Iskander]

Learning Latin has many uses One of them is "stretching" intellectual capacity and ability Some people would use the same argument about Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division. After all who needs it since we can use calculators to do those

[JIMMIE]

.net:

Actually that was rebottling a fifth to 750 ml. quarts were rebottled to liters.

Jimmie

[JIMMIE]

I have no problem using either standard its just a real bitch to convert between the two sometimes.

Jimmie

[krw]

I need to be able to do arithmetic to know when the calculator is "lying" to me. I also need it to know what to stick into the calculator.

Knowing Latin has no such use.

[krw]

"Over-the-shoulder-bolder-holders"

[Ed Pawlowski]

I had two years of Latin in high school All I remember is Amo, Amas, Amat and Veni Vidi Vici. If I had Spanish I may have actually used it over the past 50 years. Or French, Polish, or Italian.

[Harry K]

Care to name ONE aircraft that is designed to be ground looped?

As for the second part: WTF??

Harry K

[Harry K]

Back in the 50s when I was in HS the only "2nd language" offered was Latin. Even then I wondered why they didn't offer a _useable_ 2nd language.

Harry K

[Attila.Iskander]

Funny how my Latin set the ground work to easily learn French Spanish and Romanian But hey, I paid attention in the one year that I had to study Latin.