They fear the impression of a gun more than an actual gun.
I could put a gun in a pineapple... and this guy wouldn't even know.
If I were a bad guy... a mass shooter... why would I make it easy for any moron to look at me and tell what I'm doing? I could put the gun in anything. A box of f'ing cheerios.
Every person that wants to make society safe by taking away the guns needs to watch this...
I can blow your house up with a water heater. You can make a bomb that can take down a big office building out of fertilizer.
You're policing the wrong thing. Instead of policing weapons, police INTENT... police CRAZY... police INCOMPETENCE.
You could give me a thermonuclear weapon. Put the button to detonate that thing right in my hot little hand.
Know what would happen? Nothing. I've no intent to mass murder people. I am no crazy. And I'm not so stupid that I'm going to accidentally press the button.
In Switzerland they give their own people machine guns and a bag of bullets. Everyone in Switzerland has a machine gun and a bag of bullets. How many mass shootings are there are Switzerland despite the fact that everyone has a machine gun and a bag of bullets?
Do you see? I'm sure some of you don't... But that's on you... because this is really fucking simple.
Who is the one that shoots a school up? Just some guy with a gun? Any guy with a gun? No. It is a crazy person with a gun. Or a radical terrorist of some stripe.
Well what is the lowest common demoninator?
Think about it. No motherfucker... don't react like a fucking animal. Use your brain. Actually work it out.
The lowest common demoninator in violent uses of weapons: Criminals Crazy people Terrorists
The vast majority of gun owners are none of these and don't do anything against anyone with them.
Here you might say "but we're not mind readers, how do we police for things that are ideas or mental states?"
Easily.
1. The police know where the criminals are and they know where the gangs operate. They are very predictable and tend to have established territories. Finding a gang member with an illegal weapon is about as easy as finding a cop with an official firearm. It is really really easy. So if you want to disarm the gangs... make any effort to do it. Current policy in the US is to let the gangs do whatever they want so long as they only kill each other. Literally that. We have these big death tolls in the cities because when push comes to shove... no one cares if the gang members kill each other.
2. Crazy people out themselves almost always especially early on when they ask for help. A lot of the people that later went on to do shootings were involved in some kind of mental health program that didn't work out very well. Sending these people to asylums is the way to go. Seriously... big building... nice gardens... lots of jello... lots of great drugs... lots of jigsaw puzzles and water colors.
3. The domestic terrorists all have a "message" they want to "show the world" or show the country they're in or show some ethnic group or something. And that tends to start with a lot of violent preaching LONG before any violence happens. Go to the Mosques that terrorists frequented and you'll find a lot of violence and intolerance preached in the Mosque. The moderate Muslims LEAVE these mosques and join more moderate ones. And that just leaves a cluster of increasingly radicalized people in the existing mosque. And for the other sorts of terrorists you get the same thing. They write manifestos and send them to the news and write crazy violent statements online... and a fair number of these people are ALSO crazy... and so you have TWO opportunities to catch them.
Now will taking our guns away reduce violence? Depends. If the gangs want to kill each other and the police still don't care... then what does that change?
I could as easily argue that the foot is based on a human foot, the inch a finger joint...
And I should point out that when metric was first brought out they tried to decimalize time. That is, ten months, ten months in a year... ten hours in a day... etc.
And why do you find ten useful? Because we have ten fingers.
That is why humans use base ten math. Our fingers.
All these systems are arbitrary. The fact that you're basing it on one thing or another doesn't matter. You don't have to. You choose to.
As to being an idiot, why does my failure to adopt your arbitary system and stay with the existing arbitrary system make me an idiot?
You're apparently an intolerant bigot.
As to majorities... are you really so ignorant that you don't realize that they tried to switch the US to metric?... and it failed. Because the people don't like it.
So... you're a bigot... and an idiot. Winning combination and oh so typical of an AC.
First, I didn't say you were or were not using metric.
I said it didn't matter.
Second, thank you for your correction about how well you're doing in China. That is good to hear.
You do realize that if you are on metric, that his comment that the US is not selling cars in china because of a lack of metric is doubly stupid... right?
I mean, that wasn't my argument. I didn't start talking about cars and metric. He did.
As to islamic... you apparently aren't smart enough to understand what an analogy is when you spot one.
that renders you too stupid to actually have this conversation. We're done. You're officially too stupid. Possibly that is why you log in as AC... so people don't know how how stupid you are before you post something? That's the theory I'm going with.
If there is anything left of the good scientist and thinker your education system was supposed to make you into... try to be better than you are. You are a very disappointing figure right now.
The one person that would need to know that answer would be an engineer or a scientist... and they have "calculators"... which makes all of this trivially easy.
The people wining on and on about this don't seem to understand that much of the modern world was built by the British Empire and the American Republic.... both on imperial units.
If imperial were so impossible to work with... then how did we do it?
From what I gather, the Apollo rockets were all designed in Imperial. That means we put men on the moon... in Imperial.
Anyone working in metric ever do that? No?
Then clearly going metric doesn't fucking matter.
Which was my point from the start.
Metric versus Imperial is a fucking stupid argument. It DOES NOT matter. Both systems are arbitrary.
And how is saying you don't consult your standards department a justification for you to make bigoted comments about the US?
You're making no sense. Are you telling me that a German manufacturing company consults the exact size of a meter as defined by your standards department?
They don't. They don't need to. They already know a close enough value for the meter that they have no need. That was my point.
And in the US, it is the same. We know the length of a yard. We have measurements from 200 years ago for a yard that are as accurate as we need them to be.
Even the microchip fabs that work in metric... in the US as well... (because nano meters make more sense when you're at that scale)... they aren't consulting your standards department either. They know the length of a nanometer. No one needs to tell them. They have a better grasp of what a nano meter is in fact than most people do... anywhere. Because they actually physically work with that measurement.
Now... are you done embarrassing yourself or can I expect more stupidity?
... Hypocritical since YOU were the one that started making bigoted comments about MY country... I didn't do that to you. And in fact the only negative thing I said about europe was that your beef is terrible compared to ours. And it is...
And you take that and you try to act like I'm the one with a monkey on his back?
Why are pretty much all AC useless little shitheads? And why does slashdot let you failtrolls pollute the board? Truly odd.
As to your dig on the American people, I could say the same thing for europeans leaving europe. The difference is that your countries are smaller. How many europeans leave europe? About as many Americans as leave the United States. So your presumption of superiority is comical.
You're not leaving the EU and we're not leaving the US.
There are huge cultural differences around the country. if you think we're all one simple nation then you don't know anything about us. there are states that have as much different between them as finland versus greece.
Go to Alaska... go to Callifornia... to go New Mexico... go to Maine... go to Wyoming... go to Massachusetts. Very different places. There is no one European country with as much diversity as the United States. So presuming your little countries are the equlivant of ours is just ignorance on your part.
And yes... I've been to Europe... many times.
As to what you think of our measurement system... okay, but why do we "care" what you think? See... here is something I think you missed in the last statement from me.
We don't care.
Your opinion on the issue - Meaningless.
I won't tell you how to design the plugs you use in your walls and you don't tell me what units to buy my beef in.
American beef is awesome by the way. I feel so bad for Europeans when it comes to meat. Your meat is so bad compared to ours.
Anyway... rage on, hater. We're happy with it the way it is...:)
If you're clearly your browser data with the INTENTION of obstructing justice, then I would agree... you did that. However, proving intent will be difficult.
If the justice department says they can presume intent or intent doesn't matter... then they're crazy.
But if you can prove that someone cleared their history to evade a criminal probe then that would of course be obstruction of justice. That's entirely reasonable. But you have to prove intent.
Your kneejerk instances on political correctness don't interest me. Catering to them merely privileges you to presume you are entitled to it.
Utterly ignoring and denying it is a service I provide to the world.
As to you generally blowing off the significance of what you presumed to do... which was morally judge me on the basis of your cultural taboos... No. That's as dumb as you pointing out that something I said didn't follow islamic law. Then acting like it wasn't a big deal when I point out that I don't care if I don't follow islamic law.
I'm not Islamic. And I'm not some politically correct meat puppet.
You can't presume to judge me by your cultural frame work and have that be meaningful to me unless I ascribe to your culture. I don't. I think I made it clear that i find your culture to be dull, formalistic, and insufferable in its pretensions to moral superiority.
Here you'll again try to blow off my comment as a rant, ignoring that I was responding to your casual presumption of moral authority which was itself quite presumptuous on your part.
Hmmm... a distinction without meaning. Just because the stick we use to determine what is the PERFECT yard is caculated first in metric what does that matter to the rest of the system?
First the standards systems are only referenced when there is a dispute. If I show you a FOOT and I measured it out using a basic ruler... do you think your version of a foot is going to be any different? Not really.
At this point, who is even consulting these standard's departments? I think every industry knows what a foot or a pound is... I'm sure the europeans also don't need their standard's department to tell them what a gram weighs. They know damn well what a gram weighs.
What is more they're as much born by other countries as by us so the actual cost to us is basically nothing. We are not at a competitive disadvantage industrially because of our preference for imperial units.
Note, we don't only use imperial units. We use BOTH imperial and metric especially in business, science, and engineering.... which is the only place this is going to matter.
The only thing left to you really is that metric is divisible by ten which is easier to remember for people not familiar with the units. But imperial tends to have units based around what they're used for... and people familiar with imperial don't care if something is divisible by ten because they know the imperial units.
1. Big manufacturing companies care about as much about this issue as I do... which is not at all. They're not going to do anything that they think will impact sales negatively. If they think people want imperial units they'll sell products with imperial units. Period.
2. As to requiring things be in metric or you get fined... that is actually how they got metric adopted in the EU. But imagine trying to do that in the US? Think about the political shit storm you'd be walking into. And for what? With all the other problems we're dealing with, you want to divert national energy to that? We have terrorism, budget problems, issues with labor, issues with immigration, issues with our health system, issues with agriculture, issues with land management, issues with making sure other big powers take us seriously enough to not invade allies, etc etc etc etc.
And in and amongst all that... you want to convert to metric? Why? That is a total waste of finite energy, attention, political good will, and public peace.
People will get fucking furious about that. For one thing you're going get the whole 'Merica crowd showing up saying that Imperial is American and not like that filthy foreign metric. And for another you're going to get a lot of people that just are really used to the old units and don't want you fucking with them.
This is a terrible idea from a frankly terrible politician.
American cars are not failing to sell in china because of lack of metric adoption.
American cars are selling less well because the Chinese are making better cars domestically. Their cars are insanely cheaper than ours.
As to the fall of American dominance in general... depends on what you mean. Consider voltage plugs sold around the world. Lots of countries have different voltages and plugs. And if you want to sell your shit there then you have to equip your product with the right inverter and the right plugs.
If every little country can get its custom plug accommodated than explain to me why metric versus imperial is a problem?
Any company that finds the conversion between the two to be daunting is too incompetent to be worth buying anything from.
The costs of using a divergent system are exaggerated. We use metric and imperial industrial equipment all the time almost interchangeably.
Think of the average American ruler... inches on one side and centemeters on the other.
What is the cost difference between that ruler and a purely metric ruler? Irrelevant. The cost is meaningless.
The funny thing is that I think we actually incovienence the world more with our units than they do with theirs. So... if there is a cost being paid, I think they're paying it instead of us... as funny as that is...
Why? Because we're a big dick economy and people need to make things in our units for them to sell well in our market. So they do that.
Do we pay more for that? Nope. Look at the cost of metric machinery versus imperial machinery. The price is the same.
here is another way to think about it... the US doesn't use he standard global voltages either. Our plugs and voltages are different. Do we pay more because a plug sold in europe won't work in the US? Nope. They just make a different inverter for each market and install it in the device seamlessly. if you need to carry a machine over from one place or the other than you can get the converter plugs. And large machinery tends to have duel operation inverters that can handle either voltage by flipping a switch to activate different circuits.
Do we pay more for that? Not that I can see.
This is an irrelevant issue. It isn't worth wasting time on. These systems are arbitrary. And the only way to get the US to convert to metric is to force us to do it like they did in Europe. That is, fine people for not using metric and fine them for listing things in imperial. Do you honestly see that going down well? And is that a great use of our national political capital? People are already pissed off about a lot of legitimate issues.
Getting people pissed off because you're fining them for using imperial is not a fight you want to start.
A few people were saying cooking in metric was a pain in the ass and a lot of chiefs in europe don't do it.
It involves a lot of weighing things apparently. Which sounds irritating.
I mean... what takes longer... measuring out 4 cups of flour or weighing some amount of flour to get the right weight and then putting that in the recipe?
I'm not saying people shouldn't use metric. Use what you like. But enough with the attempt to push people from one arbitrary measurement system into another. It doesn't matter.
the advantage of metric is that it is a global standard and the units are all divisible by ten.
That's it.
However in the US, we're familiar with the current system so it isn't a big deal... and the US has never really cared what was standard in other countries. We just don't care.
The US tried to go metric in the 1970s.
First, most people just ignored it and used the existing imperial system.
Second, it was the middle of a bad economic time and transitioning costs money because you have to change everything to suit the new system. It was just a tough sell in hard times.
Third... and this can't be stressed enough... I feel like the metric advocates really don't get this... Americans don't care about joining a global standard. At all. Not even a little.
When you factor it out, what you're left with is advantage of their divisible by ten units versus the more varied divisions in imperial.
That's pretty much it. And then you have to factor that Americans know imperial so it isn't a hardship to use it. And they don't know metric as well so it is inconvenient.
What does this leave us with? The US is not going metric any time soon. Just isn't happening.
not really. I pointed out you were making claims that can't be substantiated and you're now continuing your pattern of evasion.
There is nothing anyone could possibly say to you that would get you to respond ethically. The concept is alien to you. I've tried. And you just do "this" every time.
Slashdot Mirror
They fear the impression of a gun more than an actual gun.
I could put a gun in a pineapple... and this guy wouldn't even know.
If I were a bad guy... a mass shooter... why would I make it easy for any moron to look at me and tell what I'm doing? I could put the gun in anything. A box of f'ing cheerios.
Every person that wants to make society safe by taking away the guns needs to watch this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Ta Da!
I can blow your house up with a water heater. You can make a bomb that can take down a big office building out of fertilizer.
You're policing the wrong thing. Instead of policing weapons, police INTENT... police CRAZY... police INCOMPETENCE.
You could give me a thermonuclear weapon. Put the button to detonate that thing right in my hot little hand.
Know what would happen? Nothing. I've no intent to mass murder people. I am no crazy. And I'm not so stupid that I'm going to accidentally press the button.
In Switzerland they give their own people machine guns and a bag of bullets. Everyone in Switzerland has a machine gun and a bag of bullets. How many mass shootings are there are Switzerland despite the fact that everyone has a machine gun and a bag of bullets?
Do you see? I'm sure some of you don't... But that's on you... because this is really fucking simple.
Who is the one that shoots a school up? Just some guy with a gun? Any guy with a gun? No. It is a crazy person with a gun. Or a radical terrorist of some stripe.
Well what is the lowest common demoninator?
Think about it. No motherfucker... don't react like a fucking animal. Use your brain. Actually work it out.
The lowest common demoninator in violent uses of weapons:
Criminals
Crazy people
Terrorists
The vast majority of gun owners are none of these and don't do anything against anyone with them.
Here you might say "but we're not mind readers, how do we police for things that are ideas or mental states?"
Easily.
1. The police know where the criminals are and they know where the gangs operate. They are very predictable and tend to have established territories. Finding a gang member with an illegal weapon is about as easy as finding a cop with an official firearm. It is really really easy. So if you want to disarm the gangs... make any effort to do it. Current policy in the US is to let the gangs do whatever they want so long as they only kill each other. Literally that. We have these big death tolls in the cities because when push comes to shove... no one cares if the gang members kill each other.
2. Crazy people out themselves almost always especially early on when they ask for help. A lot of the people that later went on to do shootings were involved in some kind of mental health program that didn't work out very well. Sending these people to asylums is the way to go. Seriously... big building... nice gardens... lots of jello... lots of great drugs... lots of jigsaw puzzles and water colors.
3. The domestic terrorists all have a "message" they want to "show the world" or show the country they're in or show some ethnic group or something. And that tends to start with a lot of violent preaching LONG before any violence happens. Go to the Mosques that terrorists frequented and you'll find a lot of violence and intolerance preached in the Mosque. The moderate Muslims LEAVE these mosques and join more moderate ones. And that just leaves a cluster of increasingly radicalized people in the existing mosque. And for the other sorts of terrorists you get the same thing. They write manifestos and send them to the news and write crazy violent statements online... and a fair number of these people are ALSO crazy... and so you have TWO opportunities to catch them.
Now will taking our guns away reduce violence? Depends. If the gangs want to kill each other and the police still don't care... then what does that change?
As to crazy people... they
You don't know what the word "arbitary" means.
I could as easily argue that the foot is based on a human foot, the inch a finger joint...
And I should point out that when metric was first brought out they tried to decimalize time. That is, ten months, ten months in a year... ten hours in a day... etc.
And why do you find ten useful? Because we have ten fingers.
That is why humans use base ten math. Our fingers.
All these systems are arbitrary. The fact that you're basing it on one thing or another doesn't matter. You don't have to. You choose to.
As to being an idiot, why does my failure to adopt your arbitary system and stay with the existing arbitrary system make me an idiot?
You're apparently an intolerant bigot.
As to majorities... are you really so ignorant that you don't realize that they tried to switch the US to metric?... and it failed. Because the people don't like it.
So... you're a bigot... and an idiot. Winning combination and oh so typical of an AC.
First, I didn't say you were or were not using metric.
I said it didn't matter.
Second, thank you for your correction about how well you're doing in China. That is good to hear.
You do realize that if you are on metric, that his comment that the US is not selling cars in china because of a lack of metric is doubly stupid... right?
I mean, that wasn't my argument. I didn't start talking about cars and metric. He did.
So anyway. Carry on.
As to islamic... you apparently aren't smart enough to understand what an analogy is when you spot one.
that renders you too stupid to actually have this conversation. We're done. You're officially too stupid. Possibly that is why you log in as AC... so people don't know how how stupid you are before you post something? That's the theory I'm going with.
As to my motivations, so you're shifting to Ad hominem now?
And you call yourself a scientist?
Hahahahahahaha
I'm going to give you this because it is fitting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
As to people not reading stuff... here is the fellow's full comment:
http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/...
If there is anything left of the good scientist and thinker your education system was supposed to make you into... try to be better than you are. You are a very disappointing figure right now.
The one person that would need to know that answer would be an engineer or a scientist... and they have "calculators"... which makes all of this trivially easy.
The people wining on and on about this don't seem to understand that much of the modern world was built by the British Empire and the American Republic.... both on imperial units.
If imperial were so impossible to work with... then how did we do it?
From what I gather, the Apollo rockets were all designed in Imperial. That means we put men on the moon... in Imperial.
Anyone working in metric ever do that? No?
Then clearly going metric doesn't fucking matter.
Which was my point from the start.
Metric versus Imperial is a fucking stupid argument. It DOES NOT matter. Both systems are arbitrary.
What does the one have to do with the other?
And how is saying you don't consult your standards department a justification for you to make bigoted comments about the US?
You're making no sense. Are you telling me that a German manufacturing company consults the exact size of a meter as defined by your standards department?
They don't. They don't need to. They already know a close enough value for the meter that they have no need. That was my point.
And in the US, it is the same. We know the length of a yard. We have measurements from 200 years ago for a yard that are as accurate as we need them to be.
Even the microchip fabs that work in metric... in the US as well... (because nano meters make more sense when you're at that scale)... they aren't consulting your standards department either. They know the length of a nanometer. No one needs to tell them. They have a better grasp of what a nano meter is in fact than most people do... anywhere. Because they actually physically work with that measurement.
Now... are you done embarrassing yourself or can I expect more stupidity?
Holy shit, someone that isn't a fucktard.
I even told the idiot that he didn't understand what the word arbitrary meant... he took no hints. So many shocking fucktards.
... So you say "american cars are failing to sell in china because they're not metric"...
I say "metric isn't relevant to sales in china"...
And you respond "ha HAH tricked you they are in metric!"...
Which makes your initial comment about US cars not selling in china... moronic.
Metric doesn't matter. No one cares.
hardly relevant to the debate between metric and imperial.
... Hypocritical since YOU were the one that started making bigoted comments about MY country... I didn't do that to you. And in fact the only negative thing I said about europe was that your beef is terrible compared to ours. And it is...
And you take that and you try to act like I'm the one with a monkey on his back?
Why are pretty much all AC useless little shitheads? And why does slashdot let you failtrolls pollute the board? Truly odd.
Fuck off, you little waste of oxygen.
*makes brushing motions*
You may go.
Again... if you can show intent, then you have your obstruction of justice charge.
I said in my post that that would be hard to do. You're just saying the same thing.
As to your dig on the American people, I could say the same thing for europeans leaving europe. The difference is that your countries are smaller. How many europeans leave europe? About as many Americans as leave the United States. So your presumption of superiority is comical.
You're not leaving the EU and we're not leaving the US.
There are huge cultural differences around the country. if you think we're all one simple nation then you don't know anything about us. there are states that have as much different between them as finland versus greece.
Go to Alaska... go to Callifornia... to go New Mexico... go to Maine... go to Wyoming... go to Massachusetts. Very different places. There is no one European country with as much diversity as the United States. So presuming your little countries are the equlivant of ours is just ignorance on your part.
And yes... I've been to Europe... many times.
As to what you think of our measurement system... okay, but why do we "care" what you think? See... here is something I think you missed in the last statement from me.
We don't care.
Your opinion on the issue - Meaningless.
I won't tell you how to design the plugs you use in your walls and you don't tell me what units to buy my beef in.
American beef is awesome by the way. I feel so bad for Europeans when it comes to meat. Your meat is so bad compared to ours.
Anyway... rage on, hater. We're happy with it the way it is... :)
If you're clearly your browser data with the INTENTION of obstructing justice, then I would agree... you did that. However, proving intent will be difficult.
If the justice department says they can presume intent or intent doesn't matter... then they're crazy.
But if you can prove that someone cleared their history to evade a criminal probe then that would of course be obstruction of justice. That's entirely reasonable. But you have to prove intent.
Your kneejerk instances on political correctness don't interest me. Catering to them merely privileges you to presume you are entitled to it.
Utterly ignoring and denying it is a service I provide to the world.
As to you generally blowing off the significance of what you presumed to do... which was morally judge me on the basis of your cultural taboos... No. That's as dumb as you pointing out that something I said didn't follow islamic law. Then acting like it wasn't a big deal when I point out that I don't care if I don't follow islamic law.
I'm not Islamic. And I'm not some politically correct meat puppet.
You can't presume to judge me by your cultural frame work and have that be meaningful to me unless I ascribe to your culture. I don't. I think I made it clear that i find your culture to be dull, formalistic, and insufferable in its pretensions to moral superiority.
Here you'll again try to blow off my comment as a rant, ignoring that I was responding to your casual presumption of moral authority which was itself quite presumptuous on your part.
Hmmm... a distinction without meaning. Just because the stick we use to determine what is the PERFECT yard is caculated first in metric what does that matter to the rest of the system?
First the standards systems are only referenced when there is a dispute. If I show you a FOOT and I measured it out using a basic ruler... do you think your version of a foot is going to be any different? Not really.
At this point, who is even consulting these standard's departments? I think every industry knows what a foot or a pound is... I'm sure the europeans also don't need their standard's department to tell them what a gram weighs. They know damn well what a gram weighs.
The economic costs are basically nothing.
What is more they're as much born by other countries as by us so the actual cost to us is basically nothing. We are not at a competitive disadvantage industrially because of our preference for imperial units.
Note, we don't only use imperial units. We use BOTH imperial and metric especially in business, science, and engineering.... which is the only place this is going to matter.
The only thing left to you really is that metric is divisible by ten which is easier to remember for people not familiar with the units. But imperial tends to have units based around what they're used for... and people familiar with imperial don't care if something is divisible by ten because they know the imperial units.
1. Big manufacturing companies care about as much about this issue as I do... which is not at all. They're not going to do anything that they think will impact sales negatively. If they think people want imperial units they'll sell products with imperial units. Period.
2. As to requiring things be in metric or you get fined... that is actually how they got metric adopted in the EU. But imagine trying to do that in the US? Think about the political shit storm you'd be walking into. And for what? With all the other problems we're dealing with, you want to divert national energy to that? We have terrorism, budget problems, issues with labor, issues with immigration, issues with our health system, issues with agriculture, issues with land management, issues with making sure other big powers take us seriously enough to not invade allies, etc etc etc etc.
And in and amongst all that... you want to convert to metric? Why? That is a total waste of finite energy, attention, political good will, and public peace.
People will get fucking furious about that. For one thing you're going get the whole 'Merica crowd showing up saying that Imperial is American and not like that filthy foreign metric. And for another you're going to get a lot of people that just are really used to the old units and don't want you fucking with them.
This is a terrible idea from a frankly terrible politician.
American cars are not failing to sell in china because of lack of metric adoption.
American cars are selling less well because the Chinese are making better cars domestically. Their cars are insanely cheaper than ours.
As to the fall of American dominance in general... depends on what you mean. Consider voltage plugs sold around the world. Lots of countries have different voltages and plugs. And if you want to sell your shit there then you have to equip your product with the right inverter and the right plugs.
If every little country can get its custom plug accommodated than explain to me why metric versus imperial is a problem?
Any company that finds the conversion between the two to be daunting is too incompetent to be worth buying anything from.
The costs of using a divergent system are exaggerated. We use metric and imperial industrial equipment all the time almost interchangeably.
Think of the average American ruler... inches on one side and centemeters on the other.
What is the cost difference between that ruler and a purely metric ruler? Irrelevant. The cost is meaningless.
The funny thing is that I think we actually incovienence the world more with our units than they do with theirs. So... if there is a cost being paid, I think they're paying it instead of us... as funny as that is...
Why? Because we're a big dick economy and people need to make things in our units for them to sell well in our market. So they do that.
Do we pay more for that? Nope. Look at the cost of metric machinery versus imperial machinery. The price is the same.
here is another way to think about it... the US doesn't use he standard global voltages either. Our plugs and voltages are different. Do we pay more because a plug sold in europe won't work in the US? Nope. They just make a different inverter for each market and install it in the device seamlessly. if you need to carry a machine over from one place or the other than you can get the converter plugs. And large machinery tends to have duel operation inverters that can handle either voltage by flipping a switch to activate different circuits.
Do we pay more for that? Not that I can see.
This is an irrelevant issue. It isn't worth wasting time on. These systems are arbitrary. And the only way to get the US to convert to metric is to force us to do it like they did in Europe. That is, fine people for not using metric and fine them for listing things in imperial. Do you honestly see that going down well? And is that a great use of our national political capital? People are already pissed off about a lot of legitimate issues.
Getting people pissed off because you're fining them for using imperial is not a fight you want to start.
A few people were saying cooking in metric was a pain in the ass and a lot of chiefs in europe don't do it.
It involves a lot of weighing things apparently. Which sounds irritating.
I mean... what takes longer... measuring out 4 cups of flour or weighing some amount of flour to get the right weight and then putting that in the recipe?
I'm not saying people shouldn't use metric. Use what you like. But enough with the attempt to push people from one arbitrary measurement system into another. It doesn't matter.
All measurements systems are arbitrary.
the advantage of metric is that it is a global standard and the units are all divisible by ten.
That's it.
However in the US, we're familiar with the current system so it isn't a big deal... and the US has never really cared what was standard in other countries. We just don't care.
The US tried to go metric in the 1970s.
First, most people just ignored it and used the existing imperial system.
Second, it was the middle of a bad economic time and transitioning costs money because you have to change everything to suit the new system. It was just a tough sell in hard times.
Third... and this can't be stressed enough... I feel like the metric advocates really don't get this... Americans don't care about joining a global standard. At all. Not even a little.
When you factor it out, what you're left with is advantage of their divisible by ten units versus the more varied divisions in imperial.
That's pretty much it. And then you have to factor that Americans know imperial so it isn't a hardship to use it. And they don't know metric as well so it is inconvenient.
What does this leave us with? The US is not going metric any time soon. Just isn't happening.
not really. I pointed out you were making claims that can't be substantiated and you're now continuing your pattern of evasion.
There is nothing anyone could possibly say to you that would get you to respond ethically. The concept is alien to you. I've tried. And you just do "this" every time.
bingo the clowno
I know what herd immunity is, fool.
I asked you to make an argument.
You responded with ignorance and evasions.