Reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon from a few years back.
The gist was that technology was advanced enough that you could legitimately claim to be productive working from home, yet not sufficiently advanced for your boss to check up on you. We were therefore at a historical point in time where goofing off from home and getting paid was a possibility.
You know, I don't buy the anti-conversion argument that it's "just not so simple to implement."
I don't think most people realize just how far the metric system has penetrated, and how familiar we really are with Metric units. Americans seem *very* willing to buy soda in 2-liter bottles, to measure snow skis in centimeters, and everyone who has ever seen NYPD Blue knows what a kilo of coke looks like. Alomost every mechanic I know has a set of metric wrenches, because many cars require them.
So the question isn't "Why haven't we switched to the Metric system?" The question is "Why are we using two systems simultaneously and not dumping the English system?"
I think it would take about 2 seconds for people to determine if they were getting ripped off at the gas pump, and really, the issue of merchants using a Metric changeover as an opportunity for price gouging is irrelevant. People don't buy gas on the basis of whether they feel the price is *fair*. They buy gas where it's cheapest or most convenient. 31 cents a liter will be more appealing than 34 cents, just like $1.20/gallon sounds better than $1.25.
And think of the excuses for speeding we would have: "Officer, I didn't realize I was doing 160 km/hr, because the km/hr numbers on my speedometer are so damn small!"
There is mercury inside the tube, in a gaseous state (it "evaporates" from a little droplet of mercury in the tube. The gaseous mercury atoms become excited by the electric current running through the tube, and the photon they release is in the UV spectrum. The UV photon hits the phosphor coating on the tube, and that coating glows with the light you actually see. Sodium vapor lamps (the orange ones you sometimes see as highway street lights) use a similar principle, but the photon is orange, so a coating on the bulb is not required.
Slashdot Mirror
Reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon from a few years back.
The gist was that technology was advanced enough that you could legitimately claim to be productive working from home, yet not sufficiently advanced for your boss to check up on you. We were therefore at a historical point in time where goofing off from home and getting paid was a possibility.
You know, I don't buy the anti-conversion argument that it's "just not so simple to implement."
I don't think most people realize just how far the metric system has penetrated, and how familiar we really are with Metric units. Americans seem *very* willing to buy soda in 2-liter bottles, to measure snow skis in centimeters, and everyone who has ever seen NYPD Blue knows what a kilo of coke looks like. Alomost every mechanic I know has a set of metric wrenches, because many cars require them.
So the question isn't "Why haven't we switched to the Metric system?" The question is "Why are we using two systems simultaneously and not dumping the English system?"
I think it would take about 2 seconds for people to determine if they were getting ripped off at the gas pump, and really, the issue of merchants using a Metric changeover as an opportunity for price gouging is irrelevant. People don't buy gas on the basis of whether they feel the price is *fair*. They buy gas where it's cheapest or most convenient. 31 cents a liter will be more appealing than 34 cents, just like $1.20/gallon sounds better than $1.25.
And think of the excuses for speeding we would have: "Officer, I didn't realize I was doing 160 km/hr, because the km/hr numbers on my speedometer are so damn small!"
There is mercury inside the tube, in a gaseous state (it "evaporates" from a little droplet of mercury in the tube. The gaseous mercury atoms become excited by the electric current running through the tube, and the photon they release is in the UV spectrum. The UV photon hits the phosphor coating on the tube, and that coating glows with the light you actually see. Sodium vapor lamps (the orange ones you sometimes see as highway street lights) use a similar principle, but the photon is orange, so a coating on the bulb is not required.