Those big bills are wonderful for getting discounts from contractors. To do the same with twenties, you would have a huge stack. Maybe just annoying, but it certainly does invite wheelbarrow jokes.
They are not. They kill birds, but not in some outsized way compared to other human activities. And if you read about the problem (it is a real problem, not something to be dismissed), you would find that they have improved things for the birds: slower spinning blades, moving rubble piles away from the windmill so that rodents (raptor food) nest elsewhere, etc.
But fuck 'em. Price of Progress, eh?
I'm not willing to stop every activity that kills birds, are you? Why should windmills be held to a higher standard than skyscrapers? The best we can do is minimize our negative impact - we'll never eliminate it.
Nuke plants, I would argue, are just tiny little concrete domes by comparison, and birds are free to nest and live among any nooks and airspace they might find.
I happen to be fairly pro-nuke, but I'm not naive enough to think that nuke plants don't have some pretty serious disadvantages. For one, our government has some policies that frankly make the nukes a bit unfeasible. We could reprocess waste like the French, but that would risk... something, so instead they force us to store it. And store it we do, waiting for them to get off their asses and come up with a long-term storage solution. Nukes also run on uranium, which has to be mined. Mining is definitely not as zero-impact as you intimate.
But keep justifying giant, spinning blades; stretching as far as the eye can see...
They will either justify themselves economically, or they will not. Time will tell.
It's true that they kill birds. But so do cars and skyscrapers. And I'd wager that coal - between the waste disposal, emitted mercury, and mining - kills birds, too.
Tesla was so kick-ass to put all of his stuff into PDF format. That is some serious forward thinking. Edison has all of his stuff on wax cylinders and in PPT.
I don't know what it would take to completely move off the old standards.
Almost everything is available in metric sizes now - the automotive industry did this about 20 years ago. Certainly anything serviceable that you wish to export should be metric. It's hard to imagine why Whirlpool would continue to use standard-unit sheet metal screws. God help them if they are actually still designing stuff in standard units. They must have no ambitions at all for the export market.
I don't think it is all that expensive to keep a plane at a private airport. And a towncar fom Uber is not much different from a taxi, cost-wise. Looking at my local airport (Wings) in the Philly burbs, tie-down fees for visitors are $20/day and heated hanger fees are $55/night.
If you can't afford $20-55/night, then we have to downgrade you from "wealthy".
Exactly! The promised flying car is for when you are sitting in traffic and you hit the big red button that jumps you ahead of the blockage, not this delicate thing.
Sure, "they've" replaced it piecemeal, but not all at once. I put "they've" in quotes because the dairy industry includes many players, from the guys actually milking the cows to the supermarket. The guys milking the cows probably don't care much what the final product looks like, but the bottle manufacturer doesn't want to invest in a size that his customers don't want. The bottler may or may not care, but whenever he buys equipment he just matches the available bottle sizes. The shipper buys equipment to handle the available sizes. The store buys displays which accommodate the available sizes. At no point in the chain is there an incentive to go up to 4 liters or down to 3 liters, so they keep it at 3.78 liters. And at the end of the day, we'd all still call a 4-liter bottle a "gallon" anyway.
The weirdest mixture is how the American military uses meters for horizontal distances, but feet for vertical distances.
We use "mils" in the semiconductor industry, and they also did in the paint/coating industry when I worked in it 20 years ago. A "mil" is a thousandth of an inch... a milli-inch! This can lead to some funny mixes, like "grams per square mil" for shear force measurements.
It's just about impossible to compare prices in the US because it switches between oz and gallons or oz and lbs.
It's pretty unusual to have the same product measured in two different units. It's also pretty unusual these days for the grocery store not to have a price-per-unit sticker. Finally, it is unusual not to have metric printed on the same label, right next to the standard units. Milk gallons have 3.78 L printed on them (or stamped into the plastic). If you end up here again, just remember that it's 16 oz to lbs or pints. 2 pints to a quart. 2 quarts to a half-gallon.
I'll admit to breaking out the calculator from time to time, but usually because the amounts are an odd amount (e.g. 333g or 11.75 oz). The price can also be any weird decimal, which can make the mental math difficult.
If that is your criteria, then most products in the US are already "metric". Almost every product label has both units. It's just that most of the standard units are simple and the metric are odd: 1 pint (473ml). To call the US "metric", I'd need to start seeing half-liter tubs instead of pint tubs, even though they are almost the same thing. Oddly, some products are metric - like soda, for instance. But only bulk soda - cans are still usually 12oz.
Slashdot Mirror
You call it "tax fraud", I call it "money".
There is no way they pay (all) their taxes. They save 20-30% using all cash, which is why they give me 10% back.
It's fine to re-use them for "I don't give a shit" sites like Slashdot.
Those big bills are wonderful for getting discounts from contractors. To do the same with twenties, you would have a huge stack. Maybe just annoying, but it certainly does invite wheelbarrow jokes.
Giant, spinning blades of doom.
They are not. They kill birds, but not in some outsized way compared to other human activities. And if you read about the problem (it is a real problem, not something to be dismissed), you would find that they have improved things for the birds: slower spinning blades, moving rubble piles away from the windmill so that rodents (raptor food) nest elsewhere, etc.
But fuck 'em. Price of Progress, eh?
I'm not willing to stop every activity that kills birds, are you? Why should windmills be held to a higher standard than skyscrapers? The best we can do is minimize our negative impact - we'll never eliminate it.
Nuke plants, I would argue, are just tiny little concrete domes by comparison, and birds are free to nest and live among any nooks and airspace they might find.
I happen to be fairly pro-nuke, but I'm not naive enough to think that nuke plants don't have some pretty serious disadvantages. For one, our government has some policies that frankly make the nukes a bit unfeasible. We could reprocess waste like the French, but that would risk... something, so instead they force us to store it. And store it we do, waiting for them to get off their asses and come up with a long-term storage solution. Nukes also run on uranium, which has to be mined. Mining is definitely not as zero-impact as you intimate.
But keep justifying giant, spinning blades; stretching as far as the eye can see...
They will either justify themselves economically, or they will not. Time will tell.
It's true that they kill birds. But so do cars and skyscrapers. And I'd wager that coal - between the waste disposal, emitted mercury, and mining - kills birds, too.
"Exploiting Geniuses for Dummies" by Edison is my favorite.
Tesla was so kick-ass to put all of his stuff into PDF format. That is some serious forward thinking. Edison has all of his stuff on wax cylinders and in PPT.
We've been "making progress" in fusion research for 50 years now
I know that seems like a long time, but put it in perspective. It's not even a single human lifetime.
I do subscribe to the notion that Jupiter is a failed star,
I, on the other hand, view the sun as a failed gas giant.
I don't know what it would take to completely move off the old standards.
Almost everything is available in metric sizes now - the automotive industry did this about 20 years ago. Certainly anything serviceable that you wish to export should be metric. It's hard to imagine why Whirlpool would continue to use standard-unit sheet metal screws. God help them if they are actually still designing stuff in standard units. They must have no ambitions at all for the export market.
That's good, because this is a British news source talking about a British problem :)
if they were that wealthy,
I don't think it is all that expensive to keep a plane at a private airport. And a towncar fom Uber is not much different from a taxi, cost-wise. Looking at my local airport (Wings) in the Philly burbs, tie-down fees for visitors are $20/day and heated hanger fees are $55/night.
If you can't afford $20-55/night, then we have to downgrade you from "wealthy".
Wouldn't a wealthy traveler just go to their local private airport and take a towncar at their destination?
Exactly! The promised flying car is for when you are sitting in traffic and you hit the big red button that jumps you ahead of the blockage, not this delicate thing.
Sure, "they've" replaced it piecemeal, but not all at once. I put "they've" in quotes because the dairy industry includes many players, from the guys actually milking the cows to the supermarket. The guys milking the cows probably don't care much what the final product looks like, but the bottle manufacturer doesn't want to invest in a size that his customers don't want. The bottler may or may not care, but whenever he buys equipment he just matches the available bottle sizes. The shipper buys equipment to handle the available sizes. The store buys displays which accommodate the available sizes. At no point in the chain is there an incentive to go up to 4 liters or down to 3 liters, so they keep it at 3.78 liters. And at the end of the day, we'd all still call a 4-liter bottle a "gallon" anyway.
which will continue to destroy families
You are confusing porn with fluoridated water. It's a common mistake for those who have been subject to so many government satellite brain scans.
The weirdest mixture is how the American military uses meters for horizontal distances, but feet for vertical distances.
We use "mils" in the semiconductor industry, and they also did in the paint/coating industry when I worked in it 20 years ago. A "mil" is a thousandth of an inch... a milli-inch! This can lead to some funny mixes, like "grams per square mil" for shear force measurements.
It's just about impossible to compare prices in the US because it switches between oz and gallons or oz and lbs.
It's pretty unusual to have the same product measured in two different units. It's also pretty unusual these days for the grocery store not to have a price-per-unit sticker. Finally, it is unusual not to have metric printed on the same label, right next to the standard units. Milk gallons have 3.78 L printed on them (or stamped into the plastic). If you end up here again, just remember that it's 16 oz to lbs or pints. 2 pints to a quart. 2 quarts to a half-gallon.
I'll admit to breaking out the calculator from time to time, but usually because the amounts are an odd amount (e.g. 333g or 11.75 oz). The price can also be any weird decimal, which can make the mental math difficult.
You did your conversions wrong...
They are the same thing, only divided by 10. I think you know that, so I'm wondering why it matters to you or the building industry?
There's no crazy like having a quarter-inch socket driver with metric sockets :)
Meh, that's such a fringe case. You have my permission to arrest those people and teach them the metric system (on their dime, of course). :)
If that is your criteria, then most products in the US are already "metric". Almost every product label has both units. It's just that most of the standard units are simple and the metric are odd: 1 pint (473ml). To call the US "metric", I'd need to start seeing half-liter tubs instead of pint tubs, even though they are almost the same thing. Oddly, some products are metric - like soda, for instance. But only bulk soda - cans are still usually 12oz.
In the US, almost every consumer good has both metric and standard units. Milk, for instance, is labeled as 1 gal and 3.78 L.