FWIW I'm actually Australian. Like the Poms (what you call Brits), Zed is Zed, always was, always will be except we get Sesame street on the Telly (TV) now and kids getting confused. We have biscuits where you have 'cookies', lollies where you have candy, utes instead of 'pickups', football is called footy (either AFL or Rugby League or Union depending on state) and is played "at the ground" or "on the oval". (You can have soccer oval or ground)
Soccer is soccer (not football) and isn't dominate football code in Australia although is growing (strong push by soccer afficionados and marketers for it to become known as 'football' to compete with other footy codes).
Australians almost uniformly call USA citizens yanks (sometimes also septics - rhyming slang for septic tank = yank, might sound derogatory but actually not usually meant this way). We don't discriminate North or South and in fact when asked to impersonate a yank accent will often do a southern style drawl. You are all yanks to us;-)
> Also, why do the British pluralize "math," yet singularize "sports?" The -ize's in the previous sentence are intentional and inflammatory, by the way. same reason yanks insist on singularising maths and pluralising sport, misspelling words by replacing s with z and worst of all pronouncincing z as zee;-)
This the same Calder often quoted derogatorily on certain websites with anti environmentalist leanings?
several quote an article "In the Grip of a New Ice Age?" in the National Wildlife Federation's journal, International Wildlife attributed to a "Nigel Calder" in 70's
the line they like to quote is:
"the threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."
eg http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba337/ba337.html http://www.mises.org/story/2119 http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosop hy/BG1143.cfm
many people trot out reasons why it is so hard (changing tooling, hardware shops, celsius too coarse grained, all road signs have to change etc)
Australia did it in seventies. Lot's of people complained. Once a generation of school kids came through it was no longer a problem.
Estimate distances... a stride approx=metre (same accuracy as pacing out feet).
Temperature - can't say I can tell difference between 22.5C and 23C. (Perhaps US folk are more sensitive to temperatures but from somewhere where all temps quoted in C can't say I've ever noticed it being a problem)
Litre - when liquid food containers and fuel pumps are litre/ml multiples, you encounter it so often you forget the old units
Change size of things at the hardware - you can still buy imperial screws and metric screws but most people will think in metric. Often you buy things that are 25.4mm (=1inch) to fit old stuff.
You get used to it pretty quick. After a while imperial stuff just becomes a nuisance and you think in all metric
Road signs - As I remember it (as a kid) Australia for 5 years replaced the miles/mph signs with ones of different colour/shape with 'km' ones (clearly marked as km) and people got quickly used to it. Then removed old ones Within a few years people just forgot about mph
2. Does it matter?
if you deal with the rest of the world it makes life easier for both them and you. If you don't - who cares.
If you change older people will still think imperial younger people won't. Life and society though doesn't break down and probably over 10 year period the benefits (ease of international trade etc) will outweigh the costs (OK that number pulled out of my hat but reckon it is arguable)
(by way I grew up through the change over process and in the end was a bit of an anti climax. Reckon hardest job is getting people onside. If you do it will go well. If you don't you'll have clumsy situation like in UK where they have only done it half hearted and result is a bit of a shemozzle)
Gun confiscation leads to a loss of freedom, increased crime, and the government moving to the left. This has already happened in England and Australia.
pardon? Where do you get your info on Australia?
Can't say I've seen any increase in crime. Firearm deaths have been declining.
Interestingly this has been happening since well before the gun 'buy back' program. The difference of the gun buy back program and tougher licencing seems to have been to stop mass shootings (there had been about 10 between 1985 to 1996 when the port Aurthur massacre prompted tighter laws and a gun buyback system) Since 1996 there have been none that I can recall.
The tighter laws seem to have stopped such massacres. They haven't made a major difference to total firearm homicides (although these have continued to decrease)
There seems to be a lot of odd stories about Australia descending into violence since tighter laws were introduced. Sounds funny to someone who actually lives here - not where I live!
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FWIW I'm actually Australian. Like the Poms (what you call Brits), Zed is Zed, always was, always will be except we get Sesame street on the Telly (TV) now and kids getting confused. We have biscuits where you have 'cookies', lollies where you have candy, utes instead of 'pickups', football is called footy (either AFL or Rugby League or Union depending on state) and is played "at the ground" or "on the oval". (You can have soccer oval or ground)
;-)
Soccer is soccer (not football) and isn't dominate football code in Australia although is growing (strong push by soccer afficionados and marketers for it to become known as 'football' to compete with other footy codes).
Australians almost uniformly call USA citizens yanks (sometimes also septics - rhyming slang for septic tank = yank, might sound derogatory but actually not usually meant this way). We don't discriminate North or South and in fact when asked to impersonate a yank accent will often do a southern style drawl. You are all yanks to us
> Also, why do the British pluralize "math," yet singularize "sports?" The -ize's in the previous sentence are intentional and inflammatory, by the way. ;-)
same reason yanks insist on singularising maths and pluralising sport, misspelling words by replacing s with z and worst of all pronouncincing z as zee
This the same Calder often quoted derogatorily on certain websites with anti environmentalist leanings?p hy/BG1143.cfm
several quote an article "In the Grip of a New Ice Age?" in the National Wildlife Federation's journal, International Wildlife attributed to a "Nigel Calder" in 70's
the line they like to quote is: "the threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."
eg http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba337/ba337.html
http://www.mises.org/story/2119
http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhiloso
use quantum; use strict; foreach my $world @Quantum::allWorlds { print "hello $world\n"; }
my perspective (as an australian)
1. It isn't that hard
many people trot out reasons why it is so hard (changing tooling, hardware shops, celsius too coarse grained, all road signs have to change etc)
Australia did it in seventies. Lot's of people complained. Once a generation of school kids came through it was no longer a problem.
Estimate distances... a stride approx=metre (same accuracy as pacing out feet).
Temperature - can't say I can tell difference between 22.5C and 23C. (Perhaps US folk are more sensitive to temperatures but from somewhere where all temps quoted in C can't say I've ever noticed it being a problem)
Litre - when liquid food containers and fuel pumps are litre/ml multiples, you encounter it so often you forget the old units
Change size of things at the hardware - you can still buy imperial screws and metric screws but most people will think in metric. Often you buy things that are 25.4mm (=1inch) to fit old stuff. You get used to it pretty quick. After a while imperial stuff just becomes a nuisance and you think in all metric
Road signs - As I remember it (as a kid) Australia for 5 years replaced the miles/mph signs with ones of different colour/shape with 'km' ones (clearly marked as km) and people got quickly used to it. Then removed old ones Within a few years people just forgot about mph
2. Does it matter?
if you deal with the rest of the world it makes life easier for both them and you. If you don't - who cares.
If you change older people will still think imperial younger people won't. Life and society though doesn't break down and probably over 10 year period the benefits (ease of international trade etc) will outweigh the costs (OK that number pulled out of my hat but reckon it is arguable)
(by way I grew up through the change over process and in the end was a bit of an anti climax. Reckon hardest job is getting people onside. If you do it will go well. If you don't you'll have clumsy situation like in UK where they have only done it half hearted and result is a bit of a shemozzle)
pardon? Where do you get your info on Australia?
Can't say I've seen any increase in crime. Firearm deaths have been declining.
Interestingly this has been happening since well before the gun 'buy back' program. The difference of the gun buy back program and tougher licencing seems to have been to stop mass shootings (there had been about 10 between 1985 to 1996 when the port Aurthur massacre prompted tighter laws and a gun buyback system) Since 1996 there have been none that I can recall.
The tighter laws seem to have stopped such massacres. They haven't made a major difference to total firearm homicides (although these have continued to decrease)
There seems to be a lot of odd stories about Australia descending into violence since tighter laws were introduced. Sounds funny to someone who actually lives here - not where I live!