Err well there's a legacy of people being conversant with these older measurement units but schools have taught metric units since at least the early 70s (I am 35 and was taught metric since I started school in '71). The government are bringing things inline with many other countries by insisting shops label good in metric, this has caused a few minor stirs but most people accept the change that has been happening for the last 30 years. Tends to mean most people under the age of 50 can work in both metric and imperial units. Weights in shops tend to be in both and of course there is the trusty pint of beer, but I doubt if you asked many people how many fluid ounces were in a pint or gills to a quart they'd know, more people could probably tell you how many millilitres to a litre. And we still have the mile for road distances:-) Reckon the time will come when we drop the mile though.
I believe that *scientific* work is all carried out in metric units. I guess my original posting wasn't descriptive enough, I was interested primarily to know if any space going nation apart from the USA is using imperial units in their construction and instructions for space vehicles. It does seem rather daft to me that one country should hold out on one measurement unit while all the others choose a different system. I know there's a lot of inertia due to the costs associated with retraining, retooling, new parts, etc but surely it is better/ inevitable that a single standard emerges?
"They are the only organization that's consistently flying commercial payloads to the orbit. "
Hmmm, I think the guys at ESA may beg to differ. I think the guys on the Space Station are probably grateful that a place a wee distance from the USA called the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan exists and regularly sends up Soyuz taxis. I reckon there's more than just NASA in the history of space.... (not to belittle their great work, but have some perspective, eh?)
BTW is it only the Americans who use imperial rather than metric units, or are there other countries who also use a non-metric measuring system?
wow - somebody's posted to say that congress never officially declared war in Viet Nam...
does this mean that the USA was never officially at war in Viet Nam? somebody with some legal knowledge or a good history book want to help out here. I'm stunned. Sure appeared to be a war.
Let's hope something like that doesn't happen again in Afghanistan and all the while the politicians just say 'well it's not really a war'...what da hell is it then? I'm seeing US aircraft bombing the capital city of Afghanistan and anti aircraft guns from the Afghan army shooting back, what is that if it's not war?
errr... your last two paragraphs sound like excellent pro -taleban propaganda (swap Iowa for region in Afghanistan). I'd say that these paragraphs sum up well exactly why the Taleban forces have an excellent chance of giving the USA and all the other allied forces a really hard time . The USA doesn't want casualities in a far off land. The Afghan soldiers are fighting to protect their motherland, their way of life, their religion.
Personally I consider that both the governments of Afghanistan and the USA could be considered not to enjoy unified support from their peoples, are corrupt to some degree and abuse their populace.
I far prefer the latter to the former but I don't see purity and unsullied goodness on either side of the political fence. I just worry that yet more innocent people who would like peace and want to get on with their lives are going to die.
Yup, similar thing happened in Scotland a few years ago.
MacDonalds (the global burger people) tried to stop a local butcher in Scotland from selling beefburgers on the grounds that people might get confused between their shops and product with this wee man selling 'MacDonald's burgers' from his shop in the local village. Err... MacDonald is a pretty common name in Scotland.
MacDonald's (the global concern not your wee man round the corner) took a lot stick for that in Scotland. Telling a local he couldn't trade under his family name. The judges threw it out of court. Makes you wonder really, had the lawyers for MacDonald's (global burger company) ever taken a breathe and paused for a moment to wonder where the name of their founder had come from?
Yup, the pronunciation is always fun, fits in with that whole thing about reading a book first and having the film shatter your imagined choices on how the characters would look and talk...
It will be dead funny as per usual for all the heroes to have American accents (though I guess the money came from the USA and they made the film so why not, and it's no more or less valid than any other accent). The best bit though is I hear a lot of the filming was done in New Zealand, for the big scenes they pretty well rounded up anybody who could ride a horse to be in it, some of our pals got jobs. So, imagine the scene from the film:
A battle, outside the gates of Mordor (or summink)...
Gandalf (our hero, in a Texas accent): "I will vanquish thee, oh evil spawn of darkness, back to whence thy came!"
Evil orc dressed in gothicky black wielding dead big axe (in broad Kiwi accent): "No worries mate! Choice!"
Not sure what the answer is but it always cracks me up...
You either have to admire or despair at the man's sheer bloody mindedness and the way the men died, or perhaps both. I think I agree that Amundsen was far better prepared, actually spending time with people who lived in these conditions and learning from them.
I have to say as a character I much prefer Ernest Shackleton and his great achievement of salvaging a failed mission and bringing back all his men alive.
After the shooting in Dunblane (Scotland) when an adult went into a school and shot some children, there was universal horror. The widely supported political response was to ban a large number of categories of handguns in the UK. Good on the politicians for having the nerve to do so. After all, it makes life easier for the police. They find somebody with a pistol, its illegal, and they can take action, simple as that.
The recent school shootings in America have also righteously raised universal shock and horror. But I think it shocked a lot of people over here in Europe that one of the responses was - the call to arm the teachers.
It would be great to see the USA get on top of its gun problem but just arming everybody with more and more guns seems to be increasing the problem rather than solving it. Good luck, I hope a sane solution can be found, I hope your politicians have the nerve to do something.
What concerns me most is when authorities take rights away or impose limitations in times of crisis, but then don't give little old you and me those rights back after the crisis has passed.
In some situations I can accept the need for governments, the police, military or whoever to impose certain restrictions for safety or security. But (certainly in the UK) there is a long tradition of laws or restrictions being imposed in times of crisis and...suprise, suprise, those restrictions not being lifted after the situation has been resolved.
It would be great if we could persuade politicians to only grant certain laws for limited periods of time and stick to that duration. Unfortunately laws with limited durations seem to get their duration extended again and again, and laws being enacted for one crisis are kept in the police's arsenal in case they need to use them in a different situation. This year in the UK the police used a law designed to stop football hooliganism in the immediate vicinity of football grounds to declare *the whole of central London* an area in the vicinity of a football ground so they could stop and search anybody they fancied, anywhere in central London when there was a Reclaim The Streets demonstration occurring. On a lighter note, we have drinking laws in England (last orders at 11pm) which were brought in to stop workers getting too drunk and not contributing to the War Effort - in the First World War....
Anybody got any solutions for how we balance the need for security in a crisis with the creeping encroachment on rights? I think this is a crucial issue.
Please, read this before declaring war. A letter from an Afghani civilian, on the BBC website. Innocent people in Afghanistan have suffered enough, they don't deserve to suffer any more.
It seems to me that American opinion has shifted to declaring war on Afghanistan. Please, American friends, think twice before spilling more innocent blood. Otherwise you'll have to accept that there will be people who will say 'We were minding our own business peacefully and trying to survive and the Americans came and killed our wives and children. We must seek revenge'. It could all get horribly cyclic. Seek justice but be wise and careful in getting the right people and only them.
The large number of people who didn't vote is a scary figure - you say it represents 63% of your country's population. We had a similar poor turnout in the UK at our last election. Very worrying.
Worrying because it means the so-called representative governments aren't actually that representative, but more worrying because such a large number of people could not or chose not to participate. Something very wrong in our countries. Compare with 'new' democracies where people walk for miles and queue for hours to cast their vote.
depends on your political preference eh?
on
Mice Headed for Mars?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"In a related article SpaceRef talks about how millionaires are now starting to fund these type of private missions and speculates whether billionaires might fund further space projects."
Depends on your political preference really. Lots of stuff seems to have been done by government funded projects up to now. Suppose it's an option in a free market economy though. Shame these kind of guys don't decide to spend their billions on hospitals or schools or finding a cure for cancer though.
I reckon philanthropy aimed at funding the education system would probably be a more surefire, longer term, likely way of gettting successful space missions happening. I mean if tobacco companies can sponsor universities on the proviso that their beneficeries say nice things about cigarrettes (or at least not bad things) then surely it wouldn't be too hard to persuade a university to accept a few billion provided it made sure a number of students study space sciences.
US would react in a more forthright manner perhaps
on
Sklyarov Indicted
·
· Score: 1
"Dmitry should be freed and sent home immediately, and then the White House should send an apology to the Russians for this behavior.I know that they'd demand the same for one of our citizens cought up in a BS situation like this in another country."
Hmmm, a little optimistic methinks. I reckon the Americans would probably send the request for immediate return of their citizen along with immediate trade embargos that could take chunks out of the host country's economy.
Swap 'Russian citizen imprisoned in US for breaking US law' with,...err... 'US citizen imprisoned in Afghanistan/North Korea/Ghana/Finland for breaking local law' and give me your impression of what the US would do...
I think it's time for us to speak up and be counted, my friends. Whatever your opinion, let your local politician know. Amnesty International has been very successful over the years in helping prisoners of conscience by encouraging people to write and contact their politicians and the media, keeping these forgotten people in the public view. We should take a leaf out of their book.
"people have water at home, sometimes metered, they buy bottled water, but everyone is used to the idea of the free
public water fountain. why should it be any different with these little cells?
Well I expect it depends on the society you are living in. You have a valid, idealistic and really nice idea- I'd love to see it. Of course, nothing is free, somebody has to pay for it, and we pay for 'free' water fountains through our taxes.
I imagine the idea of 'free' net access like this paid for via municipal taxes would probably be far more acceptable in social democracies (like Scandinavia) -where people generally believe in higher taxes to pay for social infrastructures like schooling, hospitals, etc. I can imagine that this idea wouldn't be as well accepted in free market democracies such as the USA where taxes aren't so well received and the model tends towards the concept of people paying for such services individually rather than as a community, through private commercial contracts.
wow, this is a truly international robo-footie series (even if you Americans insist on calling it soccer;-P )
The way the slashdot article was hyperlinked 'the fifth international competition', I had a sinking feeling it was going to be one of those USA 'World Series' sports which turns out to be 'USA plus a couple of guests'. Good on them for having a reasonable spread of participants.
I still use my Sinclair Z88 for long train journeys, great wee machines, also run on 4 x AA batteries which mean you can keep powered up by nipping into any corner shop or supermarket when you need more juice...
Slashdot Mirror
good to see racism and is alive and kicking in the USA. And you wonder why other countries don't like you?
LUSER!
George Washington?
Err well there's a legacy of people being conversant with these older measurement units but schools have taught metric units since at least the early 70s (I am 35 and was taught metric since I started school in '71). The government are bringing things inline with many other countries by insisting shops label good in metric, this has caused a few minor stirs but most people accept the change that has been happening for the last 30 years. Tends to mean most people under the age of 50 can work in both metric and imperial units. Weights in shops tend to be in both and of course there is the trusty pint of beer, but I doubt if you asked many people how many fluid ounces were in a pint or gills to a quart they'd know, more people could probably tell you how many millilitres to a litre. And we still have the mile for road distances :-) Reckon the time will come when we drop the mile though.
I believe that *scientific* work is all carried out in metric units. I guess my original posting wasn't descriptive enough, I was interested primarily to know if any space going nation apart from the USA is using imperial units in their construction and instructions for space vehicles. It does seem rather daft to me that one country should hold out on one measurement unit while all the others choose a different system. I know there's a lot of inertia due to the costs associated with retraining, retooling, new parts, etc but surely it is better/ inevitable that a single standard emerges?
"I bet it really gets under your skin that we don't have metric time either."
No, but it makes us laugh that you still launch your spaceships using imperial measurement units...times change.....
somebody care to confirm / deny the following list? -
"The USA has bombed the following countries since 1945:
China(1945-46 & 1950-53)
Korea (1950-53)
Guatemala (1954, 1960, 1967-69)
Indonesia (1958)
Cuba (1959-60)
Congo (1964)
Peru (1965)
Laos (1964-73)
Vietnam (1961-73)
Cambodia (1969-70)
Grenada (1983)
Libya (1986)
El Savador(1980s)
Nicaragua (1980s)
Panama (1989)
Iraq (1991 - 99)
Sudan (1998)
Afghanistan (1998, 2001)
Yugoslavia (1999)"
Quite a list anyway.
"They are the only organization that's consistently flying commercial payloads to the orbit. "
Hmmm, I think the guys at ESA may beg to differ. I think the guys on the Space Station are probably grateful that a place a wee distance from the USA called the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan exists and regularly sends up Soyuz taxis. I reckon there's more than just NASA in the history of space.... (not to belittle their great work, but have some perspective, eh?)
BTW is it only the Americans who use imperial rather than metric units, or are there other countries who also use a non-metric measuring system?
wow - somebody's posted to say that congress never officially declared war in Viet Nam...
does this mean that the USA was never officially at war in Viet Nam? somebody with some legal knowledge or a good history book want to help out here. I'm stunned. Sure appeared to be a war.
Let's hope something like that doesn't happen again in Afghanistan and all the while the politicians just say 'well it's not really a war'...what da hell is it then? I'm seeing US aircraft bombing the capital city of Afghanistan and anti aircraft guns from the Afghan army shooting back, what is that if it's not war?
errr... your last two paragraphs sound like excellent pro -taleban propaganda (swap Iowa for region in Afghanistan). I'd say that these paragraphs sum up well exactly why the Taleban forces have an excellent chance of giving the USA and all the other allied forces a really hard time . The USA doesn't want casualities in a far off land. The Afghan soldiers are fighting to protect their motherland, their way of life, their religion.
Personally I consider that both the governments of Afghanistan and the USA could be considered not to enjoy unified support from their peoples, are corrupt to some degree and abuse their populace.
I far prefer the latter to the former but I don't see purity and unsullied goodness on either side of the political fence. I just worry that yet more innocent people who would like peace and want to get on with their lives are going to die.
Yup, similar thing happened in Scotland a few years ago.
MacDonalds (the global burger people) tried to stop a local butcher in Scotland from selling beefburgers on the grounds that people might get confused between their shops and product with this wee man selling 'MacDonald's burgers' from his shop in the local village. Err... MacDonald is a pretty common name in Scotland.
MacDonald's (the global concern not your wee man round the corner) took a lot stick for that in Scotland. Telling a local he couldn't trade under his family name. The judges threw it out of court. Makes you wonder really, had the lawyers for MacDonald's (global burger company) ever taken a breathe and paused for a moment to wonder where the name of their founder had come from?
Yup, the pronunciation is always fun, fits in with that whole thing about reading a book first and having the film shatter your imagined choices on how the characters would look and talk...
It will be dead funny as per usual for all the heroes to have American accents (though I guess the money came from the USA and they made the film so why not, and it's no more or less valid than any other accent). The best bit though is I hear a lot of the filming was done in New Zealand, for the big scenes they pretty well rounded up anybody who could ride a horse to be in it, some of our pals got jobs. So, imagine the scene from the film:
A battle, outside the gates of Mordor (or summink)...
Gandalf (our hero, in a Texas accent): "I will vanquish thee, oh evil spawn of darkness, back to whence thy came!"
Evil orc dressed in gothicky black wielding dead big axe (in broad Kiwi accent): "No worries mate! Choice!"
Not sure what the answer is but it always cracks me up...
You either have to admire or despair at the man's sheer bloody mindedness and the way the men died, or perhaps both. I think I agree that Amundsen was far better prepared, actually spending time with people who lived in these conditions and learning from them.
I have to say as a character I much prefer Ernest Shackleton and his great achievement of salvaging a failed mission and bringing back all his men alive.
After the shooting in Dunblane (Scotland) when an adult went into a school and shot some children, there was universal horror. The widely supported political response was to ban a large number of categories of handguns in the UK. Good on the politicians for having the nerve to do so. After all, it makes life easier for the police. They find somebody with a pistol, its illegal, and they can take action, simple as that.
The recent school shootings in America have also righteously raised universal shock and horror. But I think it shocked a lot of people over here in Europe that one of the responses was - the call to arm the teachers.
It would be great to see the USA get on top of its gun problem but just arming everybody with more and more guns seems to be increasing the problem rather than solving it. Good luck, I hope a sane solution can be found, I hope your politicians have the nerve to do something.
What concerns me most is when authorities take rights away or impose limitations in times of crisis, but then don't give little old you and me those rights back after the crisis has passed.
In some situations I can accept the need for governments, the police, military or whoever to impose certain restrictions for safety or security. But (certainly in the UK) there is a long tradition of laws or restrictions being imposed in times of crisis and...suprise, suprise, those restrictions not being lifted after the situation has been resolved.
It would be great if we could persuade politicians to only grant certain laws for limited periods of time and stick to that duration. Unfortunately laws with limited durations seem to get their duration extended again and again, and laws being enacted for one crisis are kept in the police's arsenal in case they need to use them in a different situation. This year in the UK the police used a law designed to stop football hooliganism in the immediate vicinity of football grounds to declare *the whole of central London* an area in the vicinity of a football ground so they could stop and search anybody they fancied, anywhere in central London when there was a Reclaim The Streets demonstration occurring. On a lighter note, we have drinking laws in England (last orders at 11pm) which were brought in to stop workers getting too drunk and not contributing to the War Effort - in the First World War....
Anybody got any solutions for how we balance the need for security in a crisis with the creeping encroachment on rights? I think this is a crucial issue.
Please, read this before declaring war. A letter from an Afghani civilian, on the BBC website. Innocent people in Afghanistan have suffered enough, they don't deserve to suffer any more.
It seems to me that American opinion has shifted to declaring war on Afghanistan. Please, American friends, think twice before spilling more innocent blood. Otherwise you'll have to accept that there will be people who will say 'We were minding our own business peacefully and trying to survive and the Americans came and killed our wives and children. We must seek revenge'. It could all get horribly cyclic. Seek justice but be wise and careful in getting the right people and only them.
The large number of people who didn't vote is a scary figure - you say it represents 63% of your country's population. We had a similar poor turnout in the UK at our last election. Very worrying.
Worrying because it means the so-called representative governments aren't actually that representative, but more worrying because such a large number of people could not or chose not to participate. Something very wrong in our countries. Compare with 'new' democracies where people walk for miles and queue for hours to cast their vote.
"In a related article SpaceRef talks about how millionaires are now starting to fund these type of private missions and speculates whether billionaires might fund further space projects."
Depends on your political preference really. Lots of stuff seems to have been done by government funded projects up to now. Suppose it's an option in a free market economy though. Shame these kind of guys don't decide to spend their billions on hospitals or schools or finding a cure for cancer though.
I reckon philanthropy aimed at funding the education system would probably be a more surefire, longer term, likely way of gettting successful space missions happening. I mean if tobacco companies can sponsor universities on the proviso that their beneficeries say nice things about cigarrettes (or at least not bad things) then surely it wouldn't be too hard to persuade a university to accept a few billion provided it made sure a number of students study space sciences.
"Dmitry should be freed and sent home immediately, and then the White House should send an apology to the Russians for this behavior.I know that they'd demand the same for one of our citizens cought up in a BS situation like this in another country."
Hmmm, a little optimistic methinks. I reckon the Americans would probably send the request for immediate return of their citizen along with immediate trade embargos that could take chunks out of the host country's economy.
Swap 'Russian citizen imprisoned in US for breaking US law' with,
I think it's time for us to speak up and be counted, my friends. Whatever your opinion, let your local politician know. Amnesty International has been very successful over the years in helping prisoners of conscience by encouraging people to write and contact their politicians and the media, keeping these forgotten people in the public view. We should take a leaf out of their book.
"people have water at home, sometimes metered, they buy bottled water, but everyone is used to the idea of the free public water fountain. why should it be any different with these little cells?
Well I expect it depends on the society you are living in. You have a valid, idealistic and really nice idea- I'd love to see it. Of course, nothing is free, somebody has to pay for it, and we pay for 'free' water fountains through our taxes.
I imagine the idea of 'free' net access like this paid for via municipal taxes would probably be far more acceptable in social democracies (like Scandinavia) -where people generally believe in higher taxes to pay for social infrastructures like schooling, hospitals, etc. I can imagine that this idea wouldn't be as well accepted in free market democracies such as the USA where taxes aren't so well received and the model tends towards the concept of people paying for such services individually rather than as a community, through private commercial contracts.
Check out Consume in the UK.
wow, this is a truly international robo-footie series (even if you Americans insist on calling it soccer ;-P )
The way the slashdot article was hyperlinked 'the fifth international competition', I had a sinking feeling it was going to be one of those USA 'World Series' sports which turns out to be 'USA plus a couple of guests'. Good on them for having a reasonable spread of participants.
The IKEA kitchen units really do it for me (see the photo section)...
(nah seriously folks, why not, a good way to try out technologies and the group dynamic issues, go for it)
Survival Research Laboratories have had a pulse jet kart for a few years now, but it's nice to see they have developed a pulse jet hovercraft... hehehe ....
I still use my Sinclair Z88 for long train journeys, great wee machines, also run on 4 x AA batteries which mean you can keep powered up by nipping into any corner shop or supermarket when you need more juice...
Anybody else still running one?
...that the news article on 'Hacking for human rights ' mentions that
"Hackers in the United States and other countries where abuses are infrequent should not be complacent" ....
Mind you it's worth checking Amnesty International to see their comments on human rights in the USA.