Article

2007-01-11 Europe

US firms will fall foul of EU's metric obsession

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Posted by Deacon Blues 2007-01-11 14:15|| || Front Page|| [6 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I am not joking with I say the imposition of metric in Canada was the canary in the coal-mine of stupid that has long since crippled out ability to stand up to the on-coming caliphate. We have lost so much of our history and tradition it is practically impossible to know what we are defending let alone why.

God curse these bastards and all their works. And fuck the French.

Posted by Excalibur 2007-01-11 15:45|| 2007-01-11 15:45|| Front Page Top

#2 This should mean war! (A trade war)

This is a deliberate attempt by the EUSSR to harm the American (and British) economies for absolutely no reason. There is no positive to be gained by decreasing the amount of information available to a customer.

We should consider passing a law that ALL imports into the US have to be labelled with both systems as the very least answer.

Posted by AlanC">AlanC 2007-01-11 15:46|| 2007-01-11 15:46|| Front Page Top

#3 I see the EU is furthering their efforts to kill their economy. No one will want to trade with the idiots after this.

Posted by DarthVader">DarthVader 2007-01-11 16:16|| 2007-01-11 16:16|| Front Page Top

#4 Actual conversation:

"Centimeters? What's that in real units? Like inches."

"Oh, that's right. You yanks are still using the Imperial units, aren't you? Why, in god's name?"

"Because we CAN, you frenchified bastard!"

(guffaws followed)

Posted by mojo">mojo 2007-01-11 16:34|| 2007-01-11 16:34|| Front Page Top

#5 Trade rules should be reciprocal. No products allowed in the US with metric units. FOAD Quebec.

Posted by RWV 2007-01-11 17:07|| 2007-01-11 17:07|| Front Page Top

#6 WTF? Banning reference to other units of measure? Why should they care?

Posted by Robert Crawford">Robert Crawford 2007-01-11 17:31|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2007-01-11 17:31|| Front Page Top

#7 ...it is imposing a total ban on what it calls "supplementary indications" ie any mention of inches, pounds or other non-metric units in advertising, labelling, catalogues, manuals and the like.

Sounds like a job for Winston Smith.

Posted by xbalanke 2007-01-11 17:38|| 2007-01-11 17:38|| Front Page Top

#8 francophone English ban extended to units of measure...very similar to Islam's intolerance of other religions: the knee-jerk reaction of a weak system built on subjugation and tyranny

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2007-01-11 18:16|| 2007-01-11 18:16|| Front Page Top

#9 So all new dimensions for electronic components and sockects?
What if INTEL and AMD don't agree? Does that mean no chips for the EUniks?

Posted by 3dc 2007-01-11 19:06|| 2007-01-11 19:06|| Front Page Top

#10 3 quarts of bull-shit in a litre jar.

Posted by Shipman 2007-01-11 19:19|| 2007-01-11 19:19|| Front Page Top

#11 I'm sure part of the reason is that there's very little space left on the label after every line of text is offered in all the key languages of the EU, which used to mean English, French, Italian, German, Greek, Dutch, although I think not the three Scandanavian languages. Since expansion, they've had to add Polish, Hungarian and Czech. Much is in symbols, but the font size was barely legible to my young eyes even in the good old days.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-01-11 20:48|| 2007-01-11 20:48|| Front Page Top

#12 Are the EUnicks trying to FORCE us to convert abruptly to SI units? Well bless their hearts.

Posted by bigjim-ky 2007-01-11 21:13|| 2007-01-11 21:13|| Front Page Top

#13 Well, when the flood comes, Ima gonna still build me ark in cubits, according to the original prints, and the EUniks can tie off on Notre Dame's steeple.

Posted by Alaska Paul">Alaska Paul 2007-01-11 21:33|| 2007-01-11 21:33|| Front Page Top

#14 Once more, Belgium tries to tell the whole world how to live. How about a nice ARCLIGHT strike down through Brussels, you idiots? Maybe even a BIG nuke, so you can measure the effect in (thousands of) kilotonnes. Belgium's the chihuahua tail on a St. Bernard, trying to run the whole show. When are the real people of Europe going to get tired of this crap, or are there no real people left?

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2007-01-11 23:00|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2007-01-11 23:00|| Front Page Top

#15 AP sent me this once and I just have to post it.

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses!

Now, the twist to the story . . . .

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.

The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

- And -

You thought being a

HORSE'S ASS wasn't important!

Posted by 3dc 2007-01-11 23:02|| 2007-01-11 23:02|| Front Page Top

#16 And now you know why Mr.ED, TRIGGER + other TV Cowboy Hosses are beloved Amer characters.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2007-01-11 23:10|| 2007-01-11 23:10|| Front Page Top

23:41 CrazyFool
23:37 JosephMendiola
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23:32 Barbara Skolaut
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22:56 Mahmood
22:54 DMFD
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