Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 18:04:33 GMT From: "Tim" <tbrooksnospamam.mindspring.com> Subject: Re: 9-5 gas mileage?
we just spent something like 150 billion to alienate most of the rest of the world. so a hundred million to change street signs and cooperate with the rest of the world doesn't seem so unreasonable. "Shane Almeida" <almeida.spam.is.evilnospam.is.evil.mindless.com> wrote in message news:zIWdnbf5E449_IrfRVn-jwnospamast.com... > On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 04:42:10 +0000, Pooh Bear wrote: >> Why oh *why* does the US want to be the bad boy when it comes to ( >> ignoring ) international harmonisation ? Is it a testosterone thing or >> what ? I can't work it out for sure. > > How much do you think it would cost to switch all the street signs that > are in miles or miles per hour to kilometers or kilometers per hour? > Don't forget: you can't just the switch the units, you'd also have to > physically move the signs, otherwise "Boston 1 Mile" would become "Boston > 1.609344 kilometers." Is it worth spending millions or maybe even > billions of dollars to switch just to synchronize our measurements with > the rest of the world? > > And aside from all the money we'd have to spend, metric isn't any more > convenient for measuring distance in an automobile than the US system. > The nice thing about metric in science and engineering is that the units > are all related in some way. What good does that do me when I'm driving? > > So, really, what's the point? What exactly would we gain by switching to > metric for distances? You really need to come up with a better argument > from switching than "testosterone."