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posted by takyon on Saturday June 06 2015, @02:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the 2016-lbs-in-a-ton dept.

The most recent candidate under the DNC banner is Lincoln Chafee who interestingly, besides being the lone Republican (he switched parties) to vote against the Iraq war, is vehemently pro-metric system. I remember when I was a kid, the freeway signs for distance and speed were printed in both English and metric. Converting all those signs from miles to km (again) would cost money, but then, using the English measurement system costs money too, forever -- according to a random guy I googled up without putting any real effort into it because I'm not that interested in proving myself wrong (Paul Naughtin), somewhere between six billion and a trillion. There are without a doubt, critics who might call that somewhat of a wide margin but as one witty commenter noted: "It is probably impossible to give an upper bound on that, however I can give you a lower bound: 500 Million Dollars for the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter by NASA".

Now, I'm neither a firm GOP nor DNC voter... but I'm tempted.

takyon: Former Governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee joins a number of other candidates seeking a 2016 U.S. presidential nomination.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Saturday June 06 2015, @09:38PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Saturday June 06 2015, @09:38PM (#193016) Journal

    You mean the population of the early 80s voted. That was 30 years ago and an entire world away in terms of technology. Maybe the kids of today will tire of for example, having to figure out the decimal equivalent of 5/32 when working with whatever 3D drawing program they are using. So much easier to just say 4mm, so much easier to divide it, so much easier to multiply it, and maybe, all these kids messing around with 3D printers will look at those in 80s who killed metric and think "fucking morons!"

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