Another one bites the dust

[Mattel]

Friend of mine caught this in Sydney

http://instagram.com/p/gfA0iTmlOd/

[ARCHINSTL]

Not necessarily a dust-biter.
Tom M.

[Mattel]

Not to anyone on here I wouldn't think but to your average driver their insurance would just write it off..

[Petros]

that Tercel can be fixed! The I am not sure the other car is worth it.

If you guys down under would drive on the correct side of the road this kind of thing would not happen so much.

[Mattel]

Changing over from left to right hand side of the road doesn't seem that hard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H



I'd be happy to drive on the other side of the road as soon as you guys start using the superior metric system for measurements...

[Vienna]

I guess, being Canadian, we're the superior ones using metric AND the proper side of the road =p

[ARCHINSTL]

But you still stick an unneeded and unnecessary "u" in many words, wasting ink, paper, and electrons...
Tom M.

[dlb]

I'd be happy to drive on the other side of the road as soon as you guys start using the superior metric system for measurements...

HA! strongly agreed.

[ARCHINSTL]

Ditto here - as a retired bicycle store owner (30 years), I loved the metric system! So much more rational than the SAE system - or the BSF or Whitworth as well.
My last Morris Minor ('67), had SAE for common things like drain/fill plugs, Whitworth for almost all else, and, being English, threw in a nod to the Continent with a couple of metric sizes as well.
Tom M.

[Petros]

WHAT is so supirior about metric? perhaps simple linial mesurements are easier, but when doing power, thermo, stress and strain calculations, it is a nightmare!

[dlb]

WHAT is so supirior about metric? perhaps simple linial mesurements are easier, but when doing power, thermo, stress and strain calculations, it is a nightmare!

i guess you may as well just keep converting ounces to pounds to tons, fluid ounces to pints to quarts to gallons to 'hogsheads' (??), inches to feet to yards to miles, etc. etc. that obviously makes much more sense than having a single, simple, unified system of measurements.

[irowiki]

Hogsheads? That's a new one

[dlb]

why, a hogshead is 63 gallons, of course! isn't it obvious??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... mary_units

[Petros]

I do not recall anyone on this side of the pond ever using hogshead. We have used Stone weight.

I have used both systems as an engineer, and I can tell you that most do not know what they are talking about, METRIC IS NOT EASER! conversion of measurements is the easy part david, it is the use of power and energy units where metric kind of falls on its face, requires complex relationships. few for example have any idea how powerful an 69000 watt engine is, but most people would know what a 92 hp engine feels like. Also for those that work with power units, the conversion of foot-pounds+rpm to hp can be done in your head, few can covert newton-meters plus rpm to watts, or calories to hp conversions, without looking up the relationship and using a calculator.

From my perspective it appears that the ft-lb-hp units were derived from people working with the relationship between them on actual machinery and application, while it appears the metric meter/kilo/watt system was derived by pointed headed professors from basic units of measure, rather than from real world machinery. So, yes, lineal measurements are easy in metric, but the more complex (and for design purposes, more important) power relationships are messy. It is very easy to make gross power estimate errors using the metric system as compared to the older units.

This backwards kind of derived units also lead to really quirky issues, for example most produce is sold in pounds (a unit of force, a weight), but in metric it is sold in kilos (a unit of mass, not really measurable directly because is it a derived value), rather that newtons (a unit of force) which is what should have been used in metric, but it requires certain assumptions and complex relationship with gravity. So it makes no rational sense to say one kilo is equal to 2.2 pounds because they are not compatible units!!! IT was the conversion to metric system which caused this very improper understanding of relationship with mass and acceleration. This is what happens when units of measure are forced on a system from the top down rather than allowed to develop naturally by the industry. REALLY REALLY costly mistakes have occurred because of this non-intuitive (and frankly, unnatural) derived relationship with energy, power, force and acceleration that are forced on a system.

DO NOT tell me that metric is better, it ain't. That is just propaganda to justify a government forcing it on their population, total BS. Only the metric direct units of measurement are easier to remember, but just about everything else is prone to very large (and costly) errors that are easy to miss.

[ARCHINSTL]

Oh, come off it about "pointed headed professors!"
99% (OK, maybe fewer) of people rarely come into contact with ft-lbs or newton-meters, but many come into contact with the metric system in expressing distance or weights.
Whether or not kilos or pounds are not truly compatible is just irrelevant in the real world.
The US monetary system is based on "tens,' which is kinda like the metric system , right?
Should we go back to what the Brits used to use? Even they got rid of shillings, florins, crowns and sovereigns (and half coins of all of the preceding) the UK decimalized in 1971. While some of the preceding are still minted, they are strictly commemorative pieces and not in general circulation. Gee, no more farthings and ha-pence or tuppence or thruppence coins.
Tom M.