0.568 261 25 liter of beer?

Professur

Professur

Well-Known Member
No fucking way.
We win fight to save pints

By ONLINE REPORTER
September 11, 2007

COMMENT ON THIS STORY


RAISE your glass! The good old British pint has been saved.

Decades of wrangling between London and Brussels over switching to metric measures will today come to an end with an announcement that imperial measures can carry on indefinitely.

Since 1995, goods sold in Europe have had to display metric weights and measurements, but imperial indications have also been allowed.

That concession to British tradition was due to expire in 2009, when imperial measures faced the final curtain - banishment from packaging and market stalls.

Today's announcements follows months of European Commission consultations with British industry, trade and consumer groups - an exercise which convinced eurocrats that emotions are still running high over the imperial system and a move to metric-only in the UK would give eurosceptics more ammunition for the anti-EU campaign.

EU industry Commissioner Gunter Verheugen will announce later today that pints of milk and beer, and miles - and the Troy ounce for weighing gold bullion (one Troy ounce is 31.103 grams for metric lovers) - are all here to stay.

A European Commission spokeswoman said Brussels was responding to "serious confusion" amongst British consumers and traders and wanted to "put a full stop on this issue".

"This means that measurements such as pints and miles are in no way under threat from Brussels and never will be" she said.
Click to expand...

Source

*raises a pint .... as Gawd meant us to*
 
Professur said:
*raises a pint .... as Gawd meant us to*
Click to expand...

I must have missed the weights and measures standards when I read the bible. Was that in an appendix? Where does the cubit fit in there? As long as there's beer, you can serve it up in whatever quantities makes you feel comfy.
 
i suppose you can .... with that piss you call american beer. But we'll keep the good stuff flowing by the pint, thanks.
 
There isn't much of a problem in making 0.56826125l glasses and call them pints. Just sell beer in liters. I don't see much point in holding back to such an obsolete measuring system. :shrug:
 
I don't see the point of changing a perfectly good system of measurement either. Pints are fine with me. Liters can blow me.
 
SouthernN'Proud said:
perfectly good system of measurement
Click to expand...

It is far from perfectly good. You are used to it that's all. Metric is, simpler and lets you focus on your job not on silly conversions.

Without a calculator, how many inches does 1,567 miles have?

I could tell you that 1,567km have 1,567,000,000 milimeters without a problem. Want it in meters? 1,567,000m there you go.
 
Luis G said:
It is far from perfectly good. You are used to it that's all. Metric is, simpler and lets you focus on your job not on silly conversions.

Without a calculator, how many inches does 1,567 miles have?

I could tell you that 1,567km have 1,567,000,000 milimeters without a problem. Want it in meters? 1,567,000m there you go.
Click to expand...

*sigh*

Once again...when was the last time I needed to know how many inches were in 1567 miles?

I know a pint has 16 ounces. I know a quart has two pints. I know a gallon has four quarts. It's not difficult. Just because someone somewhere decided to make a new one doesn't invalidate the old one.

Oh, and millimeters has two "Ls" in it. Just because I can. :D
 
Here's a little news flash, Luis. The only men to walk on the moon got there using Imperial. Not one person has walked anywhere else in the universe using metric. Metric ..... is ..... dumb. It's a dumbed down system for a barely literate population .... for whom 5280'/M is too difficult to handle. Frankly, I'm thoroughly sick of dumbing things down for the lowest common human. Walk into a book store anywhere today and what do you find? Wall to wall ...... tapes. Because actually reading is too much work .... but heaven forbid that anyone be left out.
 
I'm pretty sure virtually every engineer in America uses the metric system and has a calculator with a built in conversion program for when he has to talk to non-engineers.

Prof, you're wrong. Virtually everyone at NASA in the sixties was using the metric system.
 
Do you really want to open the discussion to today's engineers? The same morons at nasa who are falling back from the advances put forth for the shuttle to go back to a 1950's design of cone shaped capsules? If that's the best they can manage with the benefit of the simpler metric system, and backed up with modern computers ...... gimme imperial and a slide rule back. It took us one helluva lot further.
 
Professur said:
Do you really want to open the discussion to today's engineers? The same morons at nasa who are falling back from the advances put forth for the shuttle to go back to a 1950's design of cone shaped capsules? If that's the best they can manage with the benefit of the simpler metric system, and backed up with modern computers ...... gimme imperial and a slide rule back. It took us one helluva lot further.
Click to expand...

Did you miss the point? We got to the moon in the first place using the metric system. While most of the rest of the country was using the "English" system the military was already using the metric system. How many "klicks" (short for kilometers, in case you didn't know) to the LZ in Viet Nam? The National Bureau of Standards adopted it in 1960. NASA used military standards and terminology.

The current engineering fiascos are a result of a broken education system, nothing to do with the slide rule or the metric system. If can't figure out where the decimal belongs, it hardly matters whether you're using a slide rule, calculator or computer now, does it? You're still not going to know.
 
Luis G said:
Probably never, and I suppose you're not an engineer.
Click to expand...

No, I am not an engineer. Among other things, however, I am a consumer. And I know what a pound of produce feels like in my hands. I have no idea how a gram of produce feels. I know when I have picked about a quart of berries off the local strawberry farmer. I have no idea when I have a liter, and since he sells them by the quart, I'll fare much better at berry buying than an engineer will. Since I have plans to buy strawberries but no plans to walk on Jupiter, I'll stick to quarts thankyouverymuch.
 
Professur said:
Wrong. An excerpt from the Apollo 15 mission report


Unless you want to argue that their mission reports were dumbed down too.
Click to expand...
*sigh*

Fine. The NBS never adopted it and the scientists and engineers didn't convert back and forth depending on who they were dealing with. Contractors, senators, etc. They used metrics in their day to day calculations. 6.7 inches, for instance is 170 millimeters, etc., etc., ad nauseum. I don't understand where you get the idea that I think one is "dumbed down." The metric system is hundreds of times easier to use. Everyone who uses it in day to day business understands this, don't they? That hardly means that one is "smarter" or "dumber" than the other. I can use either with equal facility. Can't you? I use english measurements where appropriate (about 90% of the time in the US) and metric where I can because it's easier. Humans think in base ten. Ten finger, ten toes, etc...

That isn't and wasn't the point. You said the guys who went to the moon used the "imperial" system (not, I might note, exactly the same thing as the system we Americans actually use, but close enough), I simply pointed out that the scientists and engineers at NASA (and nearly everywhere else in the government by that time) actually used the metric system for day to day operations and converted back and forth as needed. I promise you that they aren't such difficult calculations.

In fact, we were well on our way to becoming a metric nation until Reagan pulled that particular plug.

You know, my original point was that I really don't care how you measure my beer, just gimme some (I actually have quite a collection of pint glasses). In fact, I'm going to have one now. You wouldn't like it, it's Heineken draught. Thanks for playing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top