How Obama could TRUELY be a historic president!

Originally posted by Raud

I'll tell you what he could do, what eminent change he could bring:

Introduce and apply the Metric System througout the entrie US of A!

If he could just impress upon americans the importance of good personal hygiene (both physical and psychological) he'd be be remembered as the greatest reformer in modern history.

reply to post by Lilitu


LOL

I've long since thought of Americans as a lot of things - but unhygienic?


Have you ever visited this place???????

Obviously not.

Originally posted by digitus impudicus
2nd line ... How is that "Hope and Change" working for you? I'm still unemployed!

Well, I am employed. Have been so all the time. Fact is though; if you look slightly to the left you see that I am not a US citizen, hence, I did not have a total idiot for president for 8 goddamn years prior to the current one.
Now, there you have a valid reason to complain about the economical/employment situation in the USA.

Please stay on topic.

No way my lathe, milling machine and shaper in my shop are imperial and i dont have and can not get parts to convert them.
My lathe is a 1940 logan
My alas shaper in from the late 1940s
And my mill is from the 1950s.

All are still in good shape and i have no reason to buy new ones just so i can work in a system that i rarely use.
All the guns i work on are in imperial.

The rest of the world just wants us to go metric so that it will be easier to counterfeit our products.

Metric system. My gosh I couldn't change now.. I'm over 40!

I have a better idea.

He could be known for being the first president in history to go over Niagara Falls sitting in a Radio Flyer Classic Red Wagon - wearing nothing but Winnie The Pooh Boxer shorts !

Yep.. at least I'd remember that for the rest of My life.

Originally posted by InfaRedMan

Originally posted by Voyager1
1 foot is such a handy measuring tool.

Yeah.. especially for the porn industry. Inches and feet have such a romanticism attached to them don't they!

IRM

I can just see it now instead of inches they'll be saying so and so has a 270 mm cock. Too funny.


Seriously though, I feel like the metric system shines mostly below a foot after that its not worth a lot. Our fractoral system comes naturally by deviding in half and doing so again and again. Its natural to say, half a glass or a fourth of a glass. Its not very natural to say .5 of a glass or .25 of a glass.

[edit on 12-11-2009 by Voyager1]

reply to post by Raud


i've got to say man, i've been on ATS about 3 months now and am pretty active. all things considered, this is by far one of the strangest topics i've encountered.

reply to post by snusfanatic


SCORE!!!



Seems like Raud strikes again!

That's not going to happen. Think about it a minute. Look at the current irrationality, rhetoric, ranker, idiocy, and deep divisions caused by Health Care Reform. Most people who open their mouths to speak about it, don't have clue one about the depth and implications which it represents. I don't even think most of them care. Understanding the issue properly is too hard. Besides, if you've already got your mind made up anyhow, then what's the damn point of making the effort to know the details in the first place?! They wouldn't matter. It's enough to know that you think it's something bad, and then say Hitler was all in favor of it. What are you gonna do anyhow... probe the issue in-depth in a rational and meaningful manner? That's not how you win debates. No, no, no.... you just have to be the most ignorant one about it, and scream that ignorance as loud and angrily as you can until the other guy is irritated enough to leave.


I understand switching to the metric system standard would be a damned smart move for America in terms of time, money, and resources which we should done decades ago. I see no defensible or rational reason why I shouldn't support such a move... and I would support it. ...But even I don't want to hassle with that awkward transitional period of switching to the metric system. How can you even joke about something like that I can already hear the cries of allegations of fascism, the predictions that it will be the death of America, the fear-mongering of crippling of American Sovereignty by "globalist European elites", and the Craftsman Death Panels. You know, Hitler used the metric system.


So yeah... you're god damned right switching to the metric system would make Obama a truly historic president. You throw those kinds of people an issue simple enough that even they can understand and conceptualize? You're just asking for this nation to plunge into civil war shortly after such an attempt was made. You have to understand that being represent a significant threat... (no... an ASSAULT really) on America's sovereignty and our fundamental liberties to be as ass backwards obstinate for no good reason as we see fit.


Sheesh, next thing you'll suggest is that we all start driving crazy like on the other side of the road such as up in Canada.

I want to clarify what I said in my first post in this thread. To measure with your foot when you dont have a ruler you would have to count 30,60,90,120,150 etc,,. not 3,6,9,12 while using the metric system.


You could throw out inches, divide our english foot into ten and leave everything else the same. Thousandths of a foot are pretty small for a ruler though. You could do tenths, hundredths and half hundredths= five thousandths .005 .


Even if you didn't adopt the foot into the metric system it should have its own term for the length of your foot.

The other thing, we are so used to thinking in miles. I have never learned to think in kilometers when driving.
1 kilometer=1000 meters
1.61 kilometers = 1 mile

1 kilometer is 61 large steps less than a mile

so now a 250 mile trip I have taken all my life is going to be 402.4 kilometers.

A trip to Nashville is going to be 463.68 Kilometers

reply to post by Voyager1


I think that would be less of a problem than you think. Here in the UK, we converted to metric in the late 70's/early 80's, in order to ease trade in the EEC. Today, we still use miles, feet and inches in day-to-day operation of our lives. The cars and street signs are still in miles. Most scales are shown in both imperial and metric. I go to the gym and the weights are in both too.

I think the only real problem was the conversion of the fuel pumps from gallons to litres, which is one of the reasons petrol is so fecking expensive over here. I filled up last night and it was £1.08/litre! (about £4.10 a gallon, $6.80/gallon). The other reason is that 80% of the price of fuel in this country is tax! Sorry, I'm ranting now...