Monday, September 6, 2010

Metric system

Here is a map that shows in red all of the nations that don't yet use the metric system: Liberia, Burma (aka Myanmar) and ... The United States of America.  Not so much comic as just sad.

About 10-15 years ago I remember hearing about some guy who sued the US government for not converting to the metric system. He claimed that it wasted a few billion dollars each year in converting measurements over for import/export labelling.  Then there's the catastrophe of the Mars Surveyor/Climate Orbiter where they lost the interplanetary probe due to different teams in the mission using different measurement systems.

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