I guess it depends on who the generics have been exposed to in their "impressionable" period, PSD (re: stealing, that is)

WEll, to say I figured it was slightly untrue. Mused aloud, may be closer/



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

FWIW, yes, anything scientific in the US is generally done using metrics. In the lab we measure things in grams, micrograms, liters, milliliters, microliters, millimeters, nanomoles, and so forth.

And while we still use old stlyle measurements for everyday stuff, our currency has been decimal for much longer than yours.

BTW, I know there are 20 shillings in a pound only becuase I used to be an avid Whovian, and in the first episode (aired November 1963), the Doctor's granddaughter Susan's teachers asked her how many shillings in a pound, and were astonished when she didn't know the answer and said she thought they'd gone decimal by now.

Within the next year or two they also had an episode where the teachers used a space time visualizer to see a performance by the Beatles, and the Dr. commented that he hadn't realized they were into classical music.

But a litre, defined as the volume occupied by 1kg of pure water at a certain temperature & atmospheric pressure, was supposed to be identical to a cubic decimetre and _ because somebody got their experimental results &/or their subsequent sums wrong initially _ it isn't.

(And as the metric system was a French invention I oppose it on general principles anyway... :-)

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"This was willed where what is willed... can get rather silly."

Amongst other things Simon is duty-bound to detest:

Velcro, movie cameras, margerine, parachutes, lead acid batteries, gyroscopes, Braille, the stethoscope, hot air ballons and the steam-powered bicycle.

All pretty essential to the modern world...



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Oh come on, THAT old game?!

Let's play Pretend Everything Was Invented By The French

Non-player: "So we've got upgrade to a 54Kbps modem." Player: "Modem. That's one of my favourite words. Do you know where the name comes from?" Non-player: "No, where?" Player: "Well, you see, it was invented by Pierre M'Odem who first had the idea one day when he was messing about with a Swanee whistle, so they named it after him" Non-player: "Really? Is that the time? Gotta' go..."

In the above example the player would do reasonably well on the preposterousness scale, since there's a good chance that the non-player would know where the name "modem" actually does come from. They'd gain extra credit for the semi-plausible supporting details, but they'd lose some points for the, frankly, cack-handed way in which they brought it into the conversation.

Other famous inventors that could be referred to are: Pierre Binomial (binomial theorem), Francois Photocopieur, Marie Le Vitation and, ohhhhh, pretty much anything you can think of.

Margerine? Yuck! Give me butter, any day...

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Warning! Product may contain Newts!

Let us all give thanks for something that the French do seem to have an historical edge at. What other country within Europe could have produced so many impenetrable, convoluted, gloomy, introverted to the point of being up your own a**e and outright boring "classic" novels.

Russia?

(and I thought you were on cold turkey?)



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

It always struck me as odd that here in Canada, which is part of the British commonwealth, we converted to the metric system, while the US, which takes great stock in being 'independant' of the British, uses the 'Imperial' measuring system. Granted, they've made some of their own modifications to it, but still, it seems a bit backward.