The Kitchen Junk Drawer, Exchanges that need to be put somewhere |
The Kitchen Junk Drawer, Exchanges that need to be put somewhere |
Oct 11 2010, 05:54 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 754 Joined: 9-February 07 Member No.: 1700 |
Re: SF Valley -- My McMansion will be on the approaching side of Endeavour. In Mars gravity, maybe I could hit a golf ball all the way to Stu's Crater!
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Jun 18 2011, 05:50 AM
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#2
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Well, to be fair, Dan is right. There is no such thing as a baseline standard of measurement. Remember that the meter was originally defined with respect to a rather arbitrary physical reference: 1 x 10 exp -7 the distance from the Earth's equator to the North Pole. This was almost certainly at least a subconscious homage to Earth's "special place in the Universe", and therefore not based on anything remotely resembling a mythical absolute standard.
Not intended to be a defense--or an assault--with respect to ANY system of measurement. The real point here is that everyone in a complex endeavour had damn well better be working from the same set of same. I think that the unfortunate failure to follow this glaringly obvious (in retrospect) heuristic a few years back provided an enduring lesson that is unlikely to be forgotten--or repeated. (FWIW, even though I'm an American I'm a HUGE fan of the SI protocol...I doubt that I would have survived my physics courses without it, to say nothing of any other discipline that demands intensive calculation. Base 10 makes all kinds of sense to us goofball humans, and that's arguably the most powerful reason to embrace the metric system.) -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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