Air Borne Laser is Almost Operational

On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:34:28 +1030, Dave Kearton wrote:

Neil Hoskins wrote:
"Bob Harrington" wrote in message
...


I long for a simpler day when everything could be compared to a
football field or a VW Bug...

Ah yes. Or if you work in microelectronics, you can forget about
thou, mil, microns, or nanometers, because as far as the popular
press is concerned, everything is measured in units of 'the
thickness of a human hair'.


Or the engineering adaptation of the hair measurement, the 'BCH'.

No that's RCH (or Royal)

"Dave Kearton" wrote in
:

Andrew Chaplin wrote:
"Dave Kearton" wrote in message


Hey, it's still the same football field, only now it's metric.

Not in North America. NFL fields are still 100 yards from goal line
to goal line, and 53.33 yards from side line to side line
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America..._and_players);
CFL fields, 110 and 65 yards
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...adian_football
_field.png). --
Andrew Chaplin


heavy sigh I know, it was only wishful thinking....



Went to the hardware store last weekend, needing a handful of bolts -
at least 65mm long before the thread starts.


The only brand they had were 'Zenith' and they were in inches. I
suspected that 2 3/4" would do the trick, head scratching didn't help
and had to find a steel ruler to confirm it.



I realised the US would probably never fully accept metrification when
I saw Spock on Star Trek refer to a new M-class planet they were
orbiting - reading out it's mass in "metric tons...."

Or the time Spock used the ship's sensors to amplify the sound of a
missing crewmman's heartbeat by "One to the fourth power".

Try explaining that to your Algebra teacher...

"Bob Harrington" wrote in message
...


I long for a simpler day when everything could be compared to a football
field or a VW Bug...

You'll be delighted to hear, I'm sure, that as the first commercial A380
heads for Heathrow, the BBC man has just announced that its wingspan is
"very nearly the length of a football pitch".