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 | | | Subject: Longevity calculator
Posted Apr 17, 2012 by  Baron Grim
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  | | Yea, and I notice they tend to use Fahrenheit, miles and pints quite often too, informally, but I believe the UK is officially on the metric system. We're the only holdouts.
To give an example of why this infuriates me so, about 10 or so years ago NASA's Mars exploration program was fairly well funded and we were lobbing all sorts of probes, satellites and rovers at the Red Planet. One such lander buried itself in the Martian crust because its chute deployed too late. Why? Because one team was using metric units and the other using standard; feet instead of meters. Since their units were written without dimensions, no one knew until it was too late. So instead of discarding its heat shield at 3000 meters, it only did so at roughly 1000 and each step following that was also 2/3rds too low.
Now, you'd think we'd learn a lesson from that and universally adapt to metric, but NoOOOooo... Some  wits in D.C. tried to mandate standard units NASA wide. I can't remember if they succeeded or not, I have a suspicion that they did. 
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| | | Subject: Longevity calculator
Posted Apr 17, 2012 by Bagpuss
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| | We are officially metric, but it hasn't reached everywhere. Hence I know I'm about 5'10" but would have to convert it to cm. And we drink pints, which are different from American pints.
Anyway, apparently I'll live to 78. Not knowing my blood pressure knocked two years off - ignorance kills.
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