Hmm. If this turns out to be a problem, it could mean disaster for the Chinese government (let alone millions of Chinese people). http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,976263,00.html
The cracks have been there for quite some time (a year or two I believe) and the Chinese government, after trying unsuccessfully to patch them, deemed them no threat to the safety of the dam. Wonderful.
I'd really like to see photos of the cracks. 10 meters high is huge. How deep and how wide are the cracks? If it is a gravity arch design and they occurred up stream it sounds like they lack reinforcing steel and the stresses are not being uniformly transferred.
10 meters? what's that in American, like 300 feet? i was never keen on this metric sh!t. turn the thing into the world's largest water park.
Drop a zero. Roughly. (32.8 ft to be exact.) BTW, metric is way cooler than english units. I fucking hated using English units in engineering classes. Quick - how many inches to a mile? (uhh.. 12x uhh... {looking up} 5280 is ... 63360.) Now how many centimeters to a kilometer? (100000. Easy piezy, lemon squeezy.) My car's engine displacement is 1.8 liters - or 1800cc. Unit conversion sucks in english units, and it rules in metric.
The metric system sucks, it is designed for feeble-minded socialist foreigners whose lack of basic math skills precludes them from having a decent economy.
Riiiiiiight. You are just upset the French came up with it first. Why the US never adapted it (it was first developed in 1791!) and still resists change I'll never know. English units are the most horrible, arbitrary things I've ever had to work with. None of the units actually mean anything! What the hell is one degree F? I can tell you exactly what one degree C or K is. Foot or meter? Pound or kg? Foot-lb or Newton? Horsepower or Watt? English units are D-U-M dum.
Not to continue this thread-jack too far, but I just found this doozy from a US gov't document about acceptable use of the metric system in the gov't. That's right - not only is the foot defined as a derived unit from the meter (1200/3937?), there are two different "foot" measures in use in the US. Nice. Kinda like the mile and the nautical mile. Stupid.
But a soccer field is measured in English units so true fans of the soccer ONLY use English units. The fact that you like metric PROVES that you don't really love soccer as much as those who exclusively use English units. Also the French have an ingot that used to be, by definition, 1kg but because of nuclear decay they have had to recalculate the weight of the ingot. That goes to show that you can't trust the French to get it right the first time. Why are you driving a Honda Civic?
FWIW and to further jack this thread, in the worlds of medicine and nursing, we almost exclusively use metric units for everything we do in measuring length, volume, weight, and of course temperature. Less often we use the apothecary system for measuring weight and when we do it's written in roman numerals. I never, ever hear or read about an inch or a foot (one is a worm, the other is a body part). Over the years, I've become a conversion wizard and I think the "english" system or whatever it's called is just another example of the arrogance of the United States in needing to do things its own way.
That's because our way is the best way. We kick ass and so do the Brits, albeit slightly less ass than we kick. Of course their government has had to sell out to Brussels and start using the Redtric system for official uses but most Brits still use a real system of weights and measures.
They may be dumb, but they're also original and stand the test of time. Who wants to order a liter of beer at a bar? You'll probably get your teeth kicked in just for asking or the bartender will talk reeeeaaaally slow like you're a tourist from Oslo. A 428ci American engine kicks the living sh!t out of your 1800cc riceburner. When Lassie had to run back to the house to get rope to save a kid who fell into a well they didn't say - "Hey Lassie, go back and get us 50 meters of rope and do it on the double!" Lassie didn't have the time to do metric conversions in the dirt with his paw. Lassie had some life-savin' to do. Lassie would've most likely pissed on your leg or bitten your nuts at the very least for even mentioning meters. Oh yeah - make sure you toss a POUND of Alpo into his dish and not a kilogram. Can you picture Joe Buck or some other broadcaster saying - "Randy Johnson just popped that fastball up to 150 KILOMETERS per hour." Sounds impressive in Paris. The phones would be ringing off the hook in the studio though.
Why the hell is everyone assuming I drive a riceburner? I drive a fine piece of German engineering, thank you very much. 1.8 liters of turbocharged luxury vehicle. As for being original - not really. Besides, they are all officially defined by conversions from metric now anyways. It's kinda tough to go back and measure the ol' king's foot, innit? And if they stood the test of time, why has the rest of the world - including the Brits - dropped the system in favor of metric? It's only a matter of time before we follow suit. I've yet to encounter an engineer under the age of 40 who doesn't prefer metric. Hey Alex - show me a Brit that measures length in non-metric units. You won't find one, I promise. Just watch EPL matches on the telly - field dimensions are marked in meters, player heights in meters, etc etc. In fact, the Laws of the Game indicate permissible field sizes in meters, and provide conversions for us StupidAmericans(tm) who can't figure out what a "meter" is.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/metr26.shtml http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/jonah080100.asp In all seriousness, the metric system is fine for areas where uniformity across national boundaries is needed, such as engineering, medicine, etc. But calling for the US government to force the metric system upon an unwilling public (and I'm not sure that that's what you're doing--is it?) is insane. People who need to use the metric system know how to, but a lot of people don't, and there's no reason these people should have to buy a liter of gas or drive a kilometer or measure their height in centimeters if they don't have to.
Anyone under the age of 30 who doesn't have an approximate sense of what a "meter" is is a legitimately stupid person. They teach this stuff in fourth-grade science classes, or at least they have since I was in fourth grade. In any case, it's really a cultural thing. Once you're familiar with any system of measurement, the numbers begin to take on meaning. Twenty years of soda bottles later, we all know exactly how much "two liters" is. If we had whole-heartedly converted in the 1970s, we would have that same instinctive sense for all metric measurements. Instead, we're going about it piecemeal, which makes us the only country in the world that has to remember how to convert from Celsius to Farenheit at a moment's notice. The ironic thing is that we're going through all this work in the name of simplicity.
Alex: Please drop out of the military now and save yourself and the rest of us from the obvious court marshal that will come when you refuse to report to a NATO or UN commander.
Those were pretty funny. I enjoy reading about conservative people calling any change for the better "socialist". *wipes tear* The point is not uniformity across national boundries - it's that the metric system is inherently better. It's easier to use. Do you even know what a "rod" is? And how many of the appropriate base measure are in it? Without looking it up? If I'd never seen "Gigameter" (and I haven't) before, it's immediately obvious by the unit name what it measures, and how big it is. And conversions are easier. The only arguments against are a) it's Communist/Socialist , and b) it would require a modicum of thought from the unwashed masses during the conversion period.
Sure - 90% of Americans can't set the time on the VCR. If you told someone that it would be 28 Celsius tomorrow, they'd run outside with a down jacket & mittens. We could change, but outside of the people in the US that really need to use the metric system already, chances are that we won't.
well actually we use both. Field dimensions are usually indicated in yards and players' heights are always given in feet an inches (we also use stones by the way for weight, as saying someone is 12 stone 6 is easier to visualise than saying someone is 174 lbs.) I think football uses imperial measures (as we call them over here) as those were the ones originally used. It makes sense to say a player has to stand 10 yards from a free kick than to say he has to stay 9.144 metres away. Same goes with beer. Nobody orders a .568 of a litre of beer. On the other hand nobody has any real problems going abroad and adjusting either. I'd have no idea how big a 428ci engine is.......but having just checked boasting that a 7000cc engine would be more powerful than a 1800cc one goes without saying, but then again American engine technology is renowned for being crap (sorry, but it is) and relying on oversized brute strength rather than any technological advancement for its power.