I just finished watching the movie on video a few minutes ago. I presume that the 0.1% non-metric was the reference to knots early on and later when they sighted the U.S. Navy ship near a NATO base and referred to it being some miles away. Should we assume that even then they were referring to nautical miles?
I might add that from about 18:00 to 20:45 our neighborhood association had its annual meeting including a picnic and election of officers. One of our new neighbors was elected and his wife is recently an emigre from Russia. I think they are both about 45 to 50. As we were leaving walking back to our homes, I asked Sasha if she had gotten used to Fahrenheit yet. She replied that she certainly had not nor had she mastered ounces or inches. Some weeks earlier, I had showed her husband John, who was born in Indiana as I was, the Celsius thermometer on my back fence, the one with tiny little °F numbers on the inner ring. As we talked about the subject until we reached their house, her husband John ventured that wasn't the massive cost to change the reason we hadn't changed 25 or so years ago. Sasha's reply, without my coaching, was that she believed that an adult should be able to learn metric in less than a month and that its ease of use surely would eventually save money not cost money. I have to admit that I could not resist saying that I felt Americans resisted because most are too stubborn or arrogant or both. John said I was probably correct, perhaps just to be agreeable, I don't know. Norm ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Frysinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2003 12:22 Subject: [USMA:25642] Re: K-19 > Carl Sorenson wrote: > > > > I saw the movie K-19: The Widowmaker last week. I was very impressed with > > the use of metric throughout. Someone mentioned that the scenario with the > > reactor could not actually happen, which is true, but as far as metric usage > > is concerned I was very impressed. In my book, 99.9% metric usage is pretty > > darn good. I'll keep trying to find more metric movies. > > > > Carl > > The scenario of the reactor accident onboard the K-19 as presented in > the movie is substantially correct, based on my recollection of > information I had some time ago when the matter was highly classified. > > Soviet reactor design and US reactor design were not even the same > league. Look at Chernobyl. > > Jim > >
