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| Europe | |
| Europeans celebrate collective strength | |
| 2005-05-10 | |
Via Bros. Judd:
By DON MELVIN COX NEWS SERVICE BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Take a close look at that Coca-Cola bottle in your refrigerator. Ever wonder why this quintessentially American concoction is sold in containers that say "2 liters" instead of "2 quarts?" Blame it on the European Union. The EU says quarts are illegal, and bottlers -- even those capping those ounces of liquid Americana -- don't find it cost-effective to make two different sizes, one for Europe, the other for the United States. From dictating the size of Coke bottles to dissuading Iran from pursuing its nuclear ambitions, the EU has arrived as a force to be reckoned with. Americans for years have tended to think of the European Union as merely an extension of the Common Market, a cooperative agreement intended to help the economies of European countries. But evidence is mounting that the EU does not only aspire to be a counterweight to the United States in global affairs; it has already become one. <SMALL>--SNIP-- | |
| Posted by:anonymous2u |
| #40 Europeans celebrate collective strength They ain't got jack. And whoever wrote this piece is higher than a kite. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2005-05-10 21:35 |
| #39 Coke sells bottles in liters and US cars have KilometerPerHour markings because in the late 70s there was a short-lived drive to convert the US to metric system. Just another successful Carter initiative. A liter is close enough to 2quarts that it was a wash. But you will notice that Coke is still sold in 12 OUNCE cans and smaller bottles in 10 and 16 ounce sizes. |
| Posted by: Stephen 2005-05-10 20:22 |
| #38 :> AP! |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-05-10 20:06 |
| #37 Your volume units lesson for today: Heres good luck to the barrel good luck to the Barley Mow Jolly good luck to the barrel good luck to the barley mow Here's the barrel the half barrel the gallon half gallon quart pot pint pot half a pint gill pot half a gill nipperkin and the brown bowl Here's good luck, good luck to the Barley Mow! |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2005-05-10 17:57 |
| #36 Sobiesky, I had imperial hardwired into me. So despite 30+ years of living metric, when someone asks me how tall are you or how much do you weigh? I just shrug cos I have no idea in centimeters and kilos. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-05-10 17:44 |
| #35 Mrs. Davis, the point is very obvious... When I was a teenager, my primary concern being girls, I would have never figured out the the conversions between US Imp. units. You have to admit that I have a big beef here. ;-) Rods and stones? Never heard of it. I grew up with metric system. So, it is hardwired. When I see "nn Fl.Oz", I just look puzzled and mutter under my breath something like: "whatever...". |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-05-10 17:22 |
| #34 Mrs.D! |
| Posted by: Daisy 2005-05-10 17:00 |
| #33 Don't forget Rods and Stones... |
| Posted by: mojo 2005-05-10 16:52 |
| #32 Sobieski, we all know that stuff, what's your point? By the way, you left out that a rod is 16.5 feet (wow!) and there's four rods in a chain. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-05-10 16:41 |
| #31 I live for furlongs. |
| Posted by: Carryback Barbie 2005-05-10 15:59 |
| #30 Metric system has little to do with EU. Has been adopted by continetal Europe at the time of Bismarck, or around. When a teenager, my primary concern were girls, not physics. But thanks to the internal consistency of the metric system, I could derive a lot of stuff myself and pass exams. To see how US imperial units system is really easy, here is an example: 12 inches = 1 foot 144 sq. inches = 1 square foot 3 feet = 1 yard 9 sq. feet = 1 square yard 220 yards = 1 furlong 4840 sq. yards = 1 acre 8 furlongs = 1 mile 640 acres = 1 square mile 5280 feet = 1 mile 1760 yards = 1 mile 36 sections = 1 township 1728 cu. inches = 1 cubic foot 27 cu. feet = 1 cubic yard ...etc, etc. |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-05-10 15:53 |
| #29 EU is the new €€€P |
| Posted by: Ebbavith Ebbereting9742 2005-05-10 14:54 |
| #28 Does that mean that a sh!tload will be an official unit of measurement? |
| Posted by: BH 2005-05-10 14:51 |
| #27 Saw a post on another blog that stated England was going to start taxing horse manure. They were going to base it on metric units, so I guess you could say that the metric measurement system is sh!t....... |
| Posted by: USN, ret. 2005-05-10 14:48 |
| #26 from coke bottle to nukes - WTF??? This guy is really stretching it. I vote to send Mucky lose on this asshat! |
| Posted by: Yosemite Sam 2005-05-10 13:00 |
| #25 ROFL! Purrfekt, Fred, lol! |
| Posted by: .com 2005-05-10 13:00 |
| #24 Who was it that said "There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't"? |
| Posted by: Fred 2005-05-10 12:59 |
| #23 RC Cola and a little bag of salted peanuts. Drink a few ozs and dump the peanuts in. Childhood's Gatorade after mowing the lawn under the Texas sun. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-05-10 12:58 |
| #22 Relatively young I guess... but old enough so that when I was a kid the EU was tiny and completely inconsequential... yet somehow according to this writer they "forced" coca cola to use liters... Just actually read this article... besides the blatant lies in the article (like the EU having a lower crime rate than the US, the higher foreign aid of europeans vs americans, that turkey's political climate isn't governed by the turkish military not it's politicians, longer European lifespans... which they measure completely differently, etc...) the writer cites a bunch of jokers who laughingly believe Europe is ascendant!!! Are they freaking blind?!? Let's see... aging populations... check. decreasing populations..... check. decreasing relative economic output.... check. increasing cultural conflicts... check. bankrupt pensions.... check. Not a very good formula for "supremacy" in the 21st century... |
| Posted by: Damn_Proud_American 2005-05-10 12:55 |
| #21 I had one of those machines in college Deacon. Made a great fridge. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2005-05-10 12:55 |
| #20 Damn_, you must be fairly young. I remember when one could get a 6 oz drink in a bottle from a machine for nickle. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2005-05-10 12:43 |
| #19 Ummmm, we've been using liters for our soft drink sizes since I was a kid... |
| Posted by: Damn_Proud_American 2005-05-10 12:37 |
| #18 phil_b: Prominent amoungst them was 'computers won't work unless we decimalize/metricize' Which shows how stupid or mendacious they were. If you look at the liquid measures: 1 gallon = 4 quarts 1 quart = 2 pints 1 pint = 2 cups 1 cup = 2 gills 1 gill = 4 ounces Notice how they are all powers of 2? I'm not smart enough to force a fixed-pitch font in the comments, but you could lay out a binary word to exactly fit the liquid measurement system. The standard measurements couldn't fit modern binary computers better if you designed them to. Whereas if you use litres, everything is decimal, so you either have to do conversions in and out, or store it in BCD. Besides, as Frank J. said: "If Americans have to learn the metric system, the terrorists have won." |
| Posted by: Jackal 2005-05-10 12:28 |
| #17 Oh, this guy is really grasping at straws to find an example of this "power" by using a 2-liter bottle. I'm sure Coke could just as easily make a 2-quart bottle and sell it over there as the "1.9-liter" bottle. How pathetic. Or does the EU mandate everything must be sold in whole-number, metric quantities? "Sorry, sir! You can't buy only 18.4 liters of petrol! You must buy either 18 or 19!" "But the tank's full!" "Then pump another 0.6 liters onto the ground! You're not leaving until you do!" |
| Posted by: Dar 2005-05-10 11:17 |
| #16 From dictating the size of Coke bottles to ***snip OH PLEASE! ***, the EU has arrived as a force to be reckoned with. Yup, when it comes to enforcing sh*t that Americans don't care about, the EU is da bomb. Personally, I don't care if they bottle Coke in units of 50 megabloobies. But if it gives the EU a stiffy to think they've had some major effect on a global product, just pat their head and say "oh, what a big girl you are!". |
| Posted by: BH 2005-05-10 10:39 |
| #15 I figured it came from the SPI or SF Chron, neither one is smart enough to see the train wreck ahead for the EU. The EU collective has yet to celbrate a single victory in Europe let alone project political will outward. If Iran stops processing nuclear material it will be fear of U.S. bombs and not EU paperwork. Also the 2 Liter size bottles are a hold over from a ill-fated attempt to convert the U.S. over to metric, not some European strong arm policy. Where did this reporter get his info? Pravda, or some leftwing euro rag? |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2005-05-10 10:28 |
| #14 Typical liberal media glorifing the socialist governments. They will cry in their soy milk when the EU falls apart like the Soviet Union did. |
| Posted by: mmurray821 2005-05-10 10:20 |
| #13 Prominent amoungst them was 'computers won't work unless we decimalize/metricize' Because computers work in base 10? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-05-10 09:20 |
| #12 I heard that everyone in the EU has a pony too! |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2005-05-10 09:08 |
| #11 phil_b, I don't drink Coke, either. I know what's in it. That said,If the greatest thing the EU has done is force Coca Cola to sell their product in litres instead of quarts I'm not too worried. Now if beer starts to be sold in metric instead of English I will start to worry. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2005-05-10 09:06 |
| #10 If you go to Tehran (Iran), if you go to Ankara (Turkey), if you go to the Balkans, if you go to many Middle Eastern countries and North African countries, it is the European Union that is delivering change Huh? What change has been delivered to Iran or Turkey? What stability came to the Balkans without US troops? About the only change I've seen in North Africa is Libya giving up nukes, which was a direct result of US policy in Afganistan and Iraq. The only power the EU has is that it's a common market, period. As for sustainability, let's revisit in 20 years and see if we're not talking about the Eurabian Union. |
| Posted by: Spot 2005-05-10 09:04 |
| #9 "Trust me, Monsieur Chirac, these are very serious people. 'Mucky' by himself represents a serious theat to world order..." And if that doesn't get him, we'll escalate to Jos. Mendiola. |
| Posted by: too true 2005-05-10 08:58 |
| #8 the Seattle "dumb as a post" intelligencer strikes again |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-05-10 08:44 |
| #7 Heh. Maybe Rantburg should announce plans to produce enriched uranium to see if we could get Fred a new server and free bandwidth. TGA could sell the deal: "Trust me, Monsieur Chirac, these are very serious people. 'Mucky' by himself represents a serious theat to world order..." |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-05-10 08:44 |
| #6 Offer them free Coke plants in every member state in exchange for delaying enrichment for three months. |
| Posted by: Tom 2005-05-10 08:28 |
| #5 What would the EU do if the Coca-Cola Company announced plans to produce enriched uranium? |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-05-10 08:21 |
| #4 I recall the arguments for decimalisation and metrification back in the 60s and 70s. Prominent amoungst them was 'computers won't work unless we decimalize/metricize' - the standard Leftist argument that what ever they want is by definition 'progress' - required for the brave new world (irony intended). Guess who didn't metricize and got to dominate the global computer industry. I'll leave it to the Americans to comment on whether Coke is sold in liter units. I don't drink the stuff and I suspect the whisper of a boycot will get CocaCola to change its packaging something that costs it next to nothing. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-05-10 07:28 |
| #3 "From dictating the size of Coke bottles to dissuading Iran from pursuing its nuclear ambitions, the EU has arrived as a force to be reckoned with." Huh? WTF????? You mean the MMs have actually given up their nukes? When did that happen??? Oh, it hasn't happened yet, but you're sure it will, any day now... OK, never mind. You should have posted the entire article; it's a rich Mother Lode of vapid, mindless, delusional claptrap like the above, singing the praises of European "soft power" and explaining why Europe will eclipse America in the 21st century: "Europe, with its emphasis on communalism rather than rugged individualism, is increasingly seen as the model to emulate by nations seeking to integrate traditional culture with the forces of globalization." That's a bug, not a feature: that "emphasis on communalism" has given us one totalitarian horror after another for the last two hundred years. Feh. Read the whole thing. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2005-05-10 06:52 |
| #2 I wonder what they'd do if the Coca-Cola Co. simply made 2-quart bottles and labeled some "2 litres" - litres, mind you, not liters... Stop drinking coke? |
| Posted by: mojo 2005-05-10 01:57 |
| #1 But evidence is mounting that the EU does not only aspire to be a counterweight to the United States in global affairs; it has already become one. and like the DI said in 'Full Metal Jacket:' The Euros don't have the common courtesy to give a reach-around. |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-05-10 01:26 |