A vivid account of the Palestinian terrorist tunnels dug underground on the Egyptian-Gaza and Egyptian-Israeli borders by those fanatically committed to getting guns, bombs and explosives to fellow Palestinian terrorists on the othert side of the border was provided in yesterday's 'Sunday Times magazine'. Do they really use Imperial in their deadly work?

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"Ayed [master tunneller] can judge the distance excavated by experience; nine buckets of sand equals one yard. A typical day is 10-11 hours of digging, 10-15 yards of progress. Every tunnel is measured meticulously: 2 feet wide, 2 feet 4 inches high. Wider than that, and experience shows that collapse is likely"

How thrilling for them! And do they weigh their explosives and shrapnel in pounds too? And do their victims bleed by the pint or the litre? Poor choice of an example--and in even poorer taste when you consider what has happened in London recently.

Rip

I think in a desire to endorse ANY use of Imperial (because there are so few), a slight PR faux pas may have been made.

"Imperial units: The choice of terrorists everywhere."

One of those alliances where you say "Thank God they are NOT on our side."

TB
"Ayed [master tunneller] can judge the distance excavated by experience; nine buckets of sand equals one yard. A typical day is 10-11 hours of digging, 10-15 yards of progress. Every tunnel is measured meticulously: 2 feet wide, 2 feet 4 inches high. Wider than that, and experience shows that collapse is likely

metre
He probably was educated in Britain? All the same a nasty shot into your own "foot".

I have visions of Tony tunneling under a metric sign, and it suddenly disappearing into the ground, as in Groundhog Day.

You people forget that Tony only reads articles that come from questionable sources. There may be a microgram of truth in the article but the details are made up.

If these people didn't use metric why would they use imperial instead of their own traditional units? This type of lie shows what desperate hypocrites people like Tony are. They insist that England must hold on to imperial for cultural reasons but gain great pleasure if someone outside the UK uses imperial instead of their own traditional measurements. I would think that people like Tony would want to see the people of these countries preserving their cultural heritage by using their ancient units and not those of a foreign country such as England.

Or am I missing the point here?

"Ayed [master tunneller] can judge the distance excavated by experience; nine buckets of sand equals one metre. A typical day is 10-11 hours of digging, 10-15 m of progress. Every tunnel is measured meticulously: 60 cm wide x 70 cm high. Wider than that, and experience shows that collapse is likely"


I'll bet this is what Ayed really said. It is common for media editors to change metres to yards without doing a calculation.

Can anyone prove this is not what was really said and the editors changed the words to give the illusion they spoke imperial? They may also have spoken in Arabic and the conversion to imperial took place at the same time the text was translated from Arabic to English.

<<Or am I missing the point here? >>

I don't know. You are aware that much of the Middle East, certainly thate region was part of the British Empire until they decided to pack up and go home after WWII? That was about the same time the UN wisely crafted Israeli and Palestinian states (which has worked out so well).

So there was time for the area to have gotten used to Imperial measure as a British possession. I'm sure the Israelis changed to metric. I don't know but it is possible the Palestinians stayed Imperial because:
*The Israelis use metric
*Imperial is "conventional to 2-3 generations
*They are backwards
*They like things from the Middle Ages

Yes Danny - you ARE missing the point, and the plot.

"This type of lie shows what desperate hypocrites people like Tony are"

The only liar around here is you.

Stop relying on GOOGLE for all your wisdom - soon you'll find out that your neighbour is a martian. When you do - tell us what units of measure he (doesn't) use back "home".

It's quite possible that the Egyptians and Palestinians still do use imperial measures for some tasks. Both were under British rule for some time and at least parts of their populations would have been familiar, and possibly still are, with the imperial system from the time of British rule. So would many Jews that lived under British rule in Egypt and Palestine before the founding of Israel. In the early wars against the Arabs numerous Israeli army officers had learnt their trade in the British army.

re (Daniel Johnson): " 'Ayed [master tunneller] can judge the distance excavated by experience; nine buckets of sand equals one metre. A typical day is 10-11 hours of digging, 10-15 m of progress. Every tunnel is measured meticulously: 60 cm wide x 70 cm high. Wider than that, and experience shows that collapse is likely'. I'll bet this is what Ayed really said. It is common for media editors to change metres to yards without doing a calculation. Can anyone prove this is not what was really said and the editors changed the words to give the illusion they spoke imperial?"


REPLY: Yes. The authoress of the article in the 'Sunday Times magazine' - Marie Colvin. Write to the editor of the Sunday Times. I have faithfully reported verbatim what was written in the magazine. The article also included the following sentence:

"As boss, he checks the tunnel's progress with a compass every 10-15 yards; after 20 yards he installs a bespoke engine that hauls back nine 'boats' containing pails of sand"

Dan you summed that guy quite nicely up the other day, actually spot on. That man has the gall to accuse others to cite internet material of the highest calibre when he comes with reams of silly stuff trying to prove that Australia is not metric. Either his attention span is so short, or he doesn't know what he is on about.

The usual misguided and twisted b***ox.

Mis-quoting and changing all that I say.

Ahhh - just like the old days! LOL!

The more I look at the quoted report the more it seems to me that the journalist or an editor decided to edit out metric units and edit in imperial ones. We will have to go to the newspaper to get a definitive answer. I know that I said that it is possible Palestinians could still be using imperial from the time that Palestine was British mandated territory, but on reflection this seems more and more unlikely.

Check with the newspaper the article appeared in. It may be editorial policy to convert metric units to imperial for their readership. This of course doesn't make such a policy right and in no way am I condoning such a policy of converting metric units to imperial ones. I would condone such a policy if it were the other way round.

I can see an imperial speaking person saying he dug a tunnel 2 by 2 and 1/2 feet wide, but never 2 feet by 2 feet 4 inches. People who speak feet round off their descriptions into halves and quarters.

A person in a metric country would easily say 60 x 70 centimetres, using a common metric unit rounded to increments of 10 centimetres.

It is very common in the news media in English countries to change the intended unit metres to yards without doing an actual conversion. Thus maintaining the rounded number of metres spoken as a rounded number of yards.

Get over it Tony, those people never spoke an imperialism. Your newspaper did you a disservice by corrupting the measurements and changing them from the original metric to imperial. By doing so, you now falsely believe these people use imperial and have made a fool of yourself by insisting they do.

So, you're now insisting that the murderous thugs used metric?

Okay, fine, I can do that. I can now say:

"Metric units: The choice of terrorists everywhere."

Okay, I could say that if I was okay with using the bad company fallacy. ;-)

The metric system is used by people everywhere. No matter whether they are good people or bad people, they all use metric. We take the good with the bad and vice versa.

LOL!

<<I can see an imperial speaking person saying he dug a tunnel 2 by 2 and 1/2 feet wide, but never 2 feet by 2 feet 4 inches. >>

Can you?
I assume you mean yourself, considering you are from the USA.

<<People who speak feet round off their descriptions into halves and quarters. >>

Oh really? So I'm 5 feet 11/12ths tall am I?
Or maybe our road signs use fractions for height and width?
Or maybe you appear to know how everyone speaks?
lol!

<<A person in a metric country would easily say 60 x 70 centimetres, using a common metric unit rounded to increments of 10 centimetres. >>

I wonder if its because you live in a country that uses imperial (USC) measures that you show yourself up on this issue.
I'd like you to proclaim that people in "metric" countries (real ones, mind, not fake ones) do not say "half a litre" or "2 and a half metres tall" (for example).
Please inform us that people in mainland Europe would never say that.
Look forward to another guffaw!

<<It is very common in the news media in English countries to change the intended unit metres to yards without doing an actual conversion. Thus maintaining the rounded number of metres spoken as a rounded number of yards.>>

1) Provide proof of this rubbish
2) It is also common to translate the language to English too.

<<Get over it Tony, those people never spoke an imperialism.>>

While we're on the subject of English - what the hell was that meant to mean?
X-D


<< Your newspaper did you a disservice by corrupting the measurements and changing them from the original metric to imperial.>>

Imperial = corrupt
Metric = Really really good.

What a fine argument.

<< By doing so, you now falsely believe these people use imperial and have made a fool of yourself by insisting they do.>>

Progressively your posts are making more and more a fool of yourself.
Take a tip - make sure you have an oounce of knowledge on what you're talking about and leave at least one deci-second before hitting the post button.
A good example of this is the notion that the French would serve 50cl of beer and call it a pint.
Know what I mean?

;-)

P.S. Nice to see that your slowly becoming less representative of a "real" pro-metric person!

:-)

<<LOL!

<<I can see an imperial speaking person saying he dug a tunnel 2 by 2 and 1/2 feet wide, but never 2 feet by 2 feet 4 inches. >>

Can you?
I assume you mean yourself, considering you are from the USA.

<<People who speak feet round off their descriptions into halves and quarters. >>
>>

I'll be a contrarian and argue with both of you that if it needed to be measured "meticulously", an American would probably have described it as 24" x 28" as for a piece of glass or screen for a window. We tend to dislike split units like 2' 4" except for stating people's heights.

But to give Steve a laugh, I can see terrorists doing a "design of experiments" with various widths and heights, possibly even fractions of an inch variation between experiments to determine the optimum tunnel.

Since I don't like terrorists, I'll also comment if I had a thumper to collapse the tunnel, it would make a fine grave.

re (Daniel Jackson): "[Tony] has made a fool of himself by insisting that [Palestinian tunnel-diggers] use Imperial measurements"


REPLY: Here is as classic a case as you could get of deliberate misrepresenation of what someone else says.

Look carefully at my original post.

First, I quote verbatim from a newspaper account one day old.

Second, I do not say that Palestinian tunnel-diggers use Imperial measurements, I simply asked the question - do they?

Now do you see who has made an utter ass of himself?

I don't expect you to make any kind of apology on these boards because you are not the type to be able to do so

Well, he's never wrong Tony.

I thought you'd know that by now.

US/Canadian Tunnel Diggers -- English or Metric

A drug smuggling tunnel was shut down today on the US/Canadian border.
Canadian papers describe it completely in metric, the US papers in customary.
Both show the same picture. The Canadian paper describes it as one metre wide, 1.5 metre high, which I suspect is correct (at least the aspect ratio), the US paper as 3.5'-4' wide and high.

Unlike Palestinian tunnels, it is built with wooden beams, concrete, rebar, and has electric lights and ventilation.

I wonder how they disposed of 165 m^3 of soil, brought in over 3000 linear meters of 2"x6" and perhaps 10 m^3 of concrete with no neighbors noticing?

Canadian article:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/07/21/tunnel-uscan050721.html
<<Three men from Surrey, B.C., face drug charges after the discovery of a tunnel running from Langley to Washington state that authorities say was built to transport drugs between Canada and the United States.

Police say the 1.5-metre high, one-metre wide tunnel runs from a metal Quonset hut just north of the border in Langley to an abandoned house in Lynden, Wash. – just 90 metres south of the border
. . . .
They are accused of smuggling 42 kilograms of marijuana through the 110-metre tunnel across the border and into waiting vans.

Police say it's the first tunnel they've ever found along the Canadian border.
The tunnel runs from a depth of one to three metres and is reinforced with iron bars and 2 x 6 wooden planks.
U.S. government agencies, including the FBI and drug enforcement officials, had been monitoring its construction for eight months, allowing its completion so that authorities could monitor the activities of those constructing it. >>

US article
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8661624/
<<LYNDEN, Wash. - Federal agents have shut down an elaborate, 360-foot drug-smuggling tunnel dug underneath the U.S.-Canadian border — the first such passageway discovered along the nation’s northern edge, officials said Thursday.
. . . .
The passageway was 3½ to 4 feet high and wide, and ran anywhere from 3 to 10 feet below ground, authorities said.
. . . .
One was a woman who authorities said had 93 pounds of marijuana in her vehicle when she was stopped. The other was a man pulled over with 110 pounds of the drug.>>

The Beeb apparently uses those new "shrunken metres."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4706339.stm
<<Police in the United States have shut down a 360ft (120 metre) drug-smuggling tunnel under the US-Canadian border.>>

Shhh! Daniel might hear.

You won't want to shatter his fantasy with the idea that us Brits actually tend to use imperial measures now, wouldn't you?

Still - he can always tune into CNN and hear a foreigner in London talk of "metres" while describing the London bombs three weeks back and then post garbage to the USMA site.