Where I'm from in the Netherlands there's is much less resistance to them anyway because we know the alternative is for our country to be under the sea ;)
You may not be a fan of the old school windmills but I think they are a marvel of engineering. They were built without finite element analysis, CAD and all the rest. Take a look at say the iconic row of mills on Kinderdijk. They are pumps with sodding great archimedes screws that shuffle water from low to high. It has to be said that the Netherlands really go to grips with mills.
The old school job is a tower mill - a tower with some sails on it and a simple pair of gears or a pulley system to turn a grooved round stone over another one to mill flour.
I believe that most of the subsequent innovations in windmill technology were largely invented in the Netherlands and then copied or sold to elsewhere. By the time your forefathers (and mothers) had finished with them, you have things like a smock mill (the upper section looks a bit like a smock worn by rural workers) with a tail vane that automatically rotates the upper section of the mill into the prevailing wind. The sweeps are adjustable and can be rotated like an aircraft propellor - even feathered for a storm and the sails can be reefed much like a sailing boat's sails.
There was the post mill - with a wooden trestle that a boxy shaped mill sits on with the sweeps and sails attached. The post mill was ideal if only wood is available and no bricks or whatever to make a tower. The smock was handy if you have some bricks to make a base and a lot of wood to make a lighter structure on top. The tower is basically very strong. There are several more options. There is an awful lot more to mill construction and design choice than you might idly imagine. Stuff built 300 years ago was absolutely using what we might consider cutting edge design decisions.
Some relatives of mine renovated a towermill with an onion cap and tail vane to move the cap in Northamptonshire about 30 years ago. It took quite a few years but the flour it eventually produced was delightful. On the opening day we had to use long poles to get it started because the breeze was a bit naff. The bread baked from its flour in a big old wood oven tasted amazing.
(edit - speling)
source: am people
Not a blanket statement to say all change is good tho
Also, all measurement systems are functionally arbitrary - be it the kings foot, a rod in a library, or some mathematical constant - all are arbitrary, ours is just a little less rational and certainly less relational than others.
Fahrenheit is just fine however thank you. (My ideal system would be a zero to 200 system, water would freeze at zero and boil at 200, gives you the best of both worlds, and less need for half degrees in measuring the weather - or other human centric temperatures.)
The US government is an original signer of the Metric Treaty, and if you deal with the federal government you're often supplying measurements in meters and weight in kilograms. The military is metric too. Just not so much anything else.
Even bolts on our cars are metric, at least mostly. Every car I've had from MY1986 on has been more metric than SAE.
In fairness however, we're not the only English speaking country using miles still. For that matter, aviation (in most of the world) still uses feet too - inventors privilege I suppose. ;-)
Most Americans are aware of the metric system and have a vague idea of how long a meter is for example, we also know the 0 is freezing in Celsius. I don't think the costs of changing the places we use customary units would pay for the benefits, our soda cans even are usually clearly labeled at 355ml.
I agree we should get rid of the penny, and probably dollar bills, but for a bunch of historical reasons americans don't like dollar coins. (Mostly the size we picked is too close to the quarter)
> Still using a penny
Sorry, too easy... :)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Don_Quij...
I think they look great, but I agree, there is a limit to how many people will tolerate.
On top of that, they of course need access roads for maintenance crews to come do their thing once in a while, if located in a former pristine environment that isn't ideal. To say nothing of when the construction actually takes place, again, if it all happens in a pristine location then it's not ok.
Access roads required for wind generator maintenance are neither large nor busy: there's no fuel to bring, and no ash to take away.
Daily cleaning up the evidence with ruthless efficiency or just FUD by the NIMBYs?
It's an issue, but if they were that concerned about birds they would be screaming about glass windows and skyscrapers.
