If things had gone a little differently, the United
states might have gone metric 40 or 50 years ago. Instead, we
find ourselves in the distinguished company of Burma and Liberia
as the only 3 nations in the world who aren't metric.
It's odd because the United States was one of 17 world
nations in the 1800's who signed an agreement promoting the
metric system which now goes under the abbreviation of SI or
System International.
If you live here, you do see metric values all over the
place in a patchwork world in which grocery store shelves
contain 2-liter bottles of soda alongside 1-quart bottles of
bleach. Photography has always been metric as are most
scientific measurements unless you are talking about
temperature, distance or forces and then it is a free-for all.
Actually, it is anything but free. in 1998, NASA
destroyed a multi-million-Dollar Mars probe because a
subcontractor who made rocket engines rated them in pounds of
thrust and all other devisions of the project were working in
metric measurements. For some amazing reason, nobody did any
conversions of the data and the probe ended up burning up in
Mars's atmosphere because the thrusters were turned on at the
wrong time.
When we sell building materials, medical equipment, cars
and plumbing fixtures, we presently must manufacture, store and
manage inventories of stuff for us and, I almost forgot, Burma
and Liberia, and then there's the stuff we sell to everybody
else.
I admit to oversimplifying, somewhat, but we live in a
time right now in which there is an almost contemptuous attitude
by about half our population towards anything that smacks of
progress even when it would directly benefit us.
I know this message is dangerously close to technology
discussions, but to me this is more of a policy and social issue.
Several studies back in the sixties or so showed that school
children learn the metric system faster because it is like money
and we have ten fingers. Lots of things just naturally go together.
Now let's see. How many furlongs per fortnight does the
average Anglo-Saxon walk each sol which is a Martian day?
Martin
========================================
The Just-chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and
worm-free
To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web
pages located at:
<http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/just-chat>
You can find an archive of all messages posted to the just-chat group at either
of the following:
<http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/just-chat/index.html>
or:
<http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]>
You may subscribe with your RSS reader at the following URL:
<http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml>
---------------------------------------
