[USMA:10714] Air and Space Magazine

[CarletonM]

This is put out by the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space
Museum.

Check out this link:

http://www.airspacemag.com/ASM/Mag/Latest.html#Features

... to see a summary about an article by Michael Milstein, Metric Mayhem:  
Practically the entire world uses the metric system.  Is it time for the
United States to follow suit?

I think you have to buy the magazine to get the entire article but it tells
of how he wrote an article in full SI but had it converted by the editors
"because we have always done it the other way.  It's what our readers
understand.  It's the American Way."

He goes on to say:

"We're like a crotchety old hermit.  The rest of the international
neighborhood works together and speaks the same language while we huddle in a
dark, outdated house at the end of the street (which we share with Liberia
and Burma, the only other two nations that have not gone metric) mumbling our
own inscrutable logie of inches, feet, yards, miles, links, rods, furlongs,
pecks, bushels, bolts, barrels, fathoms, leagues, acres, ounces, pounds,
tons, cups, bales, pints, tablespoons, gallons, hands, chains -- most of
which have no logical relationship to one another -- and all the other aged
terms of what is often called the Imperial, or English, system, but which
metric advocates derisively refer to as FFU (Fred Flintstone Units).  

He goes on to describe the problems caused by NASA using inchpound units,
mentions Lorelle Young, and states that the USA has a lack of backbone.

Carleton