Commentary: Metric Mayhem by Michael Milstein
Is the United States finally crawling toward the metric system? Sure it is.
Inch by inch.
"Not long ago, I was writing a story for this very magazine about the
delicate extraterrestrial dance of a U.S. spacecraft around a potato-shaped
asteroid named Eros (see "Hang a Right at Jupiter," Dec. 2000/Jan. 2001). The
simplicity of the spacecraft's course stood out in a universe that is rarely
simple and convenient: The boxy craft would circle 100 kilometres from the
asteroid's cratered surface, then fire its engines to drop into an orbit 50
kilometres above the tumbling space rock.
Finally, I thought, I don't have to worry about how to round off some
impossibly large number such as the speed of light (299,792.458 kilometres per
second) or the distance between Earth and the sun (149,597,870 kilometres)."
The above article is all that I saw on that
page. What I was wondering is did he really use the FFU term? I
came up with that, as I hated and still do, the term wombat. He must like
it too. I only used that term here in the list-server, so I'm wondering if
he is a member who lurks in the background, but never comments.
It sure would be interesting to know!!
Gl�ckliches Neues Jahr!
Happy New Year!
John
Keiner ist hoffnungsloser versklavt als derjenige, der irrt�mlich glaubt
frei zu sein.
There are none more hopelessly enslaved then those who falsely believe they
are free!
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, 2001-01-28 23:52
Subject: [USMA:10714] Air and Space
Magazine
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dark, outdated house at the end of the street (which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
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