If I understand it correctly, Marcus proposes a 60% reduction of the length of the meter to what is at present 40 cm! Then all other units will change too. In fact, it looks as if we will end up with a giant foot. We could get rid of the nautical mile to-day, if only we start to use the GPS system correctly and rid it of the conversion software. In theory, GPS has made the nautical mile redundant already. Before World War II we flew in meters of altitude and speeds in km/h, even without the benefit of GPS. I think that such a vast change in SI to-day is fuel for our ifp friends. Don't rock the boat now or it will sink. At first ifp must be defeated. And the cost involved would be staggering. For the same reason I am also opposed to make speeds in m/s compulsory to-day. I totally agree with Jim and John. Make it optional as an addition on speedometers.
Han ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ma Be" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 7:05 AM Subject: [USMA:16234] More than just angles redefinition... On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 20:31:57 Pat Naughtin wrote: Dear Jim and All, I haven't finished mulling, but what I have done instead is to revisit the suggestion I made some months ago for a new unit for measuring angles. ... Ok, Pat. That should be an exciting subject to discuss indeed. However, please let me volunteer my views on this, plus add a few others. I guess most of us here agree that the SI system would require some... "refurbishing" in several aspects. This is what I'd propose to do. I know this would sound radical, but, he, the main thing is to come up with a proposal that should really last a long, looong time! Angles: I'd prefer for us to simply use 100 for the entire circle. Why use a "quad" if by doing so we would be running the same risk and flaw of the ifp system, i.e. that we would require "conversion factors" as you've rightfully pointed out in your e-mail? Angles would be decimally measured to 3 decimal points. > > Meter: We should redefine it to be ~40% of the current size in line with 100 Mm for the entire circumference of the earth. We would finally be able to get rid of the hideous nautical mile crap for aviation. The minimum 0.001 of an arc would be *exactly* 1 km. And we could finally fly by the meter almost as we already do with the hideous foot thing, with added safety. <snip>
