To all, I have been off the list for several months so its possible that my idea which follows may already be being done by the group.
For weeks now, I have been hearing National Public Radio interviewing citizens of the EU countries about the change in 12 of its member countries from old national currencies to the Euro and its cents. I have also seen numbers of articles in newspapers most of which indicate that the EU public is more or less ready for it. This morning NPR news referred to 300'000'000 Europeans who will make the change between January 1 and February 17. I added the populations of those 12 countries making the change from my 1996 edition of the World Almanac and Book of Facts and verified a total of about 301'000'000. I think that Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo now may be dependant upon using Deutschmarks and will also have to use the Euro and its Cents. It occurs to me that two of the three countries usually called North America (Canada and the United States) have a combined population of somewhat over 300'000'000 too. I think Canada is about 30'000'000 and that the U.S. is about 290'000'000. I propose that everyone on this list send letters or emails to his/her U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative as well as his/her state Senator and state Representative to point out that what these 12 EU countries are about to do is certainly as personal to them as if North America were to join the rest of the world in using SI-metric. The United States if it were to commit to truly begin to move to daily use of SI-metric would join Mexico (already there) and Canada (well on its way). It wouldn't hurt to bombard the heads of federal and state departments too. Don't forget to send letters to the editors of daily newspapers, local and national. If each person uses his/her own approach and wording it will make it a spontaneous and hopefully effective thing. What do you all think? Let's go for it! Use every argument you can think of! Norm I don
