> 1 Conservatives I heard a comedian say that there were 'traditional' conservatives and 'modern' conservatives: The traditional conservatives were "we don't want to be first with anything" The modern conservatives were "we are willing to change but not yet"
> a Those who don't like to change may be simply people who never like to > change, the true conservatives, but it might also include those who tried > to > change too early for the rest of the community and got burned by a failed > attempt - perhaps the NCTM fits into this category. The National Geographic explicitly states that they are in this category. Their failure was to define 'gradual change' as putting out issues which had some articles totally in metric (articles that they deemed 'scientific' articles) and some in old units. We need to learn from this that some people simply do not understand how to manage transition. This may be a feature of the USA which has a population that has not really had to make any radical changes in recent history, and has not had too much contact with other ways of doing things. > 3 Traders > These are the folk to attack, and to attack with vigor. However, we should beware of how disputes are seen by third parties. The UK metric martyrs exploited third party sympathy. No matter what the technicalities of the case, many onlookers saw it as harassment to lovable rogues trying to make a living. Audience opinion is often more important than 'win' or 'lose'. I still see 'lb' only labels in UK market stalls. Even picking battles with big business can be problematical. When the US 'freedom' concept gets to implementation, 'freedom' and regulation are portrayed as opposites. It is often the business freedom that gets more sympathy than consumer freedom. For example the FCC wireless number portability is debated as a conflict between these two freedoms whereas in other countries the consumer freedom issue was largely unopposed. Despite the actualities, many Americans think America=freedom=no_regulation and foreign=oppressed=regulated. If the words 'metric', 'foreign' and 'regulation' are combined it is pretty easy to get anti-metric sympathy. So the PR has to be very carefully handled. -- Terry Simpson Human Factors Consultant [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.connected-systems.com Phone: +44 7850 511794
