I concur wholeheartedly with Bill Hooper's reply (USMA:19614) to Adrian
Jadic's message (USMA:19610) regarding his letter to the editor of MT and her
reply. But I would like to add a few words of my own.
Refering to Bill's points:
"(1) The editorial in Metric Today is not erroneous."
Indeed! I recently submitted a paper for publication in a journal, the
authors' guide for which specifies paper dimensions of "approximately 28 cm
by 22 cm". Those dimensions look just as metric to me as do 297 mm by 210 mm
(or 30 cm by 21 cm). I suggest that Adrian has confused "metric" with
"rational".
Since the actual area of the sheet of paper is of minimal significance, one
is just as good as the other, in my opinion. For the nitpickers,
neither (279 mm)(216 mm)
nor (297 mm)(210 mm)
equates to 0.0625 m2 exactly. In fact the former comes closer to a nice
rational area, namely 0.60 m2. I would prefer telling people that this makes
a nice rule of thumb than I would flaunting the latter as "one-eigth of a
square meter". Keep in mind, too, that the commercial specifications on paper
sizes are not always very tight.
"(2) The editor of Metric Today is not an enemy of the metric system."
You can have that statement cast in bronze, BIll. Valerie Antoine has been
pushing the metric system longer than many of the people on this mail list
have been alive. Just the number of hours she has worked voluntarily for
metrication may exceed the lifetime employment history of some people here.
You could even double her salary without breaking USMA's bank account since
twice nothing is nothing. "An apology is required" hardly states the case!
I would add:
(3) Nature of the reply
Adrian, in his first message, characterized Antoine's response as being
"cold shouldered". Sheez! What did you want, Adrian? Chocolates and roses?
She took the time to send you a personal reply, not a form letter. My wife, a
secretary in a public shcool, has observed that people who hear "no" as an
answer to their requests often characterize the person (e.g., my wife) who
gave that answer as being mean or cold. Antoine disagreed with you; she did
not brush you off or ignore you. Hopefully this is not the first time in your
life that someone did not share your opinion. If it is, then you have
probably become very spoiled and filled with unreasonable expectations.
And, lastly, in response to a comment in this message of Adrian's:
(4) On USMA's mission
On Wednesday, 2002 April 24 1425, Adrian Jadic wrote:
....
> I don't know how other USMA members on this list feel about it but I for
> one I find that it does not reflect USMA's real mission nor does it's
> originator seem to understand what a metric transition truly implies.
>
> There is no way that we can talk about metrication in US without involving
> us in standardization. Like I said in my letter to MT, if USMA's ultimate
> goal is to have the metric system (solely) used throughout the country than
> this can ONLY be achieved by implementing *hard* metric standards.
Thanks for inviting my opinion, Adrian. I will give it to you. There are
thousands of standards in the world. Probably, the vast majority of those are
written with their dimensions in metric units. It is not USMA's mission to
support all of those. I do not want my dues to be spread among a zillion
campaigns; I want them to be dedicated to efforts promoting metrication of
the U.S. Thankfully, I note that this is indeed the mission of the USMA.
Furthermore, I think that your last phrase ("hard" metric standards) is a
linguistic antagonist to our mission. Our mission is to get Americans to
realize that the metric system is "easy" and that with metrication
international dialogue and commerce becomes "easy". Since no more than a
hundred Americans have actually read the specifications and standards for
paper size, they are oblivious to the units used in those standards
documents. As Bill said, they could be written so as to give the dimensions
in cubits and hardly anyone would be the wiser. Telling Americans that they
have to change out their filing cabinets and collections of notebooks or put
up with ill-fitting contents would be a good way to sabotage our cause. No
thanks, Adrian.
My response also is "no", and I mean that very warmly.
Jim
--
James R. Frysinger University/College of Charleston
10 Captiva Row Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Charleston, SC 29407 66 George Street
843.225.0805 Charleston, SC 29424
http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cert. Adv. Metrication Specialist 843.953.7644
