That's the whole point, John. People adapt to things when there's no other
system to compare around. Immigrants arriving in the US don't see any signs
(or road signs) in metric so it's easy to learn something new (i.e. the FFU
bandwagon as you put it).

So my point is that if, overnight, all road signs were changed to km/h then
that would be it. Fait accompli. If you do things the wrong way (as Maine
is doing currently with dual measurements) then no-one will bother learning
the metric system. Why should they, when down the road all signs revert
back to miles only?

Same in the UK. A few signs have been changed to metres (heights of bridges
etc) but all that's done is create a resistance movement (ARM) and all they
do is deface the signs.

You wouldn't expect your dentist to take several years to remove a bad
tooth, would you? No way, Jos�. It gets removed in a millisecond!

So the US must do the same with metrication, otherwise it will fail.

Regards
Mike


----- Original Message -----
From: "kilopascal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2002 11:09 PM
Subject: [USMA:21777] Re: Australian Comments


2002-08-17

What makes absolutely no sense is that most Americans are not of
Anglo-British descent.  With the large amount of African-, Asian,
Hispanic-, and Euro-Americans, there should be a large pro-metric attitude.
Yet, there is the opposite.  Even newly arrived immigrants seem to jump
happily onto the FFU bandwagon pretending they don't know anything about
metric or forgot it as soon as they kissed the ground when they arrived.

John


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