David Owen writes with much wisdom, in my opinion. Jim Elwell
At 01:18 PM 10/14/2002 -0400, David Owen wrote: >A few thoughts (I wrote the review of Alder's book in The New Yorker): > >1. In a pretty interesting book called "A Matter of Degrees: What >Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and >Universe," the author (a physicist at Penn named Gino Segre) quotes someone >else explaining why a 2000 international conference on global warming ended >"with bitterness on all sides": "When something like this is killed, it is >killed by an alliance of those who want too much with those who don't want >anything." There are more than a few members of this list server who should >take that remark to heart -- if their goal is to speed up adoption of the >metric system in the United States. In any American conversion to the >metric system, there will be a very long period during which feet and pounds >will be used, inconsistently, alongside metres and kilograms. Get over it, >and focus on areas in which using metric units would generate tangible >benefits for those who convert. (Companies that manufacture products sold >outside the United States are far more likely to gain initially than >ordinary American consumers, I would bet.) >2. There is a big difference between animosity toward the metric system and >apathy about the metric system. I think there is much less animosity toward >(or defensive "envy" of) the metric system in the United States than some >USMA members seem to think. Most people simply don't care -- and they don't >need to care, since most average Americans' lives would not be noticeably >improved, even in the long run, if they stopped measuring things the way >they measure them now. >3. The British pay a big price for driving on the left, but that doesn't >mean that individual Britons are stupid for continuing to drive on the left, >and it doesn't mean that Britain is stupid for not converting to the system >used by the rest of the world. Converting would have a huge cost, too, >including, undoubtedly, a cost in lives. Even though the UK might gain in >the long run by joining the rest of the world, the country's leaders could >perfectly rationally decide that the immediate cost of changing would be too >great. >4. I am old enough to need reading glasses, and I find a millimeter scale >very hard to read at arm's length. That's just a fact. It doesn't make me >an idiot or a Luddite. Nor does it mean that I think millimeters aren't >BETTER for measuring other things. To me, it makes perfect sense for >scientists all over the world (for example) to use the metric system; but I >also know that converting my home woodworking and carpentry to metric >measurements would make my life worse, not better. It is entirely possible >for me to hold those two ideas in my mind at the same time. >5. There is nothing necessarily bad or difficult about living with multiple >standards. My computer computes in base two, while I compute in base ten. >Converting either of us to the other's methodology for the sake of >uniformity would be a disaster. And as a practical matter, the difference >between our ways of doing arithmetic is irrelevant, because the computer >itself was designed to invisibly mediate between it and me. >6. Bitterly focusing on British pub pints is an utterly self-defeating >strategy, if the goal is universal acceptance of the metric system. What >does it possibly matter to the metric system if British beer drinkers prefer >to drink beer 568.26 millilitres at a time? The message from British beer >drinkers is "Don't mess with the size of my beer." Pick a different issue >to get agitated about. David Owen > > > > > > > > > If the American or Imperial measuring tapes are that much more suited to > > human needs than metric ones, then I do not understand what I saw > > some years > > ago.
