Dear Terry and All, on 2002-11-01 05.57, [EMAIL PROTECTED] at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
<snip> > I do recall a conversation at school before I reached my teenage years. > One boy insisted that Sunday was day 1. The poor boy was subjected to > ridicule (an early example of tyranny of the popular vote I suppose) but > he had obviously got the idea from his parents, who in turn were > probably not the only ones to think that way. However, I have never > heard it again till now. Your reference to the 'tyranny of the popular vote' reminded me of Chapter 8 of Robert J Prechter's, 'Wave Principle of Human Social Behaviour: and the New Science of Socionomics.' The title of Chapter 8 is 'Unconscious Herding Behaviour as the Psychological Basis of the Wave Principle.' Here is a sample: 'In normal people, too, feelings of certainty can be so overwhelming that they stand fast in the face of logic and contradiction. The can attach themselves to a political doctrine, a social plan, the verity of a religion, the surety of winning on the next spin of the roulette wheel, the presumed path of a financial market or any other idea.' And I would add that normal people can also attach themselves to old methods of measurement through similar herding processes. Although this book is principally about the behaviour of humans � as they interact with financial markets � it contains a large number of thoughts that are germane to the issue of metrication. As you are a human factors consultant, I commend this book to you. Cheers, Pat Naughtin CAMS Geelong, Australia
