Dear Mr. Lewis,
I read with great interest your online column "In for a penny, in for
a...kilogram" (May 29, 2003), and have spent the interim preparing my
response. Since my parents did not raise me to speak and write vulgar slang,
I waited two weeks so I could calm down before writing this.
Your article asks why the United States, after 28 years of considering
conversion to the metric system, is still "pounding and inching along". One
of the primary reasons for this, I believe, is because people such as
yourself have newspaper columns, and singlehandedly, are in a position to
publish opinions and information as prejudiced, as narrow, and as fractured
as the material you put into the above-mentioned column. The prevalence of
such dim views of a subject make me yearn to have a newspaper column of my
own so that I could at least back up my widely disseminated opinions with
facts. Does your paper have an opening for a new writer?
I start by saying that I am an American, native born and lifelong, who is
proud of the United States and what it has done for its people and for the
people of the world. I wholeheartedly support President Bush in his effort
to protect the United States from terrorism. And accordingly, I condemn the
French for their barbed opposition to our efforts to eliminate a great
threat from Iraq. But there is one thing that I will always thank the French
for, and that is their invention of the metric system.
You say that the metric system is "boring and sterile", and "suitable only
for mathematicians and other colorless folk". I've never before heard
someone compare units of measurement for their entertainment value, and I do
not measure things to be entertained. I measure things to accomplish some
task, such as framing pictures, cutting paper, or judging how much space I
need for a carpet. Sometimes I need to expand these measurements into larger
units or reduce them to smaller units. The American plan of measurement,
using 12 inches to a foot, etc., is so cumbersome and so silly compared to a
decimal system that I would equate it to being sterile of thought. I long to
use a measurement system in which all the units are decimally related. That,
this inch-weary American feels, would be a most exciting and fertile change
in our society. I yearn for what you call, almost with approval, "the
all-too-even 10". No, the "Way Of Measuring Badly in America Today" (I use
the acronym WOMBAT to describe our "system" of measurement, which is
unsystematic) is not, as you say, "just fine". It is bad for the individual
user, and, as you shall shortly read, bad for America.
You were partially correct when you observed that the United States is one
of only three nations not officially using the metric system. However, the
Congress declared in 1988 that the metric system is the "preferred system of
measurement for trade" in the United States. Congress has long known what
the American people have been reluctant to recognize: that being alone in
the world with our measurements is a major hindrance to our global
competitiveness as a people, both in academics and in trade. American
producers must produce one set of goods with US units for domestic sale and
one set of goods with metric units for export, and this has to be a major
incumbrance to our economy. So, I must disagree with your statement that our
metrological kinship with Liberia and Myanmar is "a good thing". I think it
is a very bad thing, since much of the world looks to the United States for
wisdom, not backwardness.
Of all the provocative statements you made in your column, the one notion
which irks me above all the others is your using that ignorance-perpetuating
old ruse about metric units, making hard conversions of US units to metric
and using them in a statement to show how supposedly cumbersome metric is,
e.g., that Newville was 17.7028 kilometers from Carlisle. Please tell your
readers that, in a metric America, one will say that Newville is about 18
kilometers from Carlisle, period. Once the US converts to metric, there
will be no more frequent converting. There will only be metric units being
used. Please stop spreading that kind of prejudicial venom, which I believe
is a hindrance, not just to metric conversion, but to much of human
progress.
You may know that the United States was the first nation to introduce
decimal currency. Would you like to return to the "human touch" of the old
British system of (this may not be right) 20 pence to the shilling and 12
shillings to the pound, the system discarded by the British in 1971 in favor
of our own decimal system?
I'm not a mathematician, but I would not describe mathematicians as
colorless folk. On the contrary, I sense that their craft brought much color
into the world, including the color pictures of all types we now see from
around the world on our web browsers. These people are actually the color of
the world, and a few of them, a couple of hundred years ago in France, gave
the world an easy and convenient way of measuring things. Both as a
patriotic American, and as someone who just has to measure stuff from time
to time, I want to join that world. But I can't join it if American
columnists like you persist in attempting to rob America of the measurement
system it deserves.
Please reconsider what you have written.
Sincerely,
Paul Trusten
3609 Caldera Boulevard, Apartment 122
Midland TX 79707-2872 USA
432-694-6208
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"There are two cardinal sins, from
which all the others spring: impatience
and laziness."
---Franz Kafka
