He mentioned that the pilot said "centigrade" and having recently been on an American Airlines 'plane and heard the same thing I was exercising my right of basic free speech by engaging in opinion forming debate with him.
Why do you see fit to represent someone else in such an agressive way?
Is it so that you can claim that I am somehow "distracting and diverting" people - like you claim countless times on the BWMA site while doing precisely that?
Why don't you ask other people on the *real* pro-metric side if they think I am distracting them?
Even worse (for you): try asking people who they'd rather engage in debate with.
From: "Ametrica" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:31761] Justified optimism for 2005! Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2005 15:21:20 -0500
So what does your response have to do with:
1.) American magazines using SI metric only.
2.) The in-flight TV using a metric term in an advertisement meant for an American audience.
3.) The captain fumbling for a conversion of the Celsius temperature his instruments display to a Fahrenheit one.
4.) Finding books in US library's in metric.
We know some people still call degrees Celsius as Centigrade. At least they are using and referring to the scale where water freezes at zero and boils at one hundred.
Can you give us your opinion on the four items I listed above!
Stephen Humphreys Sun, 02 Jan 2005 11:11:59 -0800
The mistake of mentioning degree centigrade as an SI derived unit (instead of Celsius) also happens in the UK.
While flying home New Year's Day on a domestic flight I was reading an American magazine, "Technology Review" that was refreshingly 100% SI with no conversions given. Even references to distances between U.S. cities were in kilometres only. SI symbols were used correctly.
I wasn't watching the in-flight TV, but I did once look up at the screen and saw "23 km of luxury" in big letters, no non-metric conversion given. I believe the reference was to 23 km of beaches at some travel destination. I never saw anything written in non-metric units.
I picked up a second magazine, "Scientific American." There were plenty of SI units used with no conversions. I only found a single non-metric unit in the magazine, a reference to altitude in feet.
The captain twice announced temperature in "degrees centigrade" and wind speed in kilometres per hour. After a long pause, he then said, "...In American that would be ..... uh ..... degrees Fahrenheit." He was clearly a native-born American.
After we got home, my wife was reading a book to our 5 year old daughter. I heard, "... 1 km away...." Yes, this was an English language children's book, sold in the U.S., checked out of our local library, with SI units.
It's going to be a great year!
Ezra Steinberg wrote:
As you can see, I'm trying to start 2005 on an optimistic note!
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