"C'mon, society, let's make that bold leap into the 20th century and adopt
the metric system as the rest of the world has. I win, Sammy Hagar wins --
everybody wins."
Couldn't agree more. Might be even better if we go for the 21st century
though.
Apart from that good article and well said.
Phil Hall
----- Original Message -----
From: Daniel
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2005 3:43 PM
Subject: [USMA:33844] It's time to reconsider our snub of the metric system
Tim Greening
TIM GREENING: It's time to reconsider our snub of the metric system
August 6, 2005
Who's responsible for screwing up America's transition to the metric system
in the 1970s? Was it Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford?
If we're going to blame it on who was in charge at the time, I guess that
would be Burt Reynolds because he was really running things. Sure, Ford
helped the nation heal after the scandal of Watergate and the conflict in
Vietnam, and Carter brought Israel and Egypt together for a historic peace
accord.
But Reynolds put Jerry Reed and Mel Tillis in every other movie he made and
still remained the No. 1 box office star in the world. That's REAL power.
I was only a kid back then, but I can remember the massive ad campaign and
all the catchy jingles that tried to convince us to convert to the metric
system. It failed, however, mainly because "he could hit a softball a
country kilometer" just didn't have the same ring.
Damn you, colloquial sayings!
But, no, the only segments of American industry that successfully adapted to
the metric system were guns (as in the 9 mm pistol), booze (the 750 ml
bottle of wine), sodas (the 2-liter bottle of Coke) and illegal narcotics
(the kilo of coke).
I bring this up because of today's Gentlemen's Cooking Classic, in which I
am participating for either the fourth or fifth time. (If we used the metric
system, I bet I could figure it out.)
I'll be making the same frozen chocolate and caramel pie I did last year.
But since I'm not smart enough to write things down, I had to reconvert the
recipe for an eight-serving pie into an amount big enough to make some 500
servings. Which is tough because the recipe measurements are in the old
English system, which is needlessly complicated. For example, I had to
figure fractions of cups into ounces, multiply by 20 then divide by various
multiples of 8 to figure whether I needed gallons or pints of something.
If, say, the recipe was in grams, all I would have to do is move decimal
points to figure how many kilograms I needed. Instead, I had to grapple with
the same old system of tablespoons and teaspoons the cavemen brought over
with them on the Mayflower.
It's time to reconsider our snub, I think. Really, wouldn't we be better off
with the metric system? Wouldn't Sammy Hagar seem even more of a rebel if he
sang about his inability to drive 88.5? The song still rhymes even. ("Take
my license, all that jive/I can't drive 88.5!")
C'mon, society, let's make that bold leap into the 20th century and adopt
the metric system as the rest of the world has. I win, Sammy Hagar wins --
everybody wins.
Let's get Reynolds on it, right away.
The Gentlemen's Cooking Classic, a benefit for the Southern University
Shreveport Foundation, starts at 6 p.m. today at Expo Hall in Shreveport.
Admission is $20 each for food only, $25 per person for food and cocktail
tasting.
I can get a FREE $15 Best Buy card, how?
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©The Shreveport Times
August 6, 2005
