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I agree with you completely on that point, Mike: catalyst. Even though it
is the officially preferred system in U.S. trade, ,metric
cannot legally stand alone in trade. Once it it permitted to do so, I
believe that a major psychological and operational barrier to U.S
metrication will have been broken.
Paul T.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: 06 Oct 23,Monday 00:35
Subject: [USMA:37428] Re: South
Korea
On the other hand perhaps voluntary metric only labeling will
serve as a catalyst for more government and business entities to realize it's
actually okiay to use metric. We can but hope.
On 10/22/06, Mike
Millet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
I'm
glad to see South Korea doing it. I do find it unlikely that once FPLA
amendments pass the government will take any sort of active role in
metrication and mandate anything though. After all, federal government
agencies which should have been switched long ago are still doling out
projects in inch-foot-pound measures in clear violation of their own
directives. The only way I see it happening in the US is making conversion
voluntary and only mandating SI units after a long period of voluntary has
gone through. If voluntary labeling goes through by 2010 (which hopefully it
will) I would foresee a ten year or so period of long use in the commercial
sector before government would actually start mandating switches in other
areas. That's not the way we all hope it will go but it is a
possibility.
As an example , I was talking recently with a friend
who works for the state government and he mentioned that Idaho as a state is
officially dropping all use of SI for all state funded projects and
switching back to US Customary. The main reason he gave was that even
federal government agencies were still handing out drawings in USC and
providing bids in USC, as well as an extreme level of distaste among the
higher ups in the various state agencies towards the use of SI.
He personally is a little annoyed that he has to relearn all his
measurements but not enough to do anything about it or as he put it
"rock the boat" :).
Hopefully we'll see a strong effort on the
part of the government as it listens to those of us who are for conversion
and we don't have to drag it out, but getting Americans to do anything has
always proved problematic :).
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