Pierre et al:
It would take the medical industry to require weighting and recording
people's mass in the SI. This also would require a complete change in
scales to show and record in SI units. Very expensive but doable.
Some scales show both English and SI units now much like autos indicate dual
units of speed and volumes of gasoline at pumps can do now. Medical
industry change to the SI would be a catalyst for the general public to
change too.
Reporting weather on TV, radio and in the newspapers in the SI would be a
significant step forward in getting the public to think in SI. However, the
media industry and particularly the news would be violently opposed to the
change much like it opposed the change during the 1970s as Bob Greene of
the Chicago Tribune did; he was one of the outspoken opponents of going
metric by publishing misleading information about metric. The media are
free to say what they want without regard to validity.
Stan Doore
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pierre Abbat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 11:04 PM
Subject: [USMA:38700] Re: Is U.S. metrication still considered "extreme?"
On Tuesday 15 May 2007 13:31, STANLEY DOORE wrote:
Paul, you have identified a critical area of discontinuity where the
medical industry uses the SI for medicine and people use English units to
describe their weight. (mass).
This is an area needs to be resolved now. It would help people to
understand metric and reduce their fear of it when they give their
dimensions (height and weight) in SI. This would be a major advance in
adopting the SI.
Last year I told my doctor my height and mass in metric. He asked me what
they
are in other units. As he practices Chinese medicine, and I don't know
Chinese units, I was stumped ;)
Most of the people I hang around with on RFT quote their mass in pounds. A
few
quote kilograms. How can we get people to weigh themselves in kilograms?
Btw, I had an opportunity to explain one of the more obscure SI units, the
gray. Someone was worried that an airport X-ray machine would irradiate
seeds
or probiotic capsules.
On Tuesday 15 May 2007 15:08, Remek Kocz wrote:
One particular area where it would be extremely easy is with body
temperature. It's a number that really exists in isolation--no one
relates
it to outdoor temperature or anything else for that matter. Weight and
height are another issue, much more difficult to convince the general
public to adopt, but in the name of reducing medical errors, it could be
done.
I do relate body temperature to outdoor temperature. I know that if the
outdoor temperature is 37 or more, I must drink a lot of water to keep
myself
between 36.0 and 36.8.
Pierre
