Since 2003, I, personally, have been on Celsius temperature. My digital thermometer reads 14 degrees this morning, a coolish morning for West Texas in early May, but we have had a hard time mustering the summerlike heat we usually start into this time of year. I glance at the "14" and I understand it instantly (in Orwellian terms, I "bellyfeel" it [grin]). But, each day I might live happily with Celsius, I wonder how many Americans would just not want to (Bartleby The Scrivener, "I would prefer not to.") To some, the rise of SI in the U.S. might represent a kind of assault upon their dwindling sense of the familiar, and one that they might not wish to accept. As James Earl Jones said in the film Field Of Dreams, America has been built, erased like a blackboard, and rebuilt again, and erased again, yet we of the U.S. continue to fight this particular form of rebuilding: changing our system of measurement. This thing seems to be something we won't be lassoed into so easily. Could we be fearing Alvin Toffler's Future Shock "information overload?"
There was a day on which someone started building the first American car that began the replacement of the horse in transportation, the first Interstate highway that replaced the maze of town streets, and the first shopping center that replaced the downtown. But the spark has not yet been ignited to replace the inch, the mile, and the gallon in the mind's eye of America. Never mind the dual labeling and the occasional highway sign: this is not Australia yet. This country has not even begun to "think metric." We need the spark of an incident, or a word of leadership, to end our fear of future shock in measurement. Me, I'm still wildly striking my little flint for a spark, but, out here in the fruited plain, the environment is, in general, awfully wet. Paul Trusten, R.Ph. Public Relations Director U.S. Metric Association, Inc. 3609 Caldera Blvd. Apt. 122 Midland TX 79707-2872 USA +1(432)528-7724 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
