Paul Trusten wrote:
Tempe Brennan? Does this take place in Arizona?
No. That's the name of a person, not a place.
Does the reference to the inch mean that the book's audience is limited
to the U.S.?
I have no idea what was in the author's mind when she wrote this book,
or her other 10 books in this series. She writes in English, I'm sure,
but with a lot of French thrown in. The author, like her main character,
also works as a forensic consultant in Montreal. The dust jacket on this
novel claims her books have been translated into something like 30
languages. If they have a library in your town, you could borrow a copy
of this novel, or one of her others, and decide this issue for yourself.
I think the author neutralizes her respect for the CGPM by giving
primacy to the inch in her narrative. She is still saying that
inch-pound should be the standard of measurement.
Well, that's kind of a "glass half empty" view in my opinion, Paul. Do
you have a mystery novel in mind, one whose author also uses micrometers
instead of microns and cites the CGPM's ruling to support that? Without
mentioning inches, of course. If so, I'll ask Reichs to send the gold
medal that I gave her to your author.
I have a confession to make. Just yesterday I told somebody that a meter
was "a wee bit larger than a yard". Gee, do you think I'm non-metric in
my thinking? Or do you suppose I was trying to help them visualize the
size of a meter?
And, why the "Intergalactic" council? Is this a futuristic story? If so,
gosh, hasn't the U.S. gone metric by, let's say, 2200?
This is an example of hyperbole, a device used in speech and literature
to convey humor. Humor is nice because it eases tensions and can
facilitate learning. I have used this technique in my lectures on
physics with good results. I think this was actually a nice touch. It
would have been tedious and off-putting for her to be utterly factual
about the level of CGPM's authority. Would you also have her cite, in
this mystery novel, the session and resolution numbers for that CGPM ruling?
As we see folks move towards using the metric system, we might be better
off lauding their progress instead of railing at their failure to
achieve perfection in this art that is new to them. Here's a new adage
for consideration: "Pedants perform poorly as proponents."
Jim
----- Original Message ----- From: "James Frysinger"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Sent: 08 October, 2008 08:38
Subject: [USMA:41812] Mystery writer plugs CGPM
I just finished the novel _Devil Bones_ written by Kathy Reichs. She's
a board-certified forensic anthropologist and a co-producer of the TV
show "Bones" (runs on USA and Fox). She is also past Vice President of
the American Academy of Forensic Scientists.
At one point her main character, Tempe Brennan, describes the thin
section she is going to slice from a femur.
"Using a very sharp diamond blade, you cut cross-sectional slices of
bone measuring one hundred microns in thickness. Or, at least they
used to. The micron was officially abolished in 1967 by the CGPM, the
intergalactic council on weights and measures. The micron is now the
micrometer. No matter. The little bugger is still .00004 of an inch.
That's why the slices are called thin sections." [page 118]
Now, I could fault Reichs for not putting a leading zero before the
decimal point. And, in an ideal world, she would not have felt obliged
to give an equivalent in inches. But she did a good thing and a great
thing. She recognized that the unit name should be micrometer. I wish
that Science magazine (AAAS) was up to speed on that issue. Amazingly,
though, she not only knows about the CGPM and this particular ruling,
she also cited it in the novel!
In the novel Reichs also spells out "degrees Celsius" at one point.
Recently I chided another author of novels in this genre, Patricia
Cornwell, for using "degrees centigrade".
What a bonanza in a great mystery novel -- micrometers instead of
microns. And a plug for CGPM to boot!
Jim
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(H) 931.657.3107
(C) 931.212.0267
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(H) 931.657.3107
(C) 931.212.0267
