Dear Jim and All,
You wrote:
What's ironic is that Alabama had been one of the early states to
adopt it and then it reverted! Usually that's a sign of an old codger
with a lot of influence or a well-funded interest raising dust.
Jim
In John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber's book, 'Our Iceberg is Melting'
the character who plays the role of your 'old codger' is given the
soubriquet, 'NoNo'!
See http://www.kotterinternational.com/KotterPrinciples/OurIceberg.aspx
And
http://www.kotterinternational.com/KotterPrinciples/OurIceberg/IsYourIcebergMelting.aspx
where the question is asked: 'Are the NONo's controlling the
organisation?'
Remember that it took only two old codgers (called NoNo ?) to destroy
the USA Metric Board in the early 1980s. Here is the story:
##
In a Washington Post remembrance of the late Reagan Press Secretary
and leading Republican Lyn Nofziger, long-time political rival
Democrat Frank Mankiewicz claims that the two of them had worked
secretly together to kill the metric system in the United States.
Mankiewicz wrote in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/28/AR2006032802142.html
)
... during that first year of Reagan's presidency, I sent Lyn another
copy of a column I had written a few years before, attacking and
satirizing the attempt by some organized do-gooders to inflict the
metric system on Americans, a view of mine Lyn had enthusiastically
endorsed. So, in 1981, when I reminded him that a commission actually
existed to further the adoption of the metric system and the damage we
both felt this could wreak on our country, Lyn went to work with
material provided by each of us. He was able, he told me, to prevail
on the president to dissolve the commission and make sure that, at
least in the Reagan presidency, there would be no further effort to
sell metric.
It was a signal victory, but one which we recognized would have to be
shared only between the two of us, lest public opinion once again
began to head toward metrification.
##
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, that you can obtain
from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
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