On 2010/11/23, at 10:43 , James R. Frysinger wrote: > A Fox News article for travelers on the subject of bed bugs > http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2010/11/17/avoid-bedbugs-vacation/ > suggests washing clothes (upon return home) in very hot water since "bedbugs > won’t survive heat above 113 degrees Fahrenheit" > > That rather awkward sounding figure of course is 45 °C. > > Jim
Dear Jim, Don't be an inch-ounce victim, By hiding the metric system! Hiding the metric system by using "metric conversion" as your approach to metrication is slow, painfully slow. See the quote by the great American journalist, H. L. Mencken, who could have been talking about metric conversion when he wrote: ... for every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, simple and wrong. See http://www.metricationmatters.com/metric_conversion.html Hiding the metric system us also extremely costly. let me quote from the Business Plan of the ISO/TC 12 Quantities, units, symbols, conversion factors at: http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/687806/ISO_TC_012__Quantities%2C_units%2C_symbols%2C_conversion_factors_.pdf?nodeid=1160789&vernum=-2 ## … Quantities and units are used in practically all industries in the world. They are used in most schools and in faculties of natural sciences, technology, and medicine in all universities in the world, and also in some other university faculties. Quantities and units are also very much used by governments and in every day life. The economic size of the markets can be estimated to trillions of US dollars per year. … The following list of quantitative indicators describes the business environment in order to provide adequate information to support actions of the ISO/TC: It is very difficult to select the total market. However, here is an attempt. If only the market for basic textbooks in physics, chemistry, and technology is considered and it is estimated that one chapter out of say 20 chapters deals explicitly with quantities and units (and the other chapters implicitly) it is found that at least 5 % of this textbook market can be referred to the field of quantities and units. This implies billions and billions of US dollars each year. Then consider the time teachers in science and technology at high schools and universities spend on the subject quantities and units. The fraction (including mathematics) is at least about the same order of magnitude as in textbooks, i.e. 5 %, probably more. This implies even higher economic resources than for textbooks. In industry, the time fraction spent on quantities and units is probably less than in education – let us say only 1 %, which is a low estimate – but the total economic turnover is far much bigger in industry than in teaching natural science and technology. Hence industrial activities in this field represents several trillions US dollars each year. If the alternative is considered that there did not exist any International Standards for quantities and units, the costs for national and international trade would further increase with at least one or two powers of ten. An estimate, giving the same order of magnitude, has also been made by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) in USA. ## You will recall that I made an estimate of the cost of non-metrication in the USA as about 1.4 trillion dollars a year at http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/CostOfNonMetrication.pdf where I paraphrased the USA Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen (1896/1969) as saying: "a trillion this year, and a trillion next year, pretty soon adds up to real money" Cheers, Pat Naughtin Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, see http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY 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] or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe.
