OK, we all cheat and call it the metric system, but we are not supposed to. We are supposed to call it the International System of Units (the SI for short). Is it fair for the SI to "copyright" a phrase that it rejects as referring to itself? (It and Sports Illustrated may have a legitimate beef with each other.)
Businesses everywhere have systems of metrics (usually plural) to measure their performance. I would suppose, given how English works, that any one measure of a set of measures is then a metric. English has many examples of words spelled the same, or sounding the same, with different meanings. I'm sure it makes English hard to learn, but context usually sorts it out: "Remember to wind up the awning before the wind blows it to pieces." Which meaning would you forbid and require another term for? ________________________________ From: Pat Naughtin <[email protected]> To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, December 8, 2010 1:12:08 AM Subject: [USMA:49053] Re: Another "metric system" On 2010/12/08, at 15:54 , Pat Naughtin wrote: Dear All, > > >It seems that a "metric system" can bob up anywhere. >See http://frenchtribune.com/teneur/102377-nursing-metric-shows-higher-expected-mortality-4-hospitals where > they say, "A metric system that is closely linked to providing quality > nursing >care and the availability of number of nurses, known as Nursing metric. This >has >shown that four hospitals have showed mortality rates which are much higher >than >expected." > > To add to this message. Isn't it great fun to have two "metric systems" in all hospitals. That's right up there with the inability to choose mL instead of ml to create the most possible confusion. Remember that medical errors in hospitals are rife and cost much suffering and many lives. Let me quote from, "A metrication elephant" at http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/AMetricationElephant.pdf ## Health Americans are increasingly concerned with the cost, quality, and availability of health care. How do you see science, research, and technology contributing to improved health and quality of life? It is reported that, at present, there is an average of 1.7 medical errors per patient per day in USA hospitals. Many – but I don't know how many– of these are due to conversion errors when converting patient's body mass from pounds to kilograms (or in the case of babies from pounds and ounces to kilograms and/or grams). Many, many, people die every day as a result of errors in unnecessary conversions. Note that the only reason for these conversions is to maintain the thin veneer of misinformation that doctors and nurses in the USA are using old pre-metric measures in their surgeries and hospitals — but this is simply not true and it has not been true for decades. All medical research in the world (including the USA) is done using SI metric units, medical drug products are developed and tested using SI metric units, and the doses are then refined and delivered with dosage units like milligrams per kilogram. Go to http://www.visicu.com/solving/research/mederrors.html to see quotations like this: '… medical errors were estimated to kill up to 98,000 Americans each year and to be due to human error "60-80%" of the time. That is more people in one year than died in the entire Vietnam War. That is more people than die from automobile accidents, AIDS or breast cancer yearly.According to a report at http://www.aarp.org/research/health/carequality/Articles/aresearch-import-711-IB35.html 'The average number of errors per patient per day was 1.7.' ## 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/ to subscribe.
