Best of luck in your endeavors over there, John! Not a week ago, I wrote
a letter to The Economist gently taking them to task for omitting the
spaces between numbers and unit symbols. I encouraged them to follow
"the rules", which I cited and documented with an SI Brochure online
link. And of course I provided an example from their pages to
demonstrate the problem and its proper solution.
My email was then favorably endorsed by an email from a UK professor who
has been a big player in the CCU and the BIPM. Likewise one from a
similarly credentialed man here, retired from our NIST. I have had no
reply from The Economist. The next few issues will tell of my success or
lack thereof.
I think that bureaucracies, whether commercial or government, possess
inordinate inertia. It it's not their idea, it starts at the back of the
pack before the starting gun is ever fired.
All we can do is to persevere. Many years ago on this mail list, I
pointed out that the Grand Canyon was created by water acting a drop at
a time. That analogy points out that many small drops of water can
eventually carve great channels through rock. It also points out,
unfortunately, that this may take eons. Nonetheless, "a drop at a time"
provides us with the possibility of eventual success.
Best regards!
Jim
On 2014-01-08 14:23, [email protected] wrote:
Dear Jim:
John Frewen-Lord here, and, as you may already know, new chairman of the
UKMA.
In the last few weeks I have sent out letters to many organisations in
the UK, some similar to the MAPI (e.g. Confederation of British
Industry), the EEF (a manufacturer's association) as well as our
National Measurement Office (equivalent I guess to NIST in at least some
respects), etc, and got back replies from them. The replies are abysmal
- I asked them all some very pertinent questions as to their views on
whether the UK's failure to complete metrication was having an adverse
effect of the UK's GDP, especially its export performance (something
that CBI is pushing very hard right now). All, without exception,
skirted and evaded the issues, trotted out the standard party line, to
the point that it was very obvious that answering my questions directly
would have exposed them to their failure to push for completion of
metrication. The letter from the NMO was in fact a disgrace, to the
point that I wonder why we even have an NMO.
This is why I am particularly interested in what comes from MAPI. Some
positive response there might just help me make progress here in the UK.
Best regards
John
-----Original Message----- From: James
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 7:39 PM
To: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:53503] Re: SI metric
Dear Robert,
I"m glad that you had the opportunity to speak with Cliff Waldman, the
Council Director and Senior Economist of the Manufacturers Alliance for
Productivity and Innovation (MAPI), yesterday.
Hopefully he was receptive to your points in that conversation. It would
be very nice to find that this induces MAPI to push for metrication.
Well done!
Best regards,
Jim
On 2014-01-08 13:28, Robert H. Bushnell wrote:
2014 Jan 8
Dear Mr. Waldman,
It was good to talk with you yesterday. I hope you
can inform me (and the metric community) about why the US
has not finished removing use of inch-pound units from
every day life and from all manufacturing as well as the
use of inch-pound units by manufacturers, who are already
using millimeters, talking to the public.
US use of inches is a substantial problem and expense
in international commerce. It is said that the US is half
way to using SI metric. Is this true? MAPI may know
better than anyone.
With a one trillion dollar per year loss in the GDP, this
is serious. K-12 schools make a big part of this loss.
I hope you can help. How can I help you?
Robert H. Bushnell PhD PE
502 Ord Drive Boulder CO 80303-4732
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
303-554-0728
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