Martin: I have to totally disagree with you. Maybe Richard Nixon (Maurice Stans, more specifically) promoted SI, but in the last 40 years or so the Democratic administrations (except Obama) have actually done more to promote metrication than Republican administrations. I remember many metric conferences when Bill Clinton was President, and Jimmy Carter at least provided funding for the Metric Conversion Board, if nothing else.(Something Reagan didn't do) Neither party seems to be metrically literate. I don't know if this is because they are anti-metric, however. I suspect that has more to do with the fact that politicians take political science and pre-law classes rather than science classes, and are just ignorant of SI. The NIST update of the FPLA ought to be a Republican's dream. No additional government regulation. No deadline dates. No increased taxes or taxpayer funding of metrication. Yet in spite of that no support from either party. Seems to me the Republicans are just as stuck in the mud as the Democrats are. Mark Henschel
<http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail> Virus-free. www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2> On Fri, Jun 7, 2019 at 10:58 AM [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: > Carleton-- Tucker Carlson's comment is at best a personal opinion or, as > one of the commentors here indicated, maybe said with tongue in cheek. > Perhaps you have not seen the Carlson program or other programs on > FoxNews, so you might not have a good sense of the channel as a whole. > > I have sent to this list over the past few years several examples of > FoxNews's increasing use of the metric system. FoxNews is an > international news service, and it so receives and broadcasts a > significant number of its reports from overseas, where the metric system > is used exclusively. > > Many of these international reports do include unconverted metric units: > meters, kilometers, kilograms, etc. I heard several of these used in the > reporting of the D-Day events yesterday. > > As I have written here before, I think that we shall see a continuing > gradual increase in the use of metric units in news broadcasting simply > because the stations are too hurried to convert the units. Moreover, > there is a gradually increasing acceptance of the metric system here. > > Yes, there is still the small group of anti-metricians, but most in the > U.S. have voiced no objection to liquid measures in liters and > milliliters, lumens in light bulbs, and milligrams in pharmaceuticals. > Even candy bars are now being advertised in centimeters. It is only when > the issue becomes politicized that one hears objections raised. > > I don't watch CNN or MS-NBC, but I suspect that those channels may be > worse than FoxNews in metric usage. It used to be that in the U.S. the > Democrats were more pro metric, but I don't think that this is the case > any longer. The Democrats came down very hard on Governor Chafee, a 2016 > Presidential candidate, who promoted the metric system. I suspect that at > this time more Republicans probably favor the metric system because of its > use in international commerce. They are making the coversions in business > products with little fanfare, flying "under the radar." It is > regrettable, but probably necessary, for them to have to do it this way. > > Martin Morrison > Columnist, "Metric Today" > > _______________________________________________ > USMA mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma >
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