Hi, everyone, In the past few months we have seen The Federalist and the Wall Street Journal sniping at the metric system, and now, with the recent story on Fox News the metric system has been squarely pushed into the public arena.
It is encouraging that the story on Fox News was reported on a huge number of blogs and news sites, and all the ones I’ve seen have been laughing at Tucker Carlson and James Panero and praising the metric system. In addition, the majority of comments to these articles have also been supportive of the metric system and dismissive of its high-profile detractors. Perhaps this is a good time for the USMA and any other metric supporters in the US to raise the profile of the metric debate and get some people who know and use the metric system to discuss its advantages. In recent times, critics of the metric system have been writers who have no need to do extensive measurements or intricate calculations of physical quantities. Most notable has been children’s author John Bemelmans Marciano who wrote Whatever Happened To the Metric System, now followed by James Panero who describes himself as a “lifestyle critic”, and his accomplice Tucker Carlson, a news commentator who has a BA in History. What qualifies these people to make any public statements about measurement systems, and why would anyone with an IQ greater than single figures pay any attention to them? Their complaints against the metric system are the same as their predecessors, Tom Wolfe and Stewart Brand: the metric system is arbitrary, (and settling on three barleycorns to the inch isn’t?); it’s not the same as the one we’ve used for hundreds of years; it has no connection with the people; it’s no good for poetry. It’s about time we had some educators, engineers and scientists promoting the advantages of the metric system to counter this rubbish. We need to tell the public that it’s easy to learn and easy to use, both for measurements and calculation. It can save teaching time in the classroom, and time money and materials in industrial use. It’s time that people who know and use the metric system were discussing it in the media, not journalists, childrens’ authors and self-styled "lifestyle critics." Regards, Peter Goodyear, Melbourne, Australia e-mail: [email protected] > On 13 Jun 2019, at 10:45, James R. Frysinger <[email protected]> wrote: > > I know that to be true! > > Jim > > On 6/12/2019 19:04, [email protected] wrote: >> It is entirely possible that because of the deficient education in the >> United States as compared to other developed countries, many Americans may >> not even know how much they are already using metric units! --Martin >> Morrison > _______________________________________________ > USMA mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma
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