I agree with Peter Goodyear that educators, scientists and engineers being interviewed on TV should use metric terms whenever possible as a matter of course. I was writing a response about that, but Martin has already sent one echoing my thoughts. The people being interviewed probably just automatically "convert" to non-metric units during interviews without even thinking about it, like we all do when having normal conversations away from work. These people must be in favor of the metric system, so if they were just made aware of what they are doing, they would be on board. Martin summed it up perfectly -------
The limited USMA resources can't attack all areas at once, but what about a vigorous approach to some of the leading scientific organizations to put out a bulletin to their membership encouraging the practice of using metric in their interviews. Sometimes, all it takes to solve a problem is to make people aware and to provide support. Maybe a short article or a "Letter to the Editor" submitted to scientific publications would help as well. This is feasible to do, but my question is who is going to actually do anything about it? Good ideas are useless if nobody does anything. Al Lawrence ________________________________ From: USMA <[email protected]> on behalf of [email protected] <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2019 10:45 AM To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA 1132] Re: How to Support the Metric System Peter Goodyear-- You make an excellent point: "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." One of the best ways to implement your suggestion would be get educators, engineers, and scientists to use the metric system when being interviewed on television. The problem is that they -- at least most of them -- don't do so in interviews, even though they use metric exclusively in their daily work. In effect, they are committing a kind of fraud on the public. If they did use the metric system in television interviews, there would probably be no pushback at all. In fact, viewers might just expect it. The limited USMA resources can't attack all areas at once, but what about a vigorous approach to some of the leading scientific organizations to put out a bulletin to their membership encouraging the practice of using metric in their interviews. Sometimes, all it takes to solve a problem is to make people aware and to provide support. Since 1988 the metric system is supposed to be the "preferred" system in the United States. What about getting our contacts at NIST to do this. What better way of education would there be than to get leading scientists to use metric on television? It would cost NIST virtually nothing. A WARNING. The USMA under Don Hillger and Paul Trusten settled on a policy to promote metric for practical reasons, such as business and commerce. Few Americans care how the kilogram is defined, yet it seems that, up to last week and Tucker Carlson, the only thing that we were hearing was about the new definition of the kilogram. I'm sure that this "scientific" emphasis does not help our cause. It makes the metric system seem exotic and obsessive, not the system that is so eminently practical that the whole world uses it. Martin Morrison "Metric Today" Columnist _______________________________________________ USMA mailing list [email protected] https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma
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