Personal editorial for the day: We have to accept the fact that there are two “systems” in the world. For lack of a better term, I’ll call it the scientific the vernacular. Many advocates for SI and metric are scientist and engineers. We believe in precision and accuracy. We, for the most part, feel that everything should be grammatically and technically correct. For engineers and scientists a klick is no more a useful term than a dram, we cringe at terms like “5K” races or when some reporter pronounces kilometers wrong. We lose sleep over this stuff but most of the rest of society doesn’t quite care if they get everything correct, and neither should we. Sometimes we lose sight of the bigger picture, to get the metric system into our focus as our mainstream measurement system. US politics, be it as it is, will likely not tolerate legislation to mandate conversion. The best we can hope for is a cultural change brought on by the influence of the remaining 90% of the world, economic realities, common sense and people like us who keep pushing. We may not all be technically correct in our usage but someday America will be metric.
Maybe a good metric slogan would be: A metric America: One mm at a time! From: owner-u...@colostate.edu [mailto:owner-u...@colostate.edu] On Behalf Of Mark Henschel Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2014 12:12 AM To: U.S. Metric Association Cc: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:53849] Re: MG I think if we want to be correct we would have to accept MG would really mean MegaGiga, which makes no sense. Like cc (centi-centi) or KPH (Kelvin Pascal Hertz) or kph ( kilo pico hour) Mark Oh, and a 5K race would be a 5 Kelvin race. On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 9:46 AM, <cont...@metricpioneer.com<mailto:cont...@metricpioneer.com>> wrote: I suspect that people reading the message that I had sent out would reasonably conclude that in such a context, clearly the intent is to indicate milligrams. It has absolutely nothing to do with any non-SI units. Can anyone offer an answer to my original question? ----- Message from Martin Vlietstra <vliets...@btinternet.com<mailto:vliets...@btinternet.com>> --------- Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 12:40:56 +0100 From: Martin Vlietstra <vliets...@btinternet.com<mailto:vliets...@btinternet.com>> Reply-To: vliets...@btinternet.com<mailto:vliets...@btinternet.com> Subject: [USMA:53820] Re: MG To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu<mailto:usma@colostate.edu>> The gauss is a cgs unit, not an SI unit. As Pierre rightly point out, 1 MG = 1hT or, as per the Wikipedia table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system , 1 G = 10^-4 T. -----Original Message----- From: owner-u...@colostate.edu<mailto:owner-u...@colostate.edu> [mailto:owner-u...@colostate.edu<mailto:owner-u...@colostate.edu>] On Behalf Of Pierre Abbat Sent: 15 May 2014 10:43 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:53819] Re: MG On Tuesday, May 13, 2014 16:36:34 cont...@metricpioneer.com<mailto:cont...@metricpioneer.com> wrote: Dr Patricia Weeks here at the Salem Clinic printed out a perscription for my wife today for 150 MG of a particular medication. Astonished, I pointed out to Dr Weeks that when the M is capitalized, it means mega, which in this case, would means 150 megagrams, or 150 metric tons of medication. MG is not megagram. It is megagauss (1 MG=1 hT). Pierre --ve ka'a ro klaji la .romas. se jmaji ----- End message from Martin Vlietstra <vliets...@btinternet.com<mailto:vliets...@btinternet.com>> ----- David Pearl www.MetricPioneer.com<http://www.MetricPioneer.com> 503-428-4917<tel:503-428-4917>
