Robert Derman wrote:
Rod Engelsman wrote:
Hey Greg!
On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 9:00 PM, Gregory J. Neumann
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Hey, Ian, Good to hear from you!!
Let's not forget the discussion of "English" (US?) system vs. Metric (or
whatever it's called now) system!
I blame the tool vendors -- Snap-On, Craftsman, etc .Every set of
wrenches
or sockets I've ever purchased has some of both system in it, and
naturally
they have to charge more that way.
( Seriously, it's inertia combined with insularity and an economy big
enough
to have our own way about it.)
Even more to blame were the gutless politicians who gave in to public
pressure rather than standing their ground and saying, metrics is like
much medicine, bad tasting but good for you in the long run.
Well, that's what democracy is about. Except that in this case, the
public was actually showing a fair amount of common sense, instead of
letting the scientific community ram a non-rational system dressed up to
look like one down their throats.
The meter is directly descended from a bad estimate of the distance from
Paris to the north pole (that no westerner had yet visited, and would
not for more than a century) imposed during a reign of terror by a group
of fanatics whose real purpose was to totally destroy the "Old Order" in
favor of a "Rational New Order". Why this makes SI a "better" system is
beyond me. Why I should discard a system of measure that divides into
fractional parts far more evenly than SI for my everyday usage is still
not very clear to me.
I do think SI's integration of linear, volume, weight/mass and
temperature is a great idea, but I don't see why a decimal system based
on a weird estimate should have to be part of that.
Guess I'm just an USian after all! ;-)
-Greg
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
