Excellent point about giving folks choices when they shouldn't and winding up with decision paralysis, Pat! -- Ezra
----- Original Message ----- From: "Pat Naughtin" <[email protected]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2011 2:33:39 PM Subject: [USMA:49576] Re: More dumbing down via NPR Dear Ezra, During the recent floods in Australia almost all -- and I estimate about 5000 media reports were given in metres -- I saw only three that used feet. One was a short (say 1.5 metres) very elderly woman who said "six feet" as she waved her hand at about her shoulder height (say 1.3 metres). Another was an employee at a truck loading depot who possibly spent his days buying "footlong(r)" from the Subway Company from the USA for his lunch and then went home to watch Fox news, Hollywood movies, or other television productions from the USA (note Subway uses the registered trademarks "sixinch(r)" and "footlong(r)" for their products as it is illegal here to trade here using inches and feet but not illegal to use registerd trademarks that contain these words. I suppose that the Subway company is planning to try to revert Australia to the uncoordinated measurement mess that the USA has to offer! On the subject of the Aussie woman dumbing down her words for an audience in the USA you are probably right. Australians know full well how far behind the USA is with respect to the other 95 % of people in the world. However, that said, women in Australia were not well supported in the metrication upgrade in Australia. As you know I have pointed out here previously that if you don't have a metrication policy then people will make up their own often providing two possible metric system units. This leads directly, in my opinion, to what the Heath brothers call " decision paralysis " where people do not have enough knowledge of the metric system to know what to do; so they revert to old pre-metric measuring words because they seem to be familiar (and not necessarily because they understand these either). Important examples are: * Human height where centimetres and metres are on offer as possible choices. This choice is promoted by schools who promote centimetres and the medical professions who promote metres for Body Mass Index (BMI). Given a choice many Australians say, " What's that in feet and inches? " * Baby masses where women are given a choice between grams and kilograms. Not knowing what to do with these, and not knowing that the use of kilograms is inherently unsafe for the health of the baby, their next question is "What's that in pounds and ounces?"; again putting the baby's health at even more serious risk. * The textile industries chose to use metres and centimetres as their preferred metric system units. These have then been divided into fractions such as half metres and quarter metres and (like the Apple Computer Company) into half centimetres and quarter centimetres. Given these choices a lot of women continue to use their old patterns in feet, inches, and yards and to train their daughters to do likewise. A few, such as fine artwork quilters, work in millimetres and the quality of their work shows the other quilters up remarkably. Insofar as the metrication of Australia is concerned, we were totally successful in areas that involved construction and engineering in all its forms (roads, electrical, construction, civil, environmental and so on) where the policy decision was made to use millimetres, ONLY. The metrication upgrade was quick easy and extremely economical (saving about 10 % of turnover for most companies). My estimate is that we are 90 % metric or more but we still have to work on the remainder. See http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/CostOfNonMetrication.pdf It would be wise for the USA to look at Australian successes -- and failures -- as a guide to changing from "hidden metrication" to an honest an open "direct metrication". Done well the USA could again lead the world in honest and open measurement policies as they have done since the early 1780s. See http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/MetricationTimeline.pdf and search for USA. Cheers, Pat Naughtin Geelong, Australia On 2011/01/23, at 08:21 , [email protected] wrote: I am listening to NPR and Atlanta Public Media. An Australian woman is describing her journey from Sydney to the protected reserve where aborigines live up north (closest large city is Darwin). The aborigine could be heard telling the woman that they had 10 liters of water just in case they break down, which was nice. But when the woman was describing the height of some things she could see while trraveling in the reserve, she used "feet" rather than "meters" (not even saying the height n meters first). I'm quite sure the American producer asked her to convert to feet or else the Aussie woman just assumed she needed to convert since she knew the program was for an American audience. Too bad.... another chance to give Americans a clue that Australia is fully metric was lost. Ezra Pat Naughtin LCAMS Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, see http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, Geelong, Australia Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. S ee http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected] or to get the free ' Metrication matters ' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe.
