Warwick Cairns bemoans the supposed loss of tradition and history in the UK and US by fully adopting the metric system, and that the UK and US would become less ‘British’ and 'American' as a result. I think he is wrong in making that assumption. I found Australia to be just as Australian as it always has been, regardless of the fact that it is one of the most metric English-speaking countries on the planet. Canada’s (still incomplete) conversion to the metric system can be said to have made it even more Canadian than it was – it provided an extra little bit of differentiation and identity between it and the USA. China had its own weird system until around 1949, yet is just as Chinese today. I am sure the same can be said for all the other countries that have converted to the metric system from whatever system they used previously – in no way did they lose any sense of their original traditions, culture or identity as a result.
The same is true of Britain and America – both countries have a rich history of embracing change and exploring the new (that in fact is what America is all about), and making (or in the case of the UK, completing ) the conversion to the metric system is very much a part of that history. The economic benefits are the icing on the cake. John F-L ----- Original Message ----- From: Kilopascal To: John M. Steele ; U.S. Metric Association Sent: Friday, April 15, 2011 4:39 AM Subject: Re: [USMA:50354] Tough Mozartkugeln I can see where there could be religious trouble in Belfast. I'm sure it didn't start there in the 1970s when I remember the last time there was trouble. So I'm not surprised there was trouble in the early 1800s as well. What I remember from my history is that the native Irish are Catholics and the colonists from Scotland brought in by the English are Presbyterians. It is as much a Scotch-Irish conflict as it is religious. Was your ancestor Catholic? If your ancestral grandfather was born in 1753 and came in 1802 with young kids they must have been from a 2-nd marriage and a young wife as he would have been about 50 years old. Did your research tell you the origin of the name? One would think it might have something to do with steel. The curiosity is why the e at the end. I wonder if Cliff is curious about you, seeing you two have the same last name. You might try and contact him privately and inquire about his ancestry. He may in fact come from the same region your ancestor did and could be a distant relative. Wouldn't that be a hoot to find out two Steeles of common ancestry have the same interest in metric? From: John M. Steele Sent: Thursday, 2011-04-14 21:21 To: Kilopascal ; U.S. Metric Association Subject: Re: [USMA:50354] Tough Mozartkugeln Probably not related, but if you go back far enough, who knows? Cliff seems to be British. I have done enough geneaology to know the progenitor of my Steele family was born in Ireland, and emigrated to the US with his family in 1802, having escaped after some type of religious trouble. They quickly made their way to Indiana and settle there for several generations until my grandfather (who I never met) moved to Michigan. Although born in Ireland, since he was snuck out of Belfast (Northern Ireland) it is not clear whether he was really British or Irish and the family doesn't have much info on him, particularly before he arrived in the US with wife and young kids. From me, he is seventh generation back (born 1753). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Kilopascal <kilopas...@cox.net> To: U.S.. Metric Association <usma@colostate.edu> Sent: Thu, April 14, 2011 8:27:30 PM Subject: [USMA:50354] Tough Mozartkugeln John Steele - Cliff Steele Are you two related? Brothers? Cousins? Anyway, the most interesting thing to consider when you have a nation divided against itself along measurement lines is that the whole nation suffers. Businesses suffer and costs are driven up. The general outcome is increased poverty. Worse yet there are bad feelings as one blames the other for ruined lives and living standard being ruined by the other side. Businesses that are metric don't hire people who can't function in metric and may even import workers from metric countries even though the unemployment may be high. One can see the effects that not being metric is having on Boeing and NASA. But when these two companies go under it effects the rest of the nation too. But I don't think the Warwick Cairns of the the world are ever going to be convinced that metric will cure his nation's economic problems in fact Warwick believes metric has caused them. When I read about things like us contravening the Vienna Convention on road signs I get this terrible urge to laugh and say “Yes..? And..?” or “Tough Mozartkugeln, my Viennese friends.” And when people talk about price transparency, I think, “Well, we managed perfectly well on that front for centuries before the metric people stuck their bloody oar in. So whose fault is that, then?” And even the Mars thing makes me think that the problem lies mainly with introducing metric to an industry that managed to get to the moon without it. As long as you have people like this believing that things were better when everyone thought in imperial, they will never succumb to metrication and continue to be a thorn in its side. The battle will rage on and both side will suffer the effects while the outside world whose economy is uniformly metric will prosper and move forward. John Steele says: 2011-04-13 at 21:53 Well, I am engineer, and an American. I worked in a metric industry (automotive) and metric is simple and international. Provided he speaks English, I can speak to an engineer anywhere in the world (as long as he is not a rocket scientist, NASA and Boeing work in Customary). Customary (the US version of Imperial) is just an abomination with all the strange relationships between different units. With arbitrary unit conversion factors thrown in, I don’t even recognize in Customary many standard engineering formulas I am used to working in metric. Given how much metric simplifies my professional life, it just seems a worthwhile change in my personal life too. One set of rational coherent units would suffice. Given what I consider to be the issue with Customary units, Imperial units are certainly no better, they are just more strange and unfamiliar units. While I sort of understand pounds, I don’t understand stones at all. Oh, and in Customary/Imperial, you can’t measure light or electricity or magnetism at all. These “systems” of units are so obsolete that no one ever bothered to invent electrical or light units for them (or have some hybrid unit like foot candles, candela from the metric system and feet (squared) from the Imperial system. Terrific. Much like the UK, the US is surrounded by metric neighbors. We have to understand metric well enough to get by when we visit there, so it is important to know two systems. What exactly is the advantage of continuing to insist on using an obsolete, irrational system, that almost no one else uses. What exactly is the benefit of knowing two systems when knowing the right one would suffice. I suppose as an American, I feel less of a sense of “heritage” towards these units. They are, after all, the very units of the very King we rebelled against, George III. Our liquid and dry volume measures are the units enforced by him, not the “improved” Imperial units of 1824. So I see only nuisance and inconvenience, no heritage at all. That is either what makes me tick, or what ticks me off. Obviously, I am a USMA member, and contribute occasionally here as well. I firmly believe both the US and UK are making metrication much harder by dragging it out.. If they just got it over with, like Australia and South Africa, it would all be settled in a year or two and then it would no longer matter much. The present process is like being pecked to death by ducks. Cliff Steele says: 2011-04-14 at 11:30 Mr Cairns, You are a writer. Writers have been producing literary content in Britain since before Roman times. Writing is the tradition that has endured to this day, not the language it is written in or the means of putting the words on paper. English has replaced Latin and the computer has replaced the quill. Mensuration, the science of measurement, is also an ancient tradition. As written language has evolved, units of measurement have also evolved into an elegantly simple holistic system that can be understood universally. It’s still the same science, but it is now easier to understand and manipulate. If you need to continue using a quill to write or prefer writing in Latin to keep your sense of continuity with past generations that’s your choice, but please don’t force me or others to understand, when there is a sensible alternative, units based on the stride of an ancient Roman soldier or the area an animal can plough in a day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 10.0.1321 / Virus Database: 1500/3574 - Release Date: 04/14/11
