I've had trouble understanding this (and several other arguments), and about
a month ago I had asked my local group of anthro grad students if anyone
knew of other examples where the old "imperial" (sinister connotations
there, too?) system was still in place - I can only see non-metrification as
hurting the US economy, since that means american stuff can't be exported to
the rest of the world... Similarly, no one else wants to buy gas-guzzling
american SUVs...
Now, I don't want to see this descend into some kind of
ideological/political debate here on the revered pages of histarch, but this
does sort of remind me of a lot of the assumptions we make as archaeologists
about what is the most "logical" or economical or otherwise best strategy
for exploiting resources or building widgets or... Whatever...
But obviously that isn't always the case, and the reasons people have for
doing things are not always the most "rational" - then we build
rational-sounding "just so" stories to support our conclusions... I'm sort
of reminded of durkheim's assumption that societies were inherently
conservative and resistant to change receiving "scientific support" from the
first law of thermodynamics sometime back in the 50s or 60s, despite thomas
malthus, darwin, and all other evidence to the contrary...
My personal opinion is that we tend only to give lip service to the idea of
uniformitarianism, and give our elegantly modelled theories precedence over
projecting what we know about the present into the past...
You can imagine that if it was just liberia that the chinese wouldn't bother
tooling up their factories to produce two sets of product: imperial and
metric...

geoff carver - SUNY buffalo
[log in to unmask]
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~gjcarver/
"The rocket bombs which fell on London were probably fired by the Government
of Oceania itself, 'just to keep the people frightened.'" Orwell, 1984.


-----Original Message-----
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ned
Heite
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2003 05:14
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Measuring 1937 Ford V/8-60's


It's a good thing Dr. Brooks is safely away from the U.S.

What liberal, commie, left-wing, anti-American heresy! You would immediately
be placed on John Ashcroft's list of undesirable subversives under 24/7
surveillance.

Like other forward-looking nations (I believe Liberia is the only other one
at the moment.) our Fearless Leaders have decreed that the metric system is
bad for the economy, which puts it in the same category with the global
warming treaty, anti-missile treaty, Saddam, Yasser, and the Euro.





At 10:21 AM +1100 1/6/03, Alasdair Brooks wrote:
>
>
>Well, for one thing, I can guarantee you that they won't be measuring 
>in inches and ounces.
>
>Alasdair Brooks





Actually, kidding aside, archaeologists will probably keep using feet and
inches when measuring historic artifacts. It makes good sense to measure
objects in the system that was used by their makers. So in fact, if the
future archaeologist has his wits about him (or her, or it), the engine
block will be reported in inches and thousandths of an inch, providing you
can still find those neat electronic calipers that give results in both
systems.


--
+++++ [log in to unmask]

Sitting here, sipping diet mead from my auroch-horn flagon,
I wonder that my contemporaries all look like a bunch of old folks.