Donald Aiken Wrote:
 
>The metric system was imposed on us some years ago by a government
>of lawyers who also liked its concept. We were promised amazing
>improvements in efficiency, simplicity and uniformity in trade.
 
The system will not be accepted by a people affraid of learning.
North Americans are notorius for mental blocks against things. You
have ten fingers. Apply this knowledge to your life. There is little
learning there. A  person needs to know that you have a unit of wiegh
which is a gram. A smaller wieght is a thousandth of a gram (read
millgram) and a bigger one is a thousand grams (read a kilogram). If
this is difficult to remember, look into the units of measurement
setup in printer control and use the symbols, together with the 10
numbers at the top of the keyboard.
 
Likewise vol=l, ml and kl.
 
 
If one was taught a silly system to measure things by, one will have
a suspicion of measurement systems. Hence one will not be able to
learn a sensible system. This applies to governments too. Those same
bad lawyers you mention pushed sanctions against south africa while
building honelands for indians in the northen wastes. Failure to
think.
 
>In fact, none of these improvements have materialized. Where we
>bought margarine in two lb tubs we now buy it in 907 gm tubs. Tires
 
>previously inflated to 50 lb per square inch are now inflated to
>350,000 pascals ( whatever they are). Recently we had a discussion
 
Should be kPa ie kilopascals.
 
>of the caloric costs and benefits of using gasoline powered vehicles
>to harvest honey, complicated by the confusion as to whether the
>inputs were in Calories or calories, the latter being 1000 times
 
I stand to be corrected, but I think that there are calories and
kilocalories. Buut the correct unit is a joule or something.
 
>smaller. The newspapers tell us that forest fires are destroying
>thousands of square hectares (are there other shapes?) of forest
 
Once again the root here is education.
 
>daily. Where I used to use a teaspoon of terramyacin per gallon of
>syrup, I am now supposed to use 5ml per 4.5 liters.
 
>Industries are far better off left to decide what sort of
>measurements they like to use for their products. If the metric
>system offers significant advantages, it will be adopted. If it
>doesn't, we will be spared the enormous silliness of scrapping
>perfectly satisfactory equipment to satisfy a bureaucrat's longing
>for uniformity.
 
It does offer significant advantages. That's why the scientific
communities of the world use the metric system. The financial system
of the US uses a perversion of the metric system, as does Canada.
Show me a 12 dollar bill?
 
>Donald Aitken 11710-129 Street Edmonton Alberta Canada T5M 0Y7
 
And I guarantee that the steel mills in Edmonton buy iron ore by the
ton. (grin if they buy it from us they make a profit!!)
 
Also with this honey weight thing, I weighed a super and it weighed
14kg. That would correlate to about 1.4kg a frame, so to about three
bottles a frame. (330ml bottle=0.5kg)
 
Keep well
 
Garth
---
Garth Cambray       Kamdini Apiaries
15 Park Road        Apis melifera capensis
Grahamstown         800ml annual precipitation
6139
Eastern Cape
South Africa               Phone 27-0461-311663
 
3rd year Biochemistry/Microbiology    Rhodes University
In general, generalisations are bad.
Interests: Flii's and Bees.