Word: metrically
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Everybody knows about that New York garbage barge which took off last spring for the Carribean in search of a small nation willing to trade bananas for several metric tons of hospital waste. But that's nothing compared with New Jersey's efforts to give away its garbage. City managers have sent trucks rolling into rural Pennsylvania in search of an appropriate rock formation on which to deposit their load. Pennsylvanians, to their credit, have been pretty adamant about not taking the refuse. A dozen roses, yes, but they refuse to accept 750 tons of Twinkie wrappers...
...refusal to abandon the English system of measurement in favor of the metric system is shortsighted. Our stubbornly clinging to feet and pounds has a negative effect on everything from tourism to machine-tool exports. Britain, Canada and Australia have changed successfully. Are Americans any less intelligent or adaptable...
...year-old, I think it is very important that we change to metric, especially if the U.S. is to compete with the rest of the world. Americans should give metric a chance. They would find measuring in kilometers and liters much easier than calculating in miles and quarts...
...metric system is alive and well, on the other hand, in many areas where it makes sense. An estimated 25% of U.S. manufacturers are metric; more than 60% of FORTUNE 500 companies produce at least some metric products, in contrast to between 10% and 20% in the early 1970s. The automobile industry, for example, is almost entirely metric...
...changeover to the metric system, in other words, need not be an all-or- nothing proposition -- a remarkably sensible perspective. After all, the reasons for conversion are economic: it is important for U.S. industry to compete in international markets, but there is no particular value in changing the weather report on the nightly news. For most Americans, it seems, an ounce of prevention was worth a kilogram of cure...