Word: metrication
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...have been mixed. Soviet national income has grown at the rate of 4% this year, compared with 2.9% in 1982. Andropov can also take heart from what is expected to be the best grain harvest since 1978. According to U.S. analysts, the yield may reach 200 to 210 million metric tons, well above the average of 177 million metric tons over the past four years. Still, the Soviet Union will not solve its economic troubles by cracking down on drunks and trusting in the weather...
...Crimson mile record is the one honor which has eluded Dixon. Fifteen years ago Jim Baker covered the distance in 4:00.2, and no one has topped it since. Because of the metric system, Dixon hasn't had many chances, but few doubt he has the capability to run a sub-four-minute mile. Dixon is likely to have his final chance when he last dons a Crimson uniform for the Cambridge/Oxford meet in England 10 days from now. For Adam Dixon, an athlete who will be sorely missed, the mile record would just be icing on the cake...
...over the coming year will increase by 14%. The last four Soviet harvests have been unnaturally scanty, so much so that the Soviet government refused to announce production figures for the past two seasons. But this year the U.S.D.A. forecasts a total Soviet grain production of around 200 million metric tons. That figure falls far short of 1978's record 237.4 million tons and of this year's optimistic target of 238 million tons. But, after two consecutive years of 160 or 180 million tons annually, the projected upswing heralds a notable improvement...
...Even the metrically untutored do not blink when doctors prescribe 500 mg (milligrams) of antibiotics or electricians recommend 15 A (ampere) fuses. Yet just as they have resisted learning foreign languages, Americans have long balked at changing measures. Says David Gorin, president of the nonprofit American National Metric Council: "The problem has deep roots. It goes back to a time when our economy was dominant and whatever we made was the biggest and best...
Critics like Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth catalogues, object to metric for the very reason that most scholars favor it: the ease of converting one unit to another-say, kilometers to meters-by simply multiplying or dividing by tens. Says Brand: "You can't visualize a tenth very well, but you can imagine a quarter or a half of something." Adds Seaver Leslie, founder of Americans for Customary Weight and Measure: "The metric system is imposed rationality...