Hello Wayne,

On Monday August 17 2020 17:45, you wrote to me:

 BF>>> what could possibly go wrong? Especially with international
 BF>>> projects.

 MV>> An airplane running out of fuel and crashing because the captain
 MV>> ordered 5000 kg of fuel and the ground crew delivered 5000 pounds?  A
 MV>> Mars lander crashing because of a mix up of feet and metres?

 WH> Without all due respect, sir, are you serious?

Bj”rn asked what could possible go wrong and I gave two examples of something
actually going wrong. I didn't make that up, these are real life examples. Sure
I am serious.

 WH> If people might be ordered 5000 kg and deliver 5000 pounds, they might
 WH> just as well mistake 5000 for 50000 too.

Unlike Bj”rn I never had a pilot license myself, but my father had one and I
spend many hours in the right seat acting as his informal copilot. I can tell
you that while people can always make mistakes, it certainly is not that easy
to mistake 5000 kg for 50000 kg of fuel and let the mistake go unnoticed until
it is too late...

 WH> To a scientist, whether you use the metric system or the imperial
 WH> system it seems a small detail.  To the population, though, it would
 WH> be a major project to go for such a change and I don't actually see
 WH> much benefit.

People often do not see the benefits until they actually are the situation. I
sure see the benefits of not having to deal with of local measuring systems and
I am very glad my predesessors of a 100 years ago did see it that way too and
acted on it by doing away with local measurements and adopting a universal
system.

You know, here in Europe two or three hundred years ago, we had local measuring
systems. We "Rijnlandes voet, "Utrechtse voet", "Amsterdamse duim". Etc, etc.
Napoleon ended that and he introduced the meter end the kg. And science,
technology and trade accepted it. I sure see the benfits.

From a global POV, you guys across are still using local measurements....

 WH>   -- Ah, I see!  If you take the kids seating at two of these smaller
 WH>      2/3-girl-tables and put them all together at this larger table,
 WH> you
 WH>      end up with a table where 4/6 kids are girls, from which we may
 WH>      safely deduce that 2/3 + 2/3 = 4/6.  Right?!
[..]
 WH> Now, I don't know what you'll make of this story.

All I can say is that I am glad that half a century ago I decided that teaching
was not my thing and I avoided a carreer in education...


Cheers, Michiel

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