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January 10, 1933 - Image 4

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The Michigan Daily, 1933-01-10

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T

MICHIGAN DA

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Campus Opinion
Letters published in, this column should not .be
construed as expressing the editorial opinion of The
Daily. Anonymous communications will be disregard-
'. ed. The names of communicants will. however, be re -
garded as confidential upon request. Contributors are
asked to be brief, confining themselves to less than
300 words if possible.
METERS, FAMILY TREES,
AND LUCKY STRIKES
To The Editor:

Published every morning except Monday during the.
University year and. Summer Session by the Board in
Control of Studen; Publications.
Member of the Western Conference Editorial. Associa-
tion and the Big Ten News Service,
MEMBER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The. Associated Press is exclusively entitled to the use
for republication of all news dispatches credited to it or
not otherwise credited in this paper and the local news
published herein. All rights of republication of special
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Third Assistant Postmaster-General..
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Ofiices: Student Publications Building, Maynard Street,
Ann Arbor, Michigan. Phone: 2-1214.
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MANAGING EDITOR.............FRANK B. GILBRETH
CITY FEDITOR............EARL SEIFFERT
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ASSISTANT WOMEN'S EDITOR........MIRIAM CARVER
NIGHT EDITORS: Thomas Connellan, Normant F. Draft,'
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son, Fr;
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). hlan, Katherine Rucker, Harriet
tern.
SINESS STAFF
lephone 2-1214
................BYRON C. VEDDER
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MANAGER........DONNA BECKER
ERS.: Advertising, Grafton Sharp;
s, Orvil Aronson; Advertising Serv-

I regret that I am obliged to ask for a little
space for the Metric System again, but the
thought of the February graduates forces me to
'do so.
I entered this discussion with the benevolent
intention of correcting 'a few glaring errors and
gross exaggerations. I had no desire to heave
the monkey-wrench into the gear wheels of the
metric lobby machine, yet see what has happened!
Just when I thought I had amputated and cau-
terized all the cephalic appendages of this hydra
metrica it sprouts several new and highly re-
doubtable ones and I have to begin my cauteriza=
tion all over again.
Peculiar to this struggle is the jungle of tan-
gled family trees that hampers my efforts. Now
I hve seriously protested that I am a great re-
specter of family trees and have admitted their
pertinence as metric arguments, not because I
really thought them pertinent, but because I did
not wish to deprive a disputant of his last con-
solation. But surely there should be a limit, or
do they wish to make a wood-chopper of me when
I thought I was a respectable surgeon?
To complete the classical meaphor of the
Lernean Swamp there has appeared an aggres-
sor with a markedly crustacean trait, I cannot
tell in which diretion he runs better, forward or
in reverse, for he presents his pedigree in order
to qualify for presenting "arguments against the
adoption of the metric system," snaps a couple
of times at the hydra and then, when he has won
my confidence, takes a vicious nip at my shins.
It is a cause of profound grief to me that I am
so harshly accused of "sarcasm," "prejudice," and
"personal slander." "Slander" is an unpleasant
word, especially when it is accompanied by the
qualifying "personal" (probably to distinguish it
from slander of title). However, I have had an
opportunity to make the observation that ad-
vocates of the metric system show a notable
license in their treatment of Webster, so perhaps
"personal slander" is the writer's term for refuta-
tion, rejoinder or argumentum ad hominem. I
venture this conjecture in view of the non-Web-
sterian would in the same paragraph. At any
rate I enter a general demurrer to the charge of
slander.
.Perhaps the accusation was not meant seri-
ously, .for the article in which it appears accuses
a previous contributor of failing to answer my
arguments and cracks of first-class joke at the
expense of the metric system by mentioning
one and four thousand three hundred fifty-five
ten-thousandths meter as a "simplification" of
4' 8V", "which represents the great advantage of
the metric system." If that writer was serious in
this observation he would probably prefer a six-
place auto license number as a simplification of
his present Elizabethan hat size. I am rather in-
clined to think that he was attempting to aid
my side, but I cannot quite follow his mental
progressions and retrogressions.
This discussion has been enlightening, for it
appears that the local advocates of the French
system have only one argument that cannot be
upset easily, viz, their personal liking. I trust
that I succeeded in tying a tin can to the tail of
that bugaboo, the disgrace of being found in the
company of Great Britain and of being less pro-
gressive than Bolivia. As to the greater simplicity
of using a quart and calling it by a double-jointed
decimal fraction, that is too absurd even for a
'high school boy's serious consideration. The ex
aathedra opinion of Prof. Rich I consider of more
weight than the official adoption of the metric
system by an entire array of banana republics,
ievertheless it is a far cry from a scientist's vol-
intary acceptance of the system for laboratory
practice and the legally enforced use of by the
,enerality of the Cretans and Philistines.

metric proponents have the effrontery to tell us
that no expense would be caused by the change.
I do not like the cool suggestion that the ad-
vocates of the English system present their argu-
ments, the burden of proof is on the proponents
of a change, and until they can present sonething
a great deal more convincing than the fatuous
arguments so far advanced, we have only the easy
job of touching their verbiage balloons with the
Lucky Strike of common sense. However for the
benefit of the next crop of young propagandists,
whom we are soon to send out, I am glad to
suggest a little reading matter:
Halsey, Fr. A., Methods of Machine Shop-
work, N. Y. 1914, pp.65-75. (This includes a select
bibliography.)
Transactions of the American Society of Me-
chanical Engineers, 1918, (Report of Committee
on Weights and Measures on the Metric System
in Export trade, pp. 427ff. and The Weights and
Measures of South America, pp. 773ff.)
At what ridiculous straws the drowning advo-
cates of the metric system will grasp is illustrated
by a passage that I quote (with the conventional
ackdowledgement of the source); "Humane so-
cieties and societies for the prevention of cruelty
are co-operating in the great movement to do
away forever with the grotesque weights and
measures which terrorized our childhood." The
Metric Advance (1926). (Attention local S. P. C. A.
officer!)
-Norman L. Willey
By GEORGE SPELVIN
ROARING EMOTIONAL DRAMA
AT THE BONSTELLE CIVIC
"The Ticket-of-Leave Man," the Great Tremen-
dous Spectacular Romantic Drama fresh from
Triumphs in New York and before the Crowned
Heads of Europe, a powerful delineation of the
struggle of two honest young souls caught in the
web of Iniquity, opened to an intensely Thrilled
audience at Robert Henderson's Bonstelle Civic
Theatre in Detroit last week-end.
The theatre, aglow with lights, was filled with
the imperious grand-dames of Society, bejeweled
and bejabered, with many an elegant young scion
dancing attendance. And as the pathetic story of
the love of two young people and their fight to
preserve Honor untarnished despite the machina-
tions of the insiduous Jack Dalton gradually un-
folded, many a handkerchief dabbed at a stream-
ing eye.
Well, not quite that, but the emotions did get
a jar of some size. "The Ticket-of-Leave Man,"
featuring the "One and Only" Fritzi Scheff of
"Mlle. Modiste" fame and Raymond Hackett,
young movie star, seems divinely appointed for
burlesque. If you remember the campus produc-
tions of "Tour du Monde," "Streets of New York,"
"Camille," and "Ten Nights" or the Broadway
revival of "After Dark" you know the method em-
ployed-straight acting in the manner of the
period, with an added touch of conscious bur-
lesque. Mr. Henderson's play is superior to all
these in the comedy opportunities it offers; espe-
cially because it was the first play to portray the
mortal struggle of Hawkshaw the Detective with
his enemy Jack Dalton.
The play is, just to be calm about our adjectives,
a riot. And Mlle. Scheff's performance as the sou-
brette (a unique character not approximated by
anything in modern comedies), along with her
singing of "Kiss Me Again" and other songs,
proves that not all return-tours are unsatisfac-
tory. Alan Handley and Mildred Todd are out-
standing for an amusing entr'acte.
STARS

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TUESDAY, JAN. 10, 1933

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ti
II

T HE SUBJECT of open introduction
of professionalism in college foot-
ball has been talked to triteness. We suspect that
most of the college editors who have engaged in it
have been, to put the matter baldly, aspirants to
Reed Harris fame. Most of the recommendations
have left us quite cold. There is one, however, that
seems to us a worthy one, and hence deserving of
serious consideration. It is that universities and
colleges insure their football players. Indeed, al-
though so far as we know, the recommendation
has been made with reference only to football, we'
can see no reason why the arguments that can be
advanced to support it are not equally applicable
to other sports.
As we understand this recommendation, it is tc
the effect that college football players and we
extend the discussion to include all athletes--
should be insured by the university or college for
which they play against death and all injuries
traceable to athletic activities.
If this suggestion were adopted, the impecu-
nious student who is able to receive a college edu-
cation only at considerable sacrifice to his family
would suffer no qualms of conscience at .the risk
he might be taking in engaging in football and'
the other "he-man" sports. The natural worries
of such students, that they may sustain injurie&c
which will not make themselves felt for a period
of years after graduation, would, among others,.
be allayed.

__&

STRIPE S

The most frequent objection to this recommen-
dation is that the injuries received in college foot-
ball are virtually negligible. Although there are
usually between twenty-five and fifty football
deaths incurred throughout the country in the
course of a season, it is pointed out, the great
majority of these occur in "sand-lot" games, in
the semi-professional leagues, and elsewhere
where players have no medical supervision, decent
equipment, nor safe fields to play on. We cannot
subscribe to this objection. However small the
risk may be in playing football, it still would ap-
pear that it is larger than the risk incurred in'
NOT playing. And since football-like all sports-
implies some sort of mutual loyalty between
school and players, it seems the laws of fairness
would demand that the former accept an insur-
ance responsibility for the latter.
We have so far Gascussed athletic insurance
without reference to the difficulties inherent in its
adoption. It could not, so far as we know, be in-
troduced on a nation-wide scale by other than
voluntary agreement, which would admittedly be
difficult to obtain. And the difficulties that would
attend its introduction even into the Western
Conference, while smaller, would probably still be
great. But, to the best of our knowledge, there is
no reason why the University of Michigan could
not adopt it, thereby accomplishing two ends: (1)

As to the array of college presidents, philan-
,hropists and politicians who in an unguarded
naoment have said something more or less favor-
able to the metric system-well consult the cig-
Irette advertisements and smoke as these gentle-
.nen do, if you are convinced by their endorse-
nent, or better still find out whether they stand
m your side of the dry Eighteenth. The adoptioni
>f the metric system is a political matter and we
Imericans do not allow even the Roman Pope
o tell us how to vote._
The De Laval testimony is another case of en-
;husiasts who think 2.540008-plus cm. is simpler
:han 1 inch. All the dimensions of the De Laval
entrifugal machinery are English and are there-
:ore far more simply expressed in units of the
.nglish system than in terms of the incommen-
mrate French meter. The little matter of screw
;hreads is not mentioned, it would have been:
jamaging, for English standard threads cannot
'e expressed in any orie of the metric standards,
in fact it cannot be expressed exactly in terms of
:he metric system at all. Metric lathes cannot
iroduce English threads unless leadscrews, gear-
ing and micrometer stops are replaced by English
ones.
But any affirmation that the adoption of the
metric system involves only a change of designa-
tion is sheer nonsense. The purpose of the -metric
advocates is to force the outlawing of our Eliza-
bethan system, this is what the metric bill of
1929 really proposed: .
"-That from and after the 1st day of January,
1938, metric weights and measures, except as
herein provided, shall be used for the following

By Karl Seiffer
FULL HOUSE TO
CHEER BASKET
TEAMS TONIGHT
-Headline
We should think so-we're usually satisfied
with a little flush now and then.
An investigation is under way in the case of a
prizefighter who was injured in the ring. Officials
who have been unable to discover any logical way
that such a thing could happen, suspect foul
play.
150 LEADERS SAY
OVERPRODUCTION
IS FALSE ALARM
-Headline
What do they want, a three-alarm fire?
The president of General Motors Corporation
says that labor saving devices are more important
now than ever before. He's right-if there's any-
thing that needs saving, it's labor.
Secretary Stimson, says a news article, is
attempting to bring President-Elect Roosevelt
into "some form of co-operation" with Presi-
dent Hoover. They might get together and see
if they can't put a stop to all these Stimson
notes.
a C 57
Police in a ibetroit suburb have been investigat-
ing reports that small boys have been playing
cowboy-and-Indian too roughly. When they get
that all cleaned up they might see if they can't
stamp out this mumblety-peg wave.
This business of fixing it so you can talk to

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