Post by { o p a l } on Jan 31, 2013 20:12:18 GMT -6
In my English class, we were required to write a This I Believe essay. Now, mind you, I had a fairly deep, nice belief all typed up and peer edited for the first two rough drafts. The night before the final draft is due, I scrap the entire thing and come up with this. My grade? 101%.
The British are the best.
Not because of their awesome accents (though that does factor into their awesomeness), or because of their historical superiority (don't get me wrong, holding out against the Germans in WWII was certainly a feat), nor due to their dietary habits (tea), and not even because Queen Victoria hated babies. (She did. But that's beside the point.) No, even though their aforementioned advantages are enough to overwhelm any sane person with their sheer epicosity, I believe it's the metric system that's the deal breaker.
We Americans are using an outdated—yet adorably patriotic—imperialistic system: three feetsies in a yard, twelve inches in a foot, and a ridiculously large number of feet in a mile! Everyone knows and can see that a foot, our most common unit, actually isn't the length of anyone’s foot. And guess what. We've got the mile, and you don't! The mile's better than the kilometer by a ratio of 1:1.60934! Because we're American and we felt the need to rebel against those teadrinking British. (Milkdrinking? Teadrinking? Does it really matter?) What counts is that we've got twelve inches in a yard. Wait, no, foot.
You see? Everyone has issues transferring units in this American system. In the metric system, you just move over the decimal point. So much easier than all this multiplication and division and garbage. The mile is one of our most important units of measurement- you see it every day on road signs. Everyone uses cars, and cars use miles per hour. But how long is a mile? Does anyone here actually know? Well, I Googled it, and it turns out that it's 5,280 feet to a mile. What. Some person just chose a random number of feet and said, “Here you go, guys! That’s a mile!” Does anyone here know how many meters in a kilometer? I'll give you a hint, there's a really nice Latin root that acts as a flashing neon sign pointing to the answer for any moderately informed person. And furthermore, it’s in every single metric measurement name: kilometer, meter, centimeter, millimeter, etc.
Do you know how confusing this is to a young child? "Why do we have this many inches in a foot, mama? Why isn't a foot the size of an actual foot? How come they’re called inchworms if they’re not an inch long? Why does the rest of the world use this Metric system thing, and we don’t?" I'll tell you-- it's because we Americans are mavericks. Mavericks, I say. I remember having those exact same questions! And asking my parents the exact same things! Despite the fact that I can't remember their answers, I'm sure they're not entirely sure about why we're still stuck in this teenage-angst-like phase of rebellious measurements. And I’m certain that I’m not the only one who’s questioned the American system of measurement from a young age. Come on, admit it. No need to be shy. Yet, we're still here, living with these confusing measurements, pointless and useless. And we common folk aren’t the only ones having issues.
Scientists are people who do dangerous things (don’t try this at home) like send ships out into space with real, live, people inside of them. Imagine if someone forgot to convert units. Or converted units wrong. Engines flaming, passengers screaming, off goes our trillion-dollar rocket and our astronauts into the abyss! If we Americans, leading developers in several fields of science, could unbend our pride enough to just switch to the metric system, it’d be so much safer and so much easier to communicate internationally with other scientists. And science is complicated enough without our meddlesome and pointless measurements.
Recently I ventured to a warmer place known as Texas. My grandparents were driving me down the road when, lo and behold, a sign that mentioned kilometers per hour! My eyes sparkling, hands clutching my seat with joy, I was so happy I almost took a picture of it. Ah, what a sight for sore eyes! To see some parts of America already transferring over to the metric system, so streamlined and elegantly simple!
And that’s why I use the metric side of my transparent green ruler whenever I possibly can. I believe that if we can all just do a few simple things each day: measuring your child’s height in meters, checking the length of a string for your hand-knitted sweater in centimeters instead of inches, or running five kilometers instead of three-something miles, we can make America a better, more sensible place, one meter at a time.
The British are the best.
Not because of their awesome accents (though that does factor into their awesomeness), or because of their historical superiority (don't get me wrong, holding out against the Germans in WWII was certainly a feat), nor due to their dietary habits (tea), and not even because Queen Victoria hated babies. (She did. But that's beside the point.) No, even though their aforementioned advantages are enough to overwhelm any sane person with their sheer epicosity, I believe it's the metric system that's the deal breaker.
We Americans are using an outdated—yet adorably patriotic—imperialistic system: three feetsies in a yard, twelve inches in a foot, and a ridiculously large number of feet in a mile! Everyone knows and can see that a foot, our most common unit, actually isn't the length of anyone’s foot. And guess what. We've got the mile, and you don't! The mile's better than the kilometer by a ratio of 1:1.60934! Because we're American and we felt the need to rebel against those teadrinking British. (Milkdrinking? Teadrinking? Does it really matter?) What counts is that we've got twelve inches in a yard. Wait, no, foot.
You see? Everyone has issues transferring units in this American system. In the metric system, you just move over the decimal point. So much easier than all this multiplication and division and garbage. The mile is one of our most important units of measurement- you see it every day on road signs. Everyone uses cars, and cars use miles per hour. But how long is a mile? Does anyone here actually know? Well, I Googled it, and it turns out that it's 5,280 feet to a mile. What. Some person just chose a random number of feet and said, “Here you go, guys! That’s a mile!” Does anyone here know how many meters in a kilometer? I'll give you a hint, there's a really nice Latin root that acts as a flashing neon sign pointing to the answer for any moderately informed person. And furthermore, it’s in every single metric measurement name: kilometer, meter, centimeter, millimeter, etc.
Do you know how confusing this is to a young child? "Why do we have this many inches in a foot, mama? Why isn't a foot the size of an actual foot? How come they’re called inchworms if they’re not an inch long? Why does the rest of the world use this Metric system thing, and we don’t?" I'll tell you-- it's because we Americans are mavericks. Mavericks, I say. I remember having those exact same questions! And asking my parents the exact same things! Despite the fact that I can't remember their answers, I'm sure they're not entirely sure about why we're still stuck in this teenage-angst-like phase of rebellious measurements. And I’m certain that I’m not the only one who’s questioned the American system of measurement from a young age. Come on, admit it. No need to be shy. Yet, we're still here, living with these confusing measurements, pointless and useless. And we common folk aren’t the only ones having issues.
Scientists are people who do dangerous things (don’t try this at home) like send ships out into space with real, live, people inside of them. Imagine if someone forgot to convert units. Or converted units wrong. Engines flaming, passengers screaming, off goes our trillion-dollar rocket and our astronauts into the abyss! If we Americans, leading developers in several fields of science, could unbend our pride enough to just switch to the metric system, it’d be so much safer and so much easier to communicate internationally with other scientists. And science is complicated enough without our meddlesome and pointless measurements.
Recently I ventured to a warmer place known as Texas. My grandparents were driving me down the road when, lo and behold, a sign that mentioned kilometers per hour! My eyes sparkling, hands clutching my seat with joy, I was so happy I almost took a picture of it. Ah, what a sight for sore eyes! To see some parts of America already transferring over to the metric system, so streamlined and elegantly simple!
And that’s why I use the metric side of my transparent green ruler whenever I possibly can. I believe that if we can all just do a few simple things each day: measuring your child’s height in meters, checking the length of a string for your hand-knitted sweater in centimeters instead of inches, or running five kilometers instead of three-something miles, we can make America a better, more sensible place, one meter at a time.