webdiplomacy.net

So, this morning I was bored enough to be reading through CNN (always good for a laugh) when I came across the headline

"Brits Queue 14km to Pay Respects to Queen"

which, for CNN, is surprisingly accurate. But even more surprising was the use of kilometers, which as far as I'm aware neither country is inclined to use for this sort of distance. Brits typically only use kilometers when planning some kind of exercise, as a 5k run feels more of an achievement than 3 miles and a bit.

So are Yanks slowly jumping on the metric bandwagon? Or was it just CNN demonstrating their lack of knowledge by attempting to use local units and getting confused?

It's time for you imperials to come to the right side. Long live metric system!

The metric system is fine, but it has no soul. The imperial units are so much more in tune with the human experience. A fathom being near enough the distance hand to hand, a foot being a booted foot, an inch being the length of the end of your thumb.

Besides, what can be easier than 100 links in a chain, 80 chains in a mile?

fahrenheit > celsius hands down

whichever bozo decided the world needed to operate between -10 and 30 or so degrees must be a real dope

Probably as big a dope as the bozo who decided freezing would be 100 and boiling would be 0. Still, it eventually got ironed out into something intuitive. So much better than the cold alien scientific system of Kelvin

To answer the original question: CNN was trying to use the local units and got confused. Or, more charitably, was trying to appeal to an international audience. We in the USA don't use the metric system much. Sure, I learned in school that 1 inch = 2.54 cm and I can do math. And we tend to have running races be 5k or 10k, not 3 or 6 miles. Oh, and we sometimes see water/soda bottles in the store that are 500 or 750 ml. But most Americans (myself included) have no intuitive sense what it means for a man to be 171 cm tall, for it to be 26 degrees celsius outside, or for a first serve at the Australian Open to travel at 205km/h. Car speedometers here can be switched between mph and km/h, but I don't know anyone who uses km/h. The fuel efficiency of new cars is always stated in miles per gallon. At the gas pump, we see how much we've purchased in gallons, and I know my car's fuel tank has a 14.1 gallon capacity. When we cook, it's cups, tablespoons and teaspoons.