Metric system. The legend. The standard. The way of life.
For the rest of the world, it is. Not here though, no, the US has to be different. We have to subject our kids and ourselves and the world to something devised by the ancient Romans, adopted by the British Empire (the same one we declared independence from in 1776), and carried on as a tradition till this day. Even the Brits have made signifcant progress towards getting rid of the measurement units originally derived from the size of the king's appendages. But no, in the US, it's part of the culture. As the matter of fact, one of the more common reasons given for refusing to convert to the metric system is the invocation of the "heritage argument." Yup, feet'n'inches are our national treasure, somewhere between the Declaration of Independence and the Yosemite State Park. They're as American as baseball, apple pie, and going postal. Why, to convert to that inscrutable metric would be an abomination. I wants my pounds'n'pints, and I loves them. Naturally, the fact that the refusal to adopt the metric system in this country is hurting us in so many ways is irrelevant to these "patriots." They don't care that in a globalized economy, buyers of non-metric US products can now turn away from their American suppliers and go with the ones who can supply metric products. They don't want you to know that 40 to 60% of US businesses have already gone metric internally to adjust to the world realities. And don't ever tell the construction industry, the post office, or the civil engineers of the money savings and efficiencies that could be realized from standardizing around metric. Our "patriots" will make sure that America will crawl along, inefficient and alienated, but we will have our mile, our gallon, and our ounce. Yay!
Oddly enough, the "heritage" argument doesn't seem to have worked in the rest of the world. Europe, up until 1850's was rife with a melange of measuring units. A 'foot,' for instance, differed from country to country, and in some places from city to city. Going metric meant that my meter will be the same as the meter in Sweden, Poland, or Italy. By the early 1900's, contiental Europe had converted, without any fuss over heritage, culture, or any other such jingoistic nonsense attached to their mish-mash of units. The rest of the world followed along, so by 1980, US was the sole industralized country that refused to adopt the metric system. Basking in the company of such notables as Liberia, Yemen, and Burma, Unisted States is part of an exclusive club of metric refuseniks. A game of golf, anyone?
It seems that the US is a vast preserve of old measures that the rest of the world chose to forget. America's most pervasive export is its culture and lifestyle, and to that end, the world embraces it. But the export comes with the baggage of antiquated units of measure, which crop up everywhere in Hollywood's offerings, National Geographic English edition, occasional rock songs, and so on. Everyone may be pirating our movies, but no one is clamoring for our feet and furlongs.
