• Twitter
  • Facebook
News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Another lost cause

Here we go again. When I post about drivel, it's usually from a political source (or from my own musings, yeah, yeah, I know). But here's some from Scientific American:

I’ve met a lot of people and learned a lot while traveling Europe the past several weeks. Of all the things I have had to explain to fellow travels as not only an American – but a Texan – by far the most frustrating thing is our stubborn refusal to embrace the metric system. I can confidently argue the finer points of how the use of y’all and the plural form all y’all are descriptive and have a place in the American lexicon. I take pleasure in explaining the intricacies of chicken fried foods.

But the metric system is another matter. “I don’t understand why y’all don’t use the metric system” is something I’ve heard too often. I don’t argue with them because there is no technical argument for why we haven’t adopted the Système Internationale – our refusal is based on emotion and familiarity.

Stubborn, yeah. Based on emotion and familiarity, for sure. Makes no sense, granted. But please don't waste our time and yours with another crusade. We ain't going metric, never, no way, no how.

And let's not even encourage them by arguing with them. Give these people an inch, they'll take a kilometer.

Posted in: Science
Quantcast