# I may be American, but I'm not stupid (daft). **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 24, 2014, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438 "2014-03-24T13:46:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/21 "2014-03-24T21:34:32Z")
> [@shiftless](#): > > I don’t mind the conversion to our ‘English’ units so much. Most Americans really don’t know how kilometers convert to miles, in my experience. Or is it milliletres? Who can say? > > The trend I hate is when they convert everything to ‘football fields’ for us Americans. Can we convert the ‘several square miles’ in this case to a ‘shitpile of football fields’ or maybe a ‘metric buttload’ of football fields? I think football fields are only applicable for measurements of length (honestly, who knows just how wide a football field is? Science may never find an answer.) I think for area, we should use Fenways. But yeah, that article bugs me. The way they worded that, it actually makes it more confusing because it gives the vague impression that “Kilometer” is just a funny word for “Mile” (it’s not; a kilometer is only slightly more than half of a mile). It was meaningless fluff that gives the impression that someone is being paid by the word. Also, I’m from the US, and I moved from school to school a lot as a kid. This sampler pack of the US education system has given me the perhaps baseless interpretation that most American kids have to learn the metric system anyways, and that that’s been the case since around 1990 when I first paid any attention in school. ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/22 "2014-03-24T21:50:10Z")
Nautical miles are bigger than your standard land based ‘under four minute’ miles. I’ve never been able to fathom out why… ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/23 "2014-03-24T22:07:02Z")
> [@mascaroni](#): > > Nautical miles are bigger than your standard land based ‘under four minute’ miles. > I’ve never been able to fathom out why… Wow, so not only was it an unnecessary conversion, it was also needlessly vague 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Mondegreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/91b2a8/32.png) [@Lord\_Mondegreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Mondegreen)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/24 "2014-03-24T22:17:44Z")
> [@Iggy](#): > > I looked up and saw CNN with a graphic earlier today showing the distance from Perth to the search area. It had some absurdly exact number such as 1552 miles. > > If we knew with that specificity where to search we wouldn’t still be looking for the plane. Way back at the start of this mystery, a local (Oz) newspaper reported that someone said they had seen the aircraft flying at “around 9144 metres”. That’s some incredible eyesight that person possesses. Or perhaps he said 30,000 feet. Hmm, I wonder which one is more likely. (The same newspaper once had a recipe which said to cut meat into 2.54 cm cubes. That’s accurate to within a tenth of a millimetre! On the other hand “one inch cubes” isn’t.) ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/25 "2014-03-24T22:54:50Z")
> [@SiXSwordS](#): > > You don’t say! Is there a website where I could find that type of information? > > What would be really nice is if there were some type of website that would allow you to enter a metric value and, within a day or so, return the Imperial equivalent. > > It might also be nice if one could enter a value, specify the metric used and request any arbitrary metric as the return value. Of course, something like that would likely take several weeks to calculate and return, so maybe it’s just a fantasy. You might want to change your thread title. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/26 "2014-03-25T01:23:44Z")
> [@mascaroni](#): > > Nautical miles are bigger than your standard land based ‘under four minute’ miles. > I’ve never been able to fathom out why… I don’t sea it either. ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/27 "2014-03-25T02:37:39Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I don’t sea it either. It’s a knotty problem… ---
**Author:** ![BobArrgh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobarrgh/32/2881_2.png) [@BobArrgh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobArrgh)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/28 "2014-03-25T04:50:38Z")
Forget square kilometers (miles). What we really need are some useful, exact measurements. So, how many areas the size of Rhode Island are we talking about, here? ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/29 "2014-03-25T06:00:15Z")
When I was a boy, my teacher would take me out in the yard and chain me to a rod by my hands and feet if I couldn’t fathom the English measures. I wasn’t there furlong. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/30 "2014-03-25T13:18:46Z")
What I don’t get is when stories that are specifically localized to the US (like in movies or video games) still use the metric with parenthetical conversions. The Phoenix Wright games will have the witness say something about meters and then have the protagonist say “And a meter is about yard, so…” It’s just silly. ---
**Author:** ![SiXSwordS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SiXSwordS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiXSwordS)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/31 "2014-03-25T14:02:22Z")
> [@bibliophage](#): > > When I was a boy, my teacher would take me out in the yard and chain me to a rod by my hands and feet if I couldn’t fathom the English measures. I wasn’t there furlong. Not to peck a fight, but that was a bushel of BS. (But seriously, that was inspired.) No discussion of the conflict between metric and the U.S. standard is compete without the classic Grandpa quote: “The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it.” ---
**Author:** ![zweisamkeit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zweisamkeit/32/4360_2.png) [@zweisamkeit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zweisamkeit)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/32 "2014-03-25T14:14:36Z")
Yeah, putting the conversions in parenthetically when there’s a specific measurement is good practice, IMO, particularly for a large internet site that no doubt gets readers from all over the world. I noticed that there was also a spot where the main measurement was in feet and they converted to meters. But the very first parenthetical is totally moronic. “Chinese IL-76 aircraft combing the search zone observed two large objects and several smaller ones spread across several square kilometers (miles), Xinhua News Agency reported.” _Really??_ :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/33 "2014-03-25T15:58:15Z")
Say what you will about all the problems of illegal drugs, but they have taught America’s children how to use the metric system. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/34 "2014-03-25T17:36:47Z")
> [@shiftless](#): > > . . . Can we convert the ‘several square miles’ in this case to a ‘shitpile of football fields’ or maybe a ‘metric buttload’ of football fields? I don’t know about ‘metric buttload’, but a standard buttload is six. ---
**Author:** ![carnut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnut/32/3531_2.png) [@carnut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnut)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438/35 "2014-03-25T19:53:52Z")
> [@mascaroni](#): > > Nautical miles are bigger than your standard land based ‘under four minute’ miles. > I’ve never been able to fathom out why… fathom - hee hee:D [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-may-be-american-but-im-not-stupid-daft/684438.md?page=1)