Lyrics in British music are mostly in imperial measurements. Yards and miles just seem a lot more poetic somehow.
“And I would walk 804 kilometres and I would walk 804 more” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
A couple of corrections:
Beagle 2 was not part of the Mars Climate Orbiter mission, in which the metric/imperial cock-up occurred. Beagle 2 was part of the European Mars Express mission, and its failure was not due to using imperial measurements.
In soccer there is an 18-yard box (aka the penalty area) and a six-yard box, not line.
Or Pete Townsend singing ‘I can see for kilometres and kilometres.’
I stand corrected Ximenean. Looks like you guys bolloxed that one up by yourselves !
In my opinion, the widespread perception in the US is that everybody in the world except us has gone fully metric. Absent specific knowledge that a given place was not fully metric, most Americans would presume that it was.
Many Americans are unaware that the UK is such an exception.
That’s probably closest to the truth, actually.
Useless trivia: John Entwistle recorded a jingle for BP with the lyrics, “100 miles of motorway, 100 miles to go.”
Just to add that as a Brit, I do find it frustrating that we don’t seem able to commit wholeheartedly to one of the two systems. Typical British fudge.
Only one is a system. The other is a haphazard collection of largely unrelated measures which happen to be grouped under one heading because a royal decreed it so many moons past.
A combination of metric and Imperial (or English) measurements is no sillier than using the Imperial system, except for the part where petrol is sold in litres but fuel economy is measured in miles per gallon.
Crikey… you can tell I’m a Liverpool fan! :o
The penalty spot is 12 yrds out, between the 18 yard line and 6 yard box.
Really? I don’t see a problem with it. They aren’t two exclusive entities; we cna pick and choose at will. It works just fine.
It’s not like we have to choose an “allegiance” or that either system will develop consciousness and become offended.
I like that we just do what works for us.
Well, yes - that’s clear. But why? Who is telling all these Americans this bizarre myth? And why?
It’s the Jews, obviously. Or possibly, Islamic militants. They hate our fluid ounces.
In contexts where it really matters - science, engineering, medicine - we pretty much are full and committed adopters. It’s really just the bloke in the street that’s managed to hang on to some of the measures we’re all most comfy with - it’s quite democratic really.
Odder still is that some ‘English’ units aren’t even the same size as their Imperial namesake in England.
I can’t help you with the ‘why’ but I have seen images and articles like this so many times I can’t remember. I’m not sure how accurate these images are, but they are so pervasive on the internet that it doesn’t surprise me that they are taken as gospel.
I think it probably arises in argument, where sides tend to polarise and push each other to further extremes - the counterpoint being the ridiculous insistence that non-metric systems of measurement are every bit as simple to work with as metric, problems solely arising from unfamiliarity.
I first had it drilled into my head back in elementary school. We learned about the metric system with a healthy side dish of “Get this into your thick skulls, because everyone else in the world already does this, so you better learn it and not embarrass America!”
Actually, I’d say this is true in the US as well. I and all my fellow scienticians all use metric exclusively. I do think you hear metric more on British TV and radio than we do here in the US on things like cooking shows, though.
I don’t. Any time two types of measurements meet, there’s unnecessary work to do and extra potential for error.
Plus all the inherent problems with the imperial side of things (e.g. cubic inches to gallons requires another conversion).
I wish we’d just go completely metric. But I think it’s an ongoing process, being done slowly by stealth.
e.g. I was surprised that my 11-year old neice only knew her height and weight in metric units. She didn’t even have a rough idea of what a foot or stone was; they simply hadn’t mentioned imperial measurements at all in school.
We measure our ingredients differently - most kitchens in the UK (at least most where cakes are ever made) will have a set of scales in use - and those scales will almost certainly be graduated in both metric and imperial.
I cook and bake a lot - I’ve got measuring cups, but I hardly use them.
Also, we’re going to go metric. Yep, any day now. Aaany day. All them speed limit signs in mph will be in km/hr, all those cans and bottles of soda that have been dual-labeled for decades will go solely to liters and milliliters, and if you don’t know how many centimeters tall you are and how many millimeters your waist is and how many decigrams you weigh, well, you’ll have to go in for retraining at a Metric Re-Education [del]Center[/del] Centre, just like the Canadians.
American schools have been saying this to every generation of third graders since the 1970s, with many using the same textbooks since the tradition began.