This post reminded me of a very amusing event that occurred in one of the most recent episodes of the blockbuster show, who wants to be a millionaire. In this episode the following question was posed to the contestant: What's the approximate distance of a league? The options were: 25 ft, 50 yd, 3 mi and 10 mi. It was *unbelievable* to watch this "poor" guy wrestle with such stupidity. He was leaning towards the 25 ft alternative (believe it or not!...), but then, at the "indication" of Regis, started having second thoughts due to the famous show 20000 leagues under the sea, or something like that. He then started considering the 50 yd alternative instead!!... Finally he decided to "call a friend", and this friend indicated to him that he was "pretty sure" it was 50 yd!!! Evidently suffice it to say that it was a typical case of "the blind leading the blind"! But the most anecdotal part was to find that nearly everyone in the audience (and even Regis himself, by the looks of it) was "baffled/surprised" by its NOT being 50 yd, but rather 3 mi! (Hey, even *I* knew that!!!...) Amazing, and how disgraceful it is to find that Americans *really* don't have a clue about what many should consider to be the most simple/fundamental principles of their own system of measurement! What more proof does the American public require to be convinced that they should scrap such MEDIOCRITY??? I honestly can't believe they can be so blind, so dumb!!! Alas, and then, we, the rest of the world, have to put up with this garbage that several businesses have been trying to impose on us???????? !@$#%@#!@%^@$ Marcus On Sun, 26 Nov 2000 17:45:59 Paul Trusten wrote: >I am in the process of refuting the Almanac article point by point. One >of the statements made therein was: > >"Maybe NASA aiming someone towards Mars, or the Ford Motor Company >designing do-dads for its cars, may find the metric system useful for >all the dividing they are doing, but most of us just don't do a lot of >division of distances and measures. And even when we do, we're quite >smart enough to fiture out that there are 16 ounces in a pound, thank >you--just ask any American 10-year-old." > >The part about few of us dividing things is easy (I don't know what >this fellow does for work, but I have always had to use our existing >measurement system to divide things---well, MEASURE, darn it! It's >called measurement) . But, haven't we discussed here on this list that >Americans have an abysmal knowledge of WOMBAT and that perhaps the >average American 10-yo does NOT know how many ounces there are in a >pound? Would one of you (or, even MORE than one of you) please send me a >citation on the lack of US WOMBAT familiarity?... Angelfire for your free web-based e-mail. http://www.angelfire.com
