[USMA:33179] Re: Independent (UK) all metric

[Daniel]

If I'm not mistaken the signage style is the same in both the UK and the Continent.  Thus it is easy to make such a mistake.  I'm sure Continental students in the UK make the same mistake in reverse.  A member of the BWMA present would set them straight.   I doubt they forget metric when they leave school.  Some may pretend to.  There must be plenty of references in daily life to keep the memory of metric units fresh in their minds.  Maybe we need to find out from the British posters, like Phillip Hall as to how much metric one would encounter in an average day.  From the morning newspaper and radio/TV news and weather, the units used on the job (or in school), the units used in the marketplace, the evening media, etc, up until the time one goes to bed.   If one is exposed to a 50 % or greater metric environment, then the chances of forgetting it are very slim.  More then likely, the amount of metric used is taken for granted.  No longer something that seems odd and sticks out as different.      I wouldn't take the 400 miles as a conversion of 650 km.  You would have to read or hear about the same subject from a different source or non-English source to see what it might have been.  We English speakers take great liberties when converting metric to English.  It is more important that the English numbers are rounded and sound good to the ear then to be correct.    Dan ----- Original Message ----- From: H. Maenen To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: Saturday, 2005-06-11 10:58 Subject: [USMA:33175] Re: Independent (UK) all metric And even more: the article might make one believe that the statute mile is being used in Central Europe to measure distances. Like British teenagers in a Eurolines long distance bus or coach from London to Amsterdam that approached the Belgian/Dutch border a few years ago.  A distance sign on the motorway northbound from Antwerp stated 'Breda 40' and these British youths, who have learnt metric at school but then had it erased from their minds, because of the largely non-metric environment they live in and partly because of the anti-metric trash they read in newspapers like The Sun, thought that this distance was 40 miles! The miles used in Central Europe about 200 years ago were much longer than the British mile - between 5 and 7 km. These mainland European archeologists have  certainly referred to  ramparts and palisades stretching up for 800 m and they will have talked about a 650 km swath of land.  Han ======================================== Message date : 11-06-2005 14:45 From : "Daniel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To : "U.S. Metric Association" Copy to : Subject : [USMA:33172] Re: Independent (UK) all metric In all, more than 150 temples have been identified. Constructed of earth and wood, they had ramparts and palisades that stretched for up to half a mile. They were built by a religious people who lived in communal longhouses up to 50 metres long, grouped around substantial villages.   Archaeologists are now beginning to suspect that hundreds of these very early monumental religious centres, each up to 150 metres across, were constructed across a 400-mile swath of land in what is now Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and eastern Germany. Second, the central sacred area was nearly always the same size, about a third of a hectare. One village complex and temple at Aythra, near Leipzig, covers an area of 25 hectares.   Maybe my math is faulty, but the above excerpts showing both metric and English in the article doesn't seem to add up to 100 %.  I would think miles are still used because they are still used on British roads.  The use of metres and hectares most likely are used because they are used in the UK instead of their former units.   This may be what the mess is all about; mixing English and metric units together like this. Dan