QUOTE
Dear Stumped,
I have have spending a lot of time out of the old U.S. of A lately and have really grown to enjoy the metric system. I heard that back in the 1970s, the U.S. tried and failed to make the big switch. I realize that we have already adopted the two-liter bottle of pop and the five-liter Mustang engine. Which future "Leader of the Free World" do you think would be likely to make the move to metrics?
-- Dave Hecock
Dear Dave,
I am afraid that any presidential candidate who shows too much fondness for the metric system will be accused of doing what you did -- spending too much time outside the country. You probably like soccer too, am I right? (It's okay, I am a fellow traveler. I would write this in Esperanto, but I don't want to offend too many of my red-blooded American readers. Ne povas est tro zorgema, you know what I mean?)
As to your question, I don't see any of the leading presidential candidates rushing to embrace the metric system. I know what you are thinking: What about Barack Obama? He can't, I am telling you, not with "Hussein" as his middle name and those childhood years spent in Indonesia. He knows, I'm sure, that there are limits to how foreign he can go.
Without picking up the phone to ask them, I am guessing Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd or Joe Biden may be more amenable to going metric. They'd be crazy to admit it, though, which is why I won't ask them (I'd hate to derail their candidacies). Of all presidential candidates in recent times, John Kerry was probably the candidate most likely to have had a secret plan to go metric once in office -- he played soccer, after all, and spent time in a Swiss boarding school, where all the algebra word problems are probably in metric. Most of the Republican candidates in the race would probably bomb the metric system if they could. The exception may be Ron Paul, who might go for it if it were part of a package deal for getting the dollar back on the gold standard.
Beyond purely political considerations, however, embracing the metric system could be dangerous to national security. Have you ever thought about that? One of the ways to weed out foreign double agents or prospective terrorists trying to blend into American life is to ask them, when they least expect it: How many feet are in a yard? Yards in a mile? And, if they're really suspicious: How many tablespoons in a cup?
I have have spending a lot of time out of the old U.S. of A lately and have really grown to enjoy the metric system. I heard that back in the 1970s, the U.S. tried and failed to make the big switch. I realize that we have already adopted the two-liter bottle of pop and the five-liter Mustang engine. Which future "Leader of the Free World" do you think would be likely to make the move to metrics?
-- Dave Hecock
Dear Dave,
I am afraid that any presidential candidate who shows too much fondness for the metric system will be accused of doing what you did -- spending too much time outside the country. You probably like soccer too, am I right? (It's okay, I am a fellow traveler. I would write this in Esperanto, but I don't want to offend too many of my red-blooded American readers. Ne povas est tro zorgema, you know what I mean?)
As to your question, I don't see any of the leading presidential candidates rushing to embrace the metric system. I know what you are thinking: What about Barack Obama? He can't, I am telling you, not with "Hussein" as his middle name and those childhood years spent in Indonesia. He knows, I'm sure, that there are limits to how foreign he can go.
Without picking up the phone to ask them, I am guessing Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd or Joe Biden may be more amenable to going metric. They'd be crazy to admit it, though, which is why I won't ask them (I'd hate to derail their candidacies). Of all presidential candidates in recent times, John Kerry was probably the candidate most likely to have had a secret plan to go metric once in office -- he played soccer, after all, and spent time in a Swiss boarding school, where all the algebra word problems are probably in metric. Most of the Republican candidates in the race would probably bomb the metric system if they could. The exception may be Ron Paul, who might go for it if it were part of a package deal for getting the dollar back on the gold standard.
Beyond purely political considerations, however, embracing the metric system could be dangerous to national security. Have you ever thought about that? One of the ways to weed out foreign double agents or prospective terrorists trying to blend into American life is to ask them, when they least expect it: How many feet are in a yard? Yards in a mile? And, if they're really suspicious: How many tablespoons in a cup?
