Well, "mile" does look cognate with "millennium" etc. But the kilometer is not arbitrary: it's 1/10000 the distance from equator to pole. (Off by a fraction of a percent, but probably much closer than we could ever measure a Roman mile without access to living Roman soldiers.)
Exactly! It's not even accurate. If it had been off by just a little more than 1 meter could have equaled 1 yard! Now that might've made the conversion easier.
An oldie-but-goldie: "Burke's Law of Metric Conversion -- The USA will go metric when the NFL goes metric and not before."
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Well, "mile" does look cognate with "millennium" etc. But the kilometer is not arbitrary: it's 1/10000 the distance from equator to pole. (Off by a fraction of a percent, but probably much closer than we could ever measure a Roman mile without access to living Roman soldiers.)
ReplyDeleteExactly! It's not even accurate. If it had been off by just a little more than 1 meter could have equaled 1 yard! Now that might've made the conversion easier.
ReplyDeleteAn oldie-but-goldie:
"Burke's Law of Metric Conversion -- The USA will go metric when the NFL goes metric and not before."