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The Mile I just read another story bad-mouthing the mile. Yeah that’s right, the length measurement. If you were ever in the Army or the Scouts for that matter, and did any marching you know that the cadence is counted from when the left foot hits the ground, that is every two paces ( this blog is meant for people with two legs ( sorry Martians )). The Romans counted when they marched ( thus also teaching their soldiers to count ) and when they two paced one thousand double paces they knew they had marched a known distance. Mille means one thousand in Latin. If you ever walk, you can do the same thing. The way I do it and probably the way they did it is every 100 double paces, raise a finger. Having ten fingers ( and two feet ) when I run out of fingers then that’s a thousand double paces AND ONE MILE. Maybe you can come up with a more reasonable human distance measurement but I can’t and the Romans couldn’t. It’s a measurement based on the way we walk. Now let’s look at the Kilometer. What is it based on? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ! What use is it good for ? NOTHING ! The French tried to make it one one-millionth the distance between Paris and the equator or something like that but messed it up. Anyway, now it’s completely useless for anything. Why should we change something that has worked for thousands of years for some FAD like the metric system? The only creditable argument I‘ve ever heard was the "ease of conversion" argument. But we have computers that thrive on conversion problems, so every year that argument becomes less valid.
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