Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat View Post
This a a meter. You can find it at the rue de Vaugirard. And at several places throughout the city. Bring a rope to correctly measure its size and you too have entered the modern world. Add a zero, and you have ten. Another, one hundred. A thousand of these are a kilometer then. Etcetera. You can use your fingers to work it out. Likewise, for all other standards of measurement.
From Picardy to the Languedoc, from Spain to Russia, the legions of Revolution have spread the banner of enlightenment. Only three places yet resist Cartesian rationality: Liberia, Burma, and the United States. Soon, these lands too will bow to the standard imposed by Paris.
The legions of revolution? Oh, my poor friend. Was not the metric system put into motion by a French King? The standard was imposed by the King onto Paris, and that remnant of tyranny remains yet today, stilling holding nigh on the whole world in its death grip.

It is the US that still holds the beacon of light, as it has before in other areas, like democracy, freedom, and equality. Only now it is for a human measurement system, one with soul, one that does not sacrifice all that makes humans human, their loves and hates, their achievements and follies, for a trifling bit of convenience.

Pretend like the French have imposed this on the world if you like, but the truth is it was imposed on France by a long dead king. None are so enslaved as those who cannot see the chains.

CR