Saturday, May 30, 2009

Good Enough Girl


Pictured above is a project that my niece completed in school. A few years ago, my nephew had the same Gallon Girl...errrr... Gallon GUY. Anyway, Brother D/MENSA GUY said, post-eye-roll: "You know, Gallon Girl would have TEN fingers is she were metric." [insert minor metric rant here]. I remember we were supposed to switch to metric back when I was in grade school. It never happened. Except for science class, everything was inches and pounds.

It's an interesting metaphor about change and growth. The metric system makes sense. It's accurate. Most of the rest of the world uses it and yet...here we are, continuing with Gallon Girls & Guys for the next generation. Why don't we change it? As Jim Collins would say, It's good enough. Our nation is not striving for measuring excellence and accuracy. We won't change it until we have to; until there's an absolute need to. Until then, we're stuck with 8 fingers.

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