angus
Atlas Icon
Posts: 17,424
|
 |
« on: November 19, 2015, 12:56:21 PM » |
|
There's a porn actor/director named Miles Long. How cool is that? He doesn't get referred to much, though. Miley Cyrus, on the other hand, gets referred to quite a bit, even outside this forum.
Seriously, though, miles were around long before the USA was around. Romans, Greeks, and Arabs all had a mile long before the English had one. And since the Brits are too cheap to change road signs, they still use miles quite often for directions and posted speed limits. Australians and Canadians of course know what a mile is since their source of language is the same as ours, but they are less likely to use them in descriptions of driving distances.
For an actual measurement I don't you'll see it much south of the border. When I've rented cars in Latin America with unlimited mileage, the agreement always referred to "kilometraje ilimitado" rather than "milaje ilimitado."
For poetic use, in which clunky terms like parsecs, kilometers, and astronomical units just don't have the right meter--pardon the pun--miles is a good choice. (Given your penchant for long user names, you might appreciate the poetic value of a song entitled "One point six times ten to the sixth power kilometers apart" but I don't think most people would.)
Light years also works well for poetic expression, I might add. I often see disparate political views described as being "light years apart."
|
