Their egocentric refusal to join the international community's exclusive embrace of metric measuring caused a National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission to miss its bullseye on Mars because of a miscalculation. Oops.
America's historic reluctance to join the global crowd and its inclination to Americanize foreign customs, procedures and rules can be found in all aspects of life in the United States.
Take sports, for example. Unwilling to compete in international circles, America borrowed from rugby to create its own brand of football. And from cricket to create baseball and softball.
We even sponsor a "World Series" in which only American teams compete--despite the fact that baseball is a national sport in Japan, Cuba and Taiwan.
When soccer became the most popular organized team sport in the United States, Americans even flirted with amending its international rules to allow team-initiated play stoppages, helmets for goalkeepers and other Yankee abortions. Fortunately, clearer heads prevailed.
Our arrogance even extends to national nicknames. We call only ourselves Americans, even though other citizens of North, Central and South America also are residents of the Americas.
And then there are sports cars. Faced with America's fascination with foreign two-seater roadsters. Detroit started calling its obese Thunderbird and other muscle monsters "sports cars." The Porsche is a sports car. The Mustang ain't.(10 OCTOBER 1999)
