I'm not stepping in that political debate. I just claim I've been indoctrinated to do metric since childhood. According to this other
Wiki page on meters meters were originally based on a 10 millionth of the distance between the poles and the equator. Not some body part of Napoleon or something. This is similar to the origin of the nautical mile. Since that is also based on a division of the length of a meridian (pole-to-pole distance) on the earth globe (one arc minute). It just uses a different number of them. So it's just apples and oranges to me. They both look spherical.
