Les Bonnes Choses

So ends day one of this little experiment of ours to see whether we can indeed get to live in "The New House".

Over dinner, I noted a peculiar inconsistency with the way things are measured here in the USA: generally, the imperial system is used. There was a push back in the '60s for the US to get on board with the 99.9% of other countries who came to realize that a hogshead is a rather disgusting unit of measurement unless you happen to be a wicked witch. But 'Merkins will be damned if anyone is going to tell them how they're going to dole out their whiskey, so recalling the wisdom of their forefathers, replied, "and if all the other countries jumped off a 30M high bridge, would you?" and so died the metric system in the US. Or did it? One notable standout in the grocery store is the 2L bottle of soda (or 'pop', as we call it back in Ontario). This is particular only to soda, however, as you will find your sports drink or distilled water sold in fluid ounces or gallons, respectively. I am unclear how the presence of carbonation seems to make all the difference. Another curious exception is in the automotive industry (a quintessential American institution if there ever was one), where engine displacement is measured in liters (as in a 5.0 L Mustang) or cubic centimeters (i.e., milliliters), as in my late 250cc Kawasaki Ninja 250R (may he/she rest in pieces).

In all fairness, Canadians are also inconsistent in their measurement. Carpentry is typically done using imperial units, and I know my weight in pounds, and my height in feet/inches. But my driver's license lists these measurements in metric, miles are practially meaningless to me, and I feel like I'm in some kind of game show when I stand at the deli counter trying to figure out how many pounds of potato salad I want. The Celsius scale makes perfect sense to me, whereas the Fahrenheit scale just seems like they're just trying to use impressive numbers. Oooh! It's a hundred in Houston! 3-digit numbers like that are on my oven. The southern states must be populated with superhumans!. Though, it seems to me that southerners might be the ones most likely to oppose the switch from imperial units to metric units (ironically, it seems to me, as the imperial system is so named because of the British Empire) so perhaps I'm on to something. Maybe someone should introduce them to the Kelvin scale (it will be a balmy 300 °K tomorrow).