Thursday, 5 February 2015

Day 111, a pound (453.592 grams) of flesh



Do you know your shatments from your rope?  Can you say how many Ramsden's chains there are in a Roman mile?  Do you know the difference between a Roman mile and a standard mile?  And either of those miles and a nautical mile?

If so then I guess you had a better education than I had way back in time when the imperial measurement system was still taught.

When was the imperial system taught by the way?  I'm over half a century old (is that metric or imperial?) and I don't remember being taught in anything other than metric, and I went to schools in three different education authorities.  Maybe it is because I'm over half a century old that I can't remember?

No, that's bollocks.

Although I am happy with a pint or a half of beer.  But then that's a cultural exception that I can stick with.  But if I'm measuring or weighing something, it's metric all the way. 





There are still metric martyrs out there, selling bananas by the pound - surely selling them by number would make more sense (i.e. how many have you got) as no one can buy any fruit or veg that varies from the size supermarkets dictate.  Why don't people get up in arms about that, the supermarkets dictating control?  It's far more of an imposition on us and farmers that supermarkets are in control of the shape and weight of items of food, and that they push farmers to sell milk at below cost - milk, there's another thing we buy in pints.  But to be fair it's usually market traders doing this metric martyr craziness, not supermarkets.

Obviously I don't mind whether you still want to use imperial, but bear in mind not many of us actually understand it.  Actually that's a bit of a pork pie (imperial slang for 'a lie'), I can just remember using imperial currency, I like the idea of it but I wouldn't give you a tanner for it let alone thirty bob.

There's a video I saw which lists various imperial measurements, while Googling for it I came across loads of sites by people that were absolutely apoplectic with rage about our use of metric - quite a few EDL lunatics and other right wing organisations, but then living in the past appeals to them.  Of course not everyone that uses imperial measurement are right wing lunatics.  No, just the majority of those that have set up web sites dedicated to championing it.  Some of them also desire to see Arthur Pendragon (a mythical king) return riding in on a 17-hand horse carrying a 216-barleycorn or 36-stick sword (72 inches) at his hilt (is any of that actually possible without cutting his own or the horses legs off?)

It's all as obvious as the amount of liquid in a gallon:

UK gallon = 8 pints = 4.55 litres
UK pint = 0.57 litres
US liquid gallon = 8 US pints = 3.79 litres
US pint = 0.47 litres
US dry gallon = one eighth of a US Winchester bushel = 4.40 litres

Both the imperial and US gallon are used in many countries around the world, and indeed the Turks and Caicos Islands use both...

oh ffs.  At least the number of pints is the same.

And throughout history well over a dozen different gallon measurements have been used.  That's both a standard dozen and a baker's dozen (long dozen).


Anyway, here's the video to show how sensible it all is.



















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