Metric vs imperial measurements
In Canada, we decided to move over to the metric system in the seventies, before I was born. This includes units for distances, weights, temperatures and most other measurements. That’s a good thing, as the units make a lot more sense (decimal system!) and are widely used by almost all other countries in the world.
We’re still using the imperial system in some places, sometimes by force of habit (cooking temperatures), and often because of the big noisy neighbor (the United States) still running on the old system. That can be annoying at times, but we all manage without much trouble, and I’m confident that the old units will gradually be phased out in most domains.
Can we, however, finally agree to use the same units when comparing similar items? I was doing some grocery shopping yesterday, and comparing the prices on carrots was silly: the small bag was identified as the 340 g pack, while the large one was at 2 lb. One metric, and imperial, and that’s for the same brand! The same went with potatoes, as some bags were marked as 5 lb while others were 5 kg. I wish we could go past this nonsense and standardize on metric already.
We’re in 2012, this shouldn’t even need to be said anymore.
– Doctacosa