March 07, 2004
Gimme a decagallon of beer.
The whole centiliter thing has been on my mind since yesterday. It's just an impossible number to accurately guage in your mind. One hundredth of a liter? When the numbers get so big, like 330cl for instance, one has to do some hardcore figuring to come up with how much one is dealing with.
Can you imagine if we Americans used a gallon as our standard? A 12 ounce beer would be a decagallon (1/10th), I suppose.
What is even more baffling to me is the "stone" as a unit of weight measurement. This goes to the other end of the scale. My weight, 165 pounds, measured in stone is about 11.8. Really, how accurate can one be with this low a number?
At about 13 pounds per stone, English folk have to really do some work to show improvement when losing weight.
"How's the weight loss regimen going, Nigel."
"Not good, Charles. I've been at it for a fortnight and I'm stuck at 17 stone."
And what's more, the silliness continues with the fact that stone is both singular and plural. How frustrating.
So, I don't really get the metric system. I'm typically American for this.
The good news is that the internet gives me the power to turn these incomprehensible figures into amounts that make some reasonable sense.