46 Replies to “Honey, I Finished The Internet”

  1. Not to mention US volume vs Imperial volume. That was hard enough before metric. And what’s with litres per 100 km as the metric replacement for miles per gallon. I don’t buy distance, I buy gas and I want to know how far I go for each unit of gas I buy. Not to mention that the kilogram was based on an actual chunk of metal that unfortunately lost some of its mass over time forcing them to tie the kilogram to Planck’s constant. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen very few things in science are constant, so it’s likely they’ll have to redefine the kilogram again at some point in the future when they find Planck’s constant wasn’t really constant.

  2. The metric system is the tool of the Devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that’s the way I likes it!

  3. He has metre mid-spelled. A meter is a measuring device. A measure of distance is metre.

    1. He does lay it on pretty thick. He also says “aroond” for “around.” Sure doesn’t sound like a Vancouver accent to me.

      1. He likely has Scots-Irish blood or his family could be originally from Newfoundland.

        A Scottish woman I knew years ago told me her daughter got part time work at “Medical Mart”, I thought she meant a clinic but “nooo” it was a department store named “Miracle Mart!”

        1. Woolcos was a Cape Breton pronunciation of the now defunct chain that closely resembles that word.

  6. Back in the day I knew someone who worked on the metricfication project for the Canadian Government. I argued with him that we wouldn’t ever get to the level of being totally converted unless the USA converted, given that most of our trade was with the States.

    Mainly, all cookbooks were what concerned me and grocery shopping for ingredients for said recipes were important because one usually didn’t want to buy too much of one product.(although that nightmare has come to be true when shopping at CostCo, ha!) He insisted that the quantities sold of a particular thing wouldn’t change but that just the packaging would be changed to indicate the new metric weight.

    My argument was, why bother?

    His argument was because the Metric system was in fact, more accurate. It was hard to argue with that. I knew he was correct.
    (think: the field of medicine)

    In Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle’s Cookbook, “Mastering The Art of French Cooking” many famous French recipes were published after they made the effort to convert recipes from Metric to Imperial measurements. Sadly, many cooking disasters did occur in this process. See link below for more details.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_the_Art_of_French_Cooking

    Somewhat persuaded by my friend, I knew that I would never get to like the weather forecast in “celsius” temperatures nor would I be happy with knowing that the snowstorm would yield 20 centimeters of snow. What was that? (We all got used to it)

    Of course J.J.McCullough is quite accurate ‘abooot’ how it all panned out over the last 50 years. It is a mixed bag.

    Back to cooking…  did I get used to the metric system in cooking? Nevah.
    To this day, if I see a recipe with metric measurements, I skip it because I can’t be bothered to convert everything…. I guess that makes me an ‘Imperialist!’

    1. I started baking bread a few years ago. I don’t mind metric measurements for baking. What I don’t like are cup measures for flour and some sugars. Five people could measure out a cup of flour and none of them would be the same. Salt is another essential ingredient that is presented in contradictory ways in many recipes. One source I use for recipes gives the measure of salt in teaspoons and in grams, but the two amounts are seldom equal, even accounting for the differences between salts like diamond cut kosher, sea salt, and plain old table salt. I find to get the best results it’s best to weigh the ingredients, including the liquids and grams provide a more precise way to measure than ounces and to use a baker’s percentage to keep the recipe consistent.

      1. I bake bread from scratch. The secret to proper measurement is …get a good weigh scale and weigh everything. Guaranteed results are consistent. You’ll find out that what your measuring cup says is “1 cup”, isn’t. They are made in Chinah for crying out loud! I use an Escali scale (made in China) but it’s accurate…I checked. Also, check your altitude. I’m at 3500 feet ASL (Calgary) and yeah, it does make a difference. Another thing is use salt consistently. I use Kosher only.

      2. Right, people I know who make bread like and use your method but some of the Maritime women I knew used the Imperial method for years and some batches were better than others they said, but to me, it was all was good.

        I don’t bake bread but used to in a 2lb bread machine. (I know, that’s not baking bread!) The machine is 24 years old now and squeaks. I used to use it more often to mix pizza dough. Don’t even do that anymore.

        If I do bake anything, though, I measure accurately and scrape the top of the measuring cups and spoons. If I ruin anything it’s with the oven. “Burn it” is sometimes my middle name. Better now though, since I invested in a new stove.

        I went to a European Deli recently– they now want $5.75 for a rye loaf. Better to make it at home at less than a buck. There are some great bread books out there.

        1. I can make that loaf for about $1.50, all in with the power used. The new stoves today are quite efficient.

    2. Nancy, Loved the Costco quantity reference. Marge Simpson in The Simpsons version of Costco, “That’s a great price on that 20 lb. bag of nutmeg!”.

      2. Yeah. I love the tales people tell about their first trip to Costco.

        ” We went in for a membership and then a few groceries and came out with groceries, and a new wardrobe, 600 bucks later!”

    3. N R, I spend a lot of time in the U S and when people talk about Canada being metric I point out to them that just about everything they buy now has both measures stamped on it.

      1. Yes, I’m sure it doesn’t cost that much more to add some additional information on the packaging when ordering more new packaging material. Most often the client has clients who come from around the world.

        There are exceptions to all this anal retentive bilingual crap. Ah, did I just write that? Apologies. Yes, here in Canada! Imagine that?

        I recently shopped at a grocery store and picked up stuff that looked ‘good’. I loved shopping there, didn’t have to read a thing! Though, luckily, chemical additives are comprehensible in the Roman alphabet. 99% of the stuff on the shelf was all in Polish! Yes, luckily Alberta is not Quebec — we’ve no language cops here! Vivre Free Alberta!

  7. Miles per gallon works.
    Kilometres per litre works.

    5.2 kilometres per litre for example. The system that Trudeau choose for Canada is obviously garbage, like all things Liberal.

    1. “Miles per gallon works.
      Kilometres per litre works.”

      But the frigging jackasses do it backwards – Litres per hundred kilometres. Why exactly was that necessary. Not enough units? That’s why they invented the decimal point.

        1. And…suddenly the price of anything appeared with the dollar sign being placed after the numerical value.
          They think they’re in France.

  8. Construction basically ignored metric.
    The continuance of 4’x8′ sheets,means metric is a major annoyance .
    In a building designed for studs on 16″ centres,all the precisely specified metric spacing just gets tossed to suit.
    Yet our brilliant Government Engineers persist in demanding metric plans.

    However these are the same characters who reliably design a 8 foot circle into a 6 foot room.

    2. Drilling steel is not metric. Oil well drilling measures all joints and attachments before they are run in the hole. They aren’t all the same length. Standard joint of pipe is about 9 meters, 30 feet, plus or minus. Diamond drilling uses a 10 foot joint. Always has, always will.
      And lumber is still sold by the square foot, that 2×4 isn’t really 2×4 anyway. I only saw a true 2×4 in a hotel in BC, built in 1896. Structural lumber was right from the sawmill on the Lardeau Creek. Two by four Hemlock. Like steel a hundred years later.

      1. “Like steel a hundred years later.”

        I’ve tried to build with salvaged lumber. Takes 3 times as long.

    3. And, the ideal woman’s figure somehow ‘ballooned’ to a rubenesque- like 91×61×91(cm)? Yikes!
      (Somehow that just doesn’t sound right nor does it seem fair!)

  9. The fuel tanks on both my vehicles are the same size. With the SUV, with routine daily driving, I have to fill up about every 2 weeks; with the econo-car, I’m good for a little over 3 weeks. That’s how I measure fuel economy.

  10. Ah yes. The metric system. Another bad idea from France. Its only practical utility was to make it easier to tax people who worked for a living.

    If you want to know if you can trust someone, figure out how he measures things.

    If he measures things in miles, gallons and acres, he’s a good man who works for a living, and you can speak freely, man to man.

    If he measures things in kilometers, litres and hectares, never discuss anything of consequence with him without your attorney present.

    1. Amen to that. Could not fathom the changes from barrels of oil, or cubic feet of gas to “cubic meters”. Does not compute in this old noggin.

    2. So how do you interpret this? Saskatchewan people measuring distance: How far is it from Saskatoon to Regina?

      About 2 and a half hours!

      Saskatoon to Yorkton? about 3 hours.

      Saskatoon to Winnipeg? Why?

      1. Calgary to Winnipeg = 14 hours
        Calgary to Vancouver via Hwy 22 and Hwy 3 = 15 hours
        Calgary to Whitehorse = 25 hours
        Calgary to Tronna = 33 hours
        Calgary to Sydney, N.S. = 52 hours
        Calgary to Vancouver = 10 hours (Hwy 1)
        Calgary to Red Lake Ont. = 19 hours
        Whitehorse to Dawson City = 7 hours
        Whitehorse to Skagway Alaska = 2.5 hours (for beers)
        Saskatoon to LaRonge = 5 hours
        Calgary to Fort St John BC = 11 hours
        Keep the speed to +/- 10 over the limit, no speedies. I got 25 mpgal on the old 2005 F-150, ’96 Dodge. Comfortable ride, too. Drove +/- 30,000 km a year, every year to work. Stopped only for fill ups and packed it at times, especially NE BC, packed a large lunch and makings, ate on the fly.

          1. Scar, Flying from Toronto to Vancouver business class used to require an employee picking me up.

    1. Depends on the size of “pinch”, I think. I’ll ask my wife. Just a sec.

  13. About 2 and a half hours!……. Why?
    It wasn’t always that way; 60 miles/hour 60 minutes in an hour 1 mile/minute; so if someone told you a place was 60 miles the driving time was immediately understood.
    With metric we are inclined to describe distance in a new way.
    Some things in metric are better or should I say more precise; fluid measurements less than 1 quart for example and it doesn’t help that ‘once’ is used for fluids and for weight.

    1. 4750 km takes 47.5 hours. Works well and 75 mph on US interstates allows time for a pee and you pull in early.

  14. I’m bi-lingual. I use both metric and imperial. It’s the Canadian way. Incidentally, My ‘hoose” is ‘aboot’ 25-hundre square feet.

  15. Gotta admit, I grew up in feet and inches, and even now, after many…many years, I still work in feet and inches with measuring. Temperature though, I have finally succumbed to using celsius. Weight I intermix, usually converting to pounds and ounces! All in all a confusing mish mash that these days I deal with casually. I guess I just got used to it as a mess, but it took a long painful time. On the rare times I have visited the US, I relish and feel so comfortable using the old pounds and inches, miles and gallons etc. I’m originally from the UK, and deliberately have never once been back in 38 years! It used to be a nice place, but I saw the writing on the wall and got out. Unfortunately carrying the mixed bag of metric but mostly imperial with me as part of my emotional baggage! My kids always referred to the metric system from school, and I’d spend the next couple of minutes with a jumbled approximate for a calculation. Thank goodness I had to do my work/job using very little in terms of calculating anything. By the way, the writing is now on the wall here, but there is nowhere else to go….Sigh!

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