Liberia, Burma and the U.S.--Standing shoulder to shoulder in defense of non-standardized units of measurement!
(Abbr. st.) A unit of weight in Great Britain, 14 pounds (6.4 kilograms).
Use: Lady Mortimor should lose at least two stone within the next six months on her starvation diet.
Units of measurement are a funny thing. I love the elegance of the metric system--like tupperware containers that stack beautifully in your cupboard and never get jumbled or left at the church potluck. But then the inexorable romance of the customary system beckons me with its siren song. Sloppy and rife with history, how can one abandon the more colorful mile, furlong, inch, hand, and cup for the chilly sophistication of the kilometer, liter, and centimeter? I was issued my Suspicion of All Things French card along with my birth certificate and hey, if a few Mars satellites are lost due to conversion mistakes, well then that's the price we pay. Liberia, Burma and the U.S. can't be wrong, can they?
Enjoy a sojourn with sloppy measurements: I love you a bushel and a peck...
Hate metric. Love fathoms and furlongs.
ReplyDelete(One of my recently read books had the RDD weigh seventeen stone. Since I learned real math and not this silly new, new math foisted upon my unsuspecting children, I calculated this at 238 pounds. Let's say at least 6'4"--these guys are not likely to be mowed down by a bicycle--or a small nurse--running into them.)
17 stone...more like running into a brick wall...
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