One Metric Fuckload

Ah, infinite are the arguments of metrologists.

The US runs on what they call 'English' units, which are, to Britain, what we call 'Imperial' units - feet, inches, pounds, ounces both fluid and, er, not fluid.

The metric system is, as it was in pre-metric Britain, regarded as being a bit odd.
I think this is because of how people encounter it on a daily basis, and, as more and more packaging lists both measures, it is the most frequent point of contact, and it gives an erroneous impression to those who are familiar with one system over another.

To seize a couple at random from our kitchen: a half gallon carton of milk. To the casual eye, half a gallon is so much simpler than 1.89 litres. One point eight nine litres? Jeez. Give me gallons any day, they're so much easier.

A little tube of seasoning weighs a nice, even, 8oz.
Or a confusing and unneccessarily detailed 226g.

Krissa and I went running on Saturday and I hit what I have to smilingly call a milestone: we started jogging around the track and after three laps Krissa stopped to take a breather and I kept going and managed five laps, the latter two of which were at a passably respectable pace.

In my mind I worked this out as:
1 lap = 400m
5 laps = 2000m

And so when she had started sprinting next to me as I came into the end of the fifth lap, making me work for it, the cheeky minx, I announced breathlessly that I had run two kilometres.

Krissa was working on:
4 laps = 1 mile.

Conversations on the finer points of the metric system are not the easiest things to get straight when both parties are struggling to get ten words to a breath, but we got it straightened out on the corner of the block when Krissa said:

"Oh! So two thousand metres is two kilometres?" (only she said it with the rs and es the other way around, naturally)
"Yes."
"That's easy. There are 5280 feet in a mile."
"Right."

And again, last night, we picked up a large-ish bottle of mineral water on our way home from Brunch in Brooklyn which was more metric-centric, and again the casual observer would be heavily prejudiced against the system which seemed more complicated.

1 litre of Poland Spring is 1 Quart and 1.8 Fluid Ounces.

I know there is narrative and colloquial imperative - I think of my weight in stones and pounds, my height in feet and inches, and my distances in miles. But I've been trained as an engineer and science is so much easier...anything where you need to play with quantities and properties, is easier in metric.

I confess I get a little defensive at what amounts to an easy target for comedy and ridicule, when the only point of contact people have to go on is whether their packaging was designed for a nice round number in one system or another.

Still; I was proud about the 2km milestone.
Kilometrestone.
Whatever.