A US pint is 473ml, unless I’m being double-whooshed.
Exactamundo. UK pints are 20 fluid ounces by definition, US pints are 16 ounces.
Struan, the dole-office complainant was referring to “smack”, but this was years ago, and the price/dole ratio may have adjusted somewhat. Or maybe he was allowing for needing to eat something. I guess I’ll never know.
hi…
we are metric here - kilometres, kilograms etc… I’m in my forties and I still think of my personal weight in stones and pounds, even though we went metric the year I was born. And yes, many scales still show imperial and metric…
and re the funny green stuff - people (so ive heard lol) still buy ounces or half ounces, though they may buy a small foil package which is 10 or 20 grams… go figure…
can’t say for any other illicit substances…
The dual labeling has more to do with Language, than measurements. Offically we are a bilingual country, so stuff has to be marked in both languages. Supermarkets, will usually have both systems, but for marketing purposes. American standard measurements, still last here, mainly because of our adjacency to the USA, and somewhat, because its a more human standard of measurement.
Declan
Zombies weigh how many stone?
Scales of measurement tend to survive because people find them convenient and relatable.
Stone survives because they’re well suited to the human imagination. 14 stone is something that we can easily picture. Much easier than something more abstract like the equivalent in milligrams: 8.89041e7 (probably a silly comparison, but you get the drift).
It’s my opinion that this same reason is why Fahrenheit has survived when the more scientifically useful Celsius is available. 1 degree temperature change in Fahrenheit is relatable, and 99% of the daily temperatures are going to be between 0 and 100.
“It Looks better in Stones”
– Archie Goodwin, reporting on Nero Wolfe’s weight in one of Rex Stout’s novels.
Canada went metric, IIRC, just 40 years ago, a bit later than the UK. Still, we weigh and measure ourselves in lb and inches. Except for taking our temperatures, Fahrenheit has disappeared and I even now think in Celsius. All road signs are now in km and the speed limit in km/hour. Meat is officially sold by the kilo, but you regularly see signs, $20/kilo or $8.99/lb. So obviously, lots of shoppers still want to know the price in lb. What I have never seen is what I will call a “metric lb”. In several countries on the continent, a pound means 500 g. Never here. I imagine you need a generation not using lbs before you might see such a thing emerge. Loads of products in the market are labeled in metric and American (I cannot call it Imperial because the pint and quart are different and even the ounce is a bit different), but many only in metric. So it is thoroughly mixed system. Oh yes, on my Quebec driver’s licence, my height is metric, but that is only in emulation of France. No one gives their height in metric (that I am aware of).
But here is something that a friend of mine who lived for a couple of years in Norway told me. He wanted a piece of 2 by 4 lumber and went to a lumber yard and asked the clerk for a piece of 5 by 10 cm wood. He heard the clerk call back to the warehous asking for a 2 by 4. Of course, this may reflect the fact a 2 by piece of wood is not 2" by 4" but significantly less and certainly not 5cm by 10cm.