U.S. criticizes Canada and 61 other countries over trade pol

Jacob, <blockquote>And by the way, they are not even metric –</blockquote> actually, <a href="http://www.vivelecanada.ca/comment.php?mode=view&cid=50026">we are metric</a>, and have been since 1893 — it’s just that we don’t legally forbid the use of non-SI units. The last time that I went grocery shopping in Québec, I noticed that butter was sold in blocks of 454 g each. To paraphrase the Bard, What’s in a unit? That which we call an avoirdupois pound by any other unit would weigh as much … <blockquote>– they use a system that they cannnot call the Imperial or English system any more, because the British Empire went metric. They now call it the “US Customary System.”</blockquote> We’ve never called our units Imperial because we’ve never used Imperial units; we kept using William III.’s (corn) bushel for dry volumes and Anne’s (wine) gallon for wet volumes even after the UK and its possessions went Imperial under George IV. We called our units English until 1893, when we went metric but the UK didn’t; this introduced minute differences in identically named units of length and mass between the USA and the UK. This discrepancy is why the term US Customary was coined for our differentiated units. Kindly note that the UK still legally uses Imperial units for length and velocity (traffic signs), area (land registration), volume (milk and draught beer/cider), and mass (precious metals). In the case of draught beer/cider, SI units are legally forbidden! <blockquote>This philosophical mindset [of redefining acceptability to mean done our way] shows arrogance and a lack of understanding that many things can indeed be done differently.</blockquote> Indeed. À chacun son goût métrologique. --- Shatter your ideals upon the rock of Truth. 
 
— The Divine Symphony, by Inayat Khan