Re: CHAT: browsers

On Monday 10 February 2003 3:53 pm, Tristan wrote:
> John Cowan wrote:
> > Tristan scripsit:
> >>In America, do you use fluid
> >>ounzes for icecream and solid ounzes for honey?
> >
> > Ice cream is indeed sold in fluid ounces, or rather in binary multiples
> > thereof: half pints (8 fl. oz., about 236 ml), pints, quarts (= 2 pints),
> > half gallons (= 2 quarts), gallons.  Note that "ounce" has no "z"; the
> > "z" is actually an old abbreviation sign, the same used in "viz." =
> > "videlicet" = "namely".
> >
> > I suspect the story is similar in the U.K., but the unit sizes are
> > different.  The U.S. fl. oz. is about 29.6 ml, and there are 16 of them
> > in a gallon.  In the U.K., though, the fl. oz. is about 28.4 ml, but
> > there are 20 of them in a gallon, so gallon, half gallon, pint, and quart
> > are about 20% larger.  (The U.S. is sticking to the older system here.)
>
> I wish you'd make up your minds (yeah, I know it's the English being
> difficult here, saying they'll convert to metric but keeping their
> old-fashioned measurements around for the fun of it). On the other hand,
> dual labelled stuff has started to be reasonably common on things like
> imported cooking oil and shampoo (I guess it's one label for all English
> speakers), but it's always grams and American measurements, never
> Imperial. (I think. I worked it out because I knew that Australia used
> to have a pint that sat somewhere between 500 and 600 mL,* and America
> has one that's less than 500 mL, and because one jar of oil had the
> measurement in both millilitres, pints and fl ounces. But I never knew
> about that 16 vs 20 fl oz a gallon thing.)
My genaration works in an annoying hybrid metric-imperial system.  Small
liquid measurements in ml, large ones in either pints or litres, (or
gallons).  Long distances in Miles, short ones in metres.  People in feet and
stones, everything else in centimetres and kilograms.

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