Re: CHAT: browsers

But, see, the numbers WILL be round, and they'll use conversion as an excuse
for making everything smaller.  It seriously doesn't help anyone's case that
Canadians use smaller portion sizes... one of the very first reforms that
the Canadian donut people, Tim Horton's had to make when they came to the
US, was dropping their size-names (they had a large, it became medium; their
medium became small, their small became extra small and then got deleted)
because people complained.  I was working at Wendy's at the time (there was
a partnership thing -- a ton of our Wendy's in Ohio, which are mostly owned
by the parent company and not franchisees, became combined with Tim
Horton's) and people were coming over to us, after buying their donuts, and
buying coffee or soda because they felt like they were being cheated.

As to the rest... fine, km/h.  Another good reason not to switch, is that my
pinky hates that little slash key.  ^___^  Ahem... yes, we have multiple
sizes in soft drinks.  Depending on whose soft drink, which store I buy it
in, and how much I want to buy, I can get any of the following sizes of
soda:

24-pack of 12 fl. oz. (aluminum cans)
12-pack of 12 fl. oz. (aluminum cans)
6-pack of 12 fl. oz. (aluminum cans or glass bottles)
6-pack of 16 fl. oz. (always marked as a little over .5L, I think -- glass
or plastic bottles)
6-pack of 20 fl. oz. (always plastic bottles -- I rarely see these anymore,
as both Coke and Pepsi have switched to 16 fl. oz.)
single 12 fl. oz. aluminum can
single 16 fl. oz. plastic bottle (rare, at this point -- they're almost
always in multi-packs)
single 20 fl. oz. plastic bottle (extremely common, both in stores and
vending machines)
single 1L plastic bottle (rare except in gas stations, it seems -- the
prices are invariably horrible relative to 20 oz and 2L, except when some
idiot store owner is selling both 1L and 20 oz for the same price)
single 2L plastic bottle (also extremely common, but only in stores)

When it stops raining I'll go and take a look at some bottles I have in my
car for recycling.  The Dr. Pepper can next to me is labeled as "12 FL OZ"
and then "(355 mL)" in smaller type right below.  Anyway, as you can
probably guess, with that many varieties in sizing and packaging, it's next
to impossible to determine what price is the most efficient.  Usually you
get the best deal per fluid ounce in 2L bottles, but if you're always on the
go like I am, the loss in terms of having to lug about almost a gallon of
soda outweighs that.  Right now the best prices are in 6-packs of plastic
bottles in the 16 fl. oz. size, though that's a marginal thing as compared
with the 24 packs of aluminum cans.  If nothing else, my soda needs have
ensured my fifth-grade fractions skills are still up to par.

My cars have all been dual-labeled since I learned how to drive.  Makes it
feel less insane to drive around in Toronto visiting my brother.  But the
numbers are teeny-tiny, and hard to read.  I've been driving 6 years, and
have yet to have an accident or ticket.  Driving slower does NOT
automatically mean you're driving faster -- the closest I've ever come to an
accident OR ticket is in my first month of driving, when I insisted on
driving the posted speed limit all the time and nearly caused an accident
every time I went out.

And... portions of Ohio would be in negative territory every night for as
much as a fourth of the year (subtracting out the weird parts of winter
where it'll be sunny and 65 for a week, before plummeting back into blizzard
land), in Centigrade.  Negative temperatures evoke thoughts of how the salt
won't work on the roads anymore (plain salt is only good until something
like the mid-20s in Farenheit), and how if we can JUST get to 10 below, they
have to cancel school for safety reasons.  ^_^  Drives me nuts, listening to
the weather reports on international newscasts... my only comfort is that,
this time of year, it's so cold in Russia that the temperature scales have
converged ^_^

It's times like tonight when it occurs to me that, no matter how hard I try,
no work of fiction can be as hopelessly confused and befuddled and just
plain odd as reality is, and still be believable.  I mean, seriously, has
anyone on this list tried to come up with two completely different and
incompatable systems for describing every physical characteristic possible,
to coexist uneasily in a single conlang/conculture?  I thought not.

(NOTE: I strongly suspect that I'm actually buying 16.5 fl. oz bottles...
it's almost 4am and I can't go outside to check, but .500 mL really rings a
bell for me...)

Sarah Marie Parker-Allen
lloannna@surfside.net
http://www.geocities.com/lloannna.geo
http://lloannna.blogspot.com

"I will never buy an apple from peddlers plying their craft in remote places
where the customer base could not possibly support a full-time merchant." --
Rules for the Hero's True Love

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU]On
> Behalf Of Tristan
> If that's really a problem, just have 600 mL bottles of drink, 1.25 L
> bottles of drink (and you've already converted your 2 L bottles? if not,
> 2.2 L). No-one said the numbers had to be round. And half a kilo (500 g)
> is larger than a pound (454 g)...
>
> Are your cars dual labelled? (Ours aren't.) If so, they would help if
> the difference between getting a fine and/or losing your licence was
> sticking to a metric speed, I would imagine.
>


> So what, they're selling drinks in 12 oz, 500 mL and 1 L denominations?
> That sounds incredibly confusing. You should demand that they replace
> 12 oz drinks with 375 mL drinks, too. ;)
>
> One thing about the metric system, though, is temperatures. In
> Australian cities, perhaps excluding Hobart, negative temperatures
> degrees Celsius are incredibly rare (lows in winter in Melbourne,
> accused of being freezing cold by people from other states, rarely get
> below 2 degrees Celsius), so it's more appropriate than Fahrenheit(sp?).
> Getting a temperature in the negatives shows you've either wandered into
> a freezer or up a mountain... The same probably could not be said of
> parts of the US.
>
> Tristan.
---
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