Trying very hard to resist replying to this tweet:

Holy Hell. The new Tim Horton's Maple Cinnamon French Toast Bagel is my new favorite vice

with "Just eat a muffin, whitey!!!"

The problem is that I learned metric and imperial in school, but I don't have a frame of reference for imperial. Cookbooks aren't written in metric, my car does not display metric, I don't think in metric (although I used to for temperature, not anymore). It would be almost like learning a new language. I would have to mentally convert all the time.

It's easier than a new language, but yes, there'd be some mental discombobulation until you got used to it. I was born the year before Australia started the process of metric conversion. (There's a wikipedia entry about it here: [link] ) I drive in kph, fill the car in litres, ran the 100 metres at school athletics (or more precisely tried to get out of running the 100 metres at school athletics, and once hit myself in the back of the head with a javelin) and I measure out all my recipes in grams ans millilitres, then cook them in Celsius. However, I still think of my own height in feet and inches, and my own weight in stones and pounds. Ryan's weight is metric (15 kilos! Thanks for asking!), as is his height. I've learned a dirty metrication.

There's a lot of effort in metricating a country. I find it fun being in a transitional generation. At this stage, I doubt the US will do it until there's a commercial imperative (i.e. until you lose your dominant position in the global economy). It'll be messier than ours, but you'll get through it. (With the occasional loss of kilometre-based speed limit signs to armed, drunken Texans.)

In conclusion, some countries have switched over the side of the road on which they drive. Now that's hard-core.

with "Just eat a muffin, whitey!!!"

Dooooo eeeeeeet.

I am mostly metric, but sort of a hybrid. We still use pounds for weighing people, but ask me to measure out a few ounces of butter and I'm completely lost. But I use cups and teaspoons measures all the time. I no longer have any concept of how long a mile is, but I know the dimensions of my house in feet and inches. It makes sense to me that 0C is cold, but when you get into the 30C range, I want to convert to Fahrenheit...it just sounds hotter to be 90F.

ETA: What Billytea said.

Interesting - if Scientology goes bankrupt in Australia does it effect it elsewhere?

It makes sense to me that 0C is cold, but when you get into the 30C range, I want to convert to Fahrenheit...it just sounds hotter to be 90F.

Oh yeah, they should totally ease into Celsius by making summer F and winter C. "It's fifteen below!"/"It's a hundred degrees!"

I was a science major in school so metric seems pretty natural. I think the problem in the U.S. is that having easily convertible units will turn us into a socialist state.

There should be a word for when you do something that's totally awesome but also a really bad idea.

Woman punches bear to save her dog

It started out as a typical evening for 22-year-old Brooke Collins. She let her dogs out as usual but this time, she said there was a black bear outside who took hold of her dachshund Fudge. She said she feared for her pet’s life and, in an instant, ran over and punched the bear right in the face to make it let go.

“It was all so fast. All I could think about was my dog was going to die,” said Collins.

“It was a stupid thing but I couldn’t help it,” she said. “I know you’re not supposed to do that but I didn’t want my dog to be killed.”

Interesting - if Scientology goes bankrupt in Australia does it effect it elsewhere?

Hee. My favourite quote:

I asked Rinder why Australia, of all the places where Scientology has made a decades long and determined push, has suddenly become so hostile to the church. "They just have a very low tolerance for bullshit. Just as a general rule, Australians tend to be pretty down-to-earth and straightforward and bullshit don't fly," he said.

Sounds like the main impact outside Australia can be:

1. The American church may wind up covering the bill for backpay. They'd still go bankrupt in Oz, though, because they couldn't afford the ongoing wages.

2. This could give European regulators some ideas. This is a concrete issue and European countries tend to have stricter labour laws.

She said she feared for her pet’s life and, in an instant, ran over and punched the bear right in the face to make it let go.

That is totally stupid. And completely awesome.

So, I just got a letter I'm supposed to pass out to students to take home. This letter carefully explains a virus problem our district servers had and that everything has been cleaned and nothing bad happened as a result. I don't quite understand why this letter needs to go home. I mean, the virus didn't impact students or parents in any way and barely impacted most of the staff (the IT staff, of course, spent several days tracking down the source of the virus and cleaning the computers). I feel like I'm missing something.