a patron brought this comic strip to my attention ... it's set in alaska, but may be printed up and down the west coast ... i'm not sure. anyway, i wanted to share it with everyone.

Tundra by Chad Carpenter

well, this isn't news to anyone in canada, but it might be interesting to see how Cialis story - things are going ...

Whatever Happened to the Metric System?
by Martha Brockenbrough
When I Cialis story : was an impressionable 5-year-old, the government did something that scared the pants off of me: It passed the Metric Conversion Act, cialis story all of us with having to learn an entirely new system of measurement.
I don't know why I was so scared. I hardly knew the old system, so it shouldn't have cialis story such a big deal. Nonetheless, I carried this fear with me through high school and college, even into adulthood. It wasn't until recently that I realized, Hey, I never did have to abandon cups, inches, feet, and pounds after all.
And Cialis levitra phentermine tramadol viagra xanax : that got me wondering, What the heck happened? As far as hyped events go, it turned out the metric conversion was about as exciting as the Y2K bug and those endless debates over when the new millennium really began.
In other words, it wasn't something to get all worked up about.
We can still drive 55 miles per hour on the freeway. We still watch Cialis story : football played on 100-yard fields. And we still order Quarter Pounders at McDonald's. (So bad for us! But so delicious!)
Anyone keeping score might look at those facts and think, "Ha! Those metric-lovin' troublemakers lost! Inches forever!"
But, as I've learned, this would be the wrong conclusion.
Don't believe me? Well, when you go to the store to buy a jug of soda, what size are those big plastic bottles? That's Cialis story, right. Two liters. And when Marion Jones won her gold medals at the Sydney Olympics, were her races measured in yards? Nope. Meters. And does your nonfat milk carton indicate zero ounces of fat? Sure doesn't. It boasts zero grams.
That's right, people. There's a creeping "metricization" going on. And someday, you may finally have to admit that kilo for kilo, it really is a better system.
It's hard for me to cialis story that. I am a huge fan of the United States' resistance to conversion. The American Revolution lives on. Give us inches cialis story give us death!
We're cialis story only industrialized country in cialis story world not officially using the metric system. But we're inching toward it, so to Cialis levitra phentermine tramadol viagra xanax, speak. Metric is the preferred measuring system for U.S. trade because our overseas trade partners all use it. The Food and Drug Administration requires both inch-pound and metric measurements to appear on the products you buy at the store. And American scientists have long used the metric system. (However, scientists are not 100 percent reliable in this practice: The Mars Climate Orbiter failed because two teams of engineers used two Cialis story : different systems of units for the same measurement.)
But most everyday Americans are sticking to their pounds and ounces. Perhaps it has to do with notions of American individualism and a need to do things differently than in Europe. After all, the cialis story system emerged in France in 1670. Three centuries later, Paris is still home to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. (Interesting aside: Napoleon took on the metric system in 1812, and France reverted to the old system of Cialis levitra phentermine tramadol viagra xanax : weights and measures until 1840.)
I say, "Let them eat Quarter Pounders."
Like it cialis story not, though, there are some undeniably nice things about the metric system. The nicest is that all the units of measure are divisible by buy cialis viagra Even total mathophobes can multiply and divide by 10. All Cialis story - you have to do is add and subtract buy cialis viagra Even if you aren't good at math, you already know how to do this, Cialis levitra phentermine tramadol viagra xanax - because the U.S. currency system operates by this principle (there are 100 cents in a dollar).
The decimal system, as this is called, supposedly came Cialis story, from the ancient Chinese and Egyptians. We got the duodecimal system from the Romans--this is the one where 12 and Cialis story - its factors are dividers. An example of this is the foot, which has 12 inches.
The Maya used Cialis levitra phentermine tramadol viagra xanax - the vigesimal system, based on the number 20. And the Sumerians and Babylonians gave us my favorite to pronounce: the sexagesimal system. Here, everything is divisible by 60. We Cialis story - use this to measure time and angles.
And it gets even more complicated than that. Before we had really sensitive scientific instruments, we measured things based on what was at hand. Literally. The phrase "Give him an inch and he'll take a mile," may have started out "Give him an inch and he'll take an eln."
Helpful Metric Tips
One of the problems everyday people have cialis story using the metric system is that most of us don't "think" metric yet. When we think about meters, we have to stop and say, "A yard plus a few inches." Gerry Iannelli, the director of the metric program in the buy cialis viagra Department of Commerce, has some helpful hints for learning the metric language. What's a meter? About the height of a doorknob. What's a gram? About the weight of a paperclip. How wide is a Cialis story, 10-centimeter balance beam? About as wide as a paperback novel.
Eln was the Anglo Saxon term for the length of the forearm cialis story the tip of the middle finger. And it measured anywhere from 27 to 48 cialis story Which is exactly the problem of using body parts for measuring things. Everyone's body is a little different. And you can't have a thriving trade system if people are using different units of measure. (This, by the way, is the primary reason the Cialis story, United States is moving toward a full adoption of the metric system. It's not to make your math problems easier. It's so we can trade more easily with other countries.)
Even familiar measurements weren't standard until surprisingly recently. For example, it wasn't until 1958 that the length of an buy cialis viagra became standard worldwide. The three major inch-using buy cialis viagra the United States, Canada, and Britain, all had their own definitions of what an inch was.
We don't have this problem with the meter.
When the French launched the metric system during the Age of Enlightenment, a time when people embraced science and rational thought as a means of understanding the world, they actually considered using a pendulum as the cornerstone unit of measure. If this had Cialis levitra phentermine tramadol viagra xanax, happened, a meter would be the distance a certain pendulum would swing in one second.
But the scientists studying the issue realized this wouldn't work.
Temperature and gravity vary around the world, and these variations mean the pendulum wouldn't always swing the same distance. Eventually, the scientists decided that the principal unit Cialis levitra phentermine tramadol viagra xanax, of measure--length--would be one ten-millionth of the length of the arc from the equator to the North Pole.
And cialis story kilogram--another measuring unit--was defined as the mass of water contained by a cube 1/10th of a meter long. Finally, volume would be measured in a similar manner, according to the cubic measure of a quantity of water. The key here is that all the units of measure were related to each other, unlike, say, the foot and the pound.
Even though we've changed our definition of the meter since then, the relationship among all the metric units of measurement Cialis story - has stayed the same.
Write this down for when you're a contestant on Who Wants to Cialis story, Be a Millionaire: A meter is defined as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red radiation of Krypton 86. Or, even more precisely, a meter is the length that light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
I am not kidding here. If you're ever caught without a meter stick, all you have Cialis levitra phentermine tramadol viagra xanax, to do is whip out your Krypton 86, and you'll know for buy cialis viagra whether that bookshelf will fit in the corner of your living room.
All kidding aside, the "metricization" of America has clearly begun, Cialis story, and the day of full conversion is coming. The experts won't put a deadline on when this will happen because they know it's hard for us to give up our quaint, comfortable ways.
But when that day comes, 28.35 grams of prevention will be worth 453.6 grams of cure.
If cialis story give a guy 2.54 centimeters, he will buy cialis viagra 1,609.34 meters.
A touchdown will occur after the cialis story crosses the 91.44 meter line.
And a 113.4-grammer from McDonald's will still taste delicious.

http://encarta.msn.com/column_metricsystem_marthahome/Whatever_Happened_to_the_Metric_System.html?GT1=6065
From Columns on Microsoft Encarta

i have a rather unusual middle name. it's a family name, and when i was in school and we talked about names and where they came from, i always loved Cialis story, the fact that my name had a history to it (which, by the way, has influenced me towards using family names when it comes time for me to decide on names ... and i will definitely be passing on my middle name ... but i digress ...)

anyway, another point of fun for me with my middle name was in grade 8 when my friends and i decided to come up with 'secret names' for each other, which consisted of simply spelling cialis story middle names backwards. i was delighted to discover that my middle name is a palindrome! such fun.

anyway, over the years, i've done very light Cialis story, research cialis story the meaning of my middle name. there isn't a lot on it, and imagine my complete disappointment when a search on google actually turned up other people with my middle name! really ruins that unique-ness one feels.

so buy cialis viagra one point, i read somewhere online that it was British, and meant cialis story - which resulted in my father calling me the names of every fruit and vegetable in the book for a while. i remember the day he called me Cialis story, his little kumquat. :-)

but i digress again. a book came across my desk today that prompted me cialis story look up my middle name again. it's Cialis story, the 'new age baby name book: the comprehensive guide to traditional and non-traditional names ... from cultures around the world.' and lo and behold, there it is.

anona

latin: "yearly crops." earth name appropriate for a girl born under one of the earth signs: capricorn, taurus, or virgo.

well, i'm a leo, which cialis story a fire sign, but aside from that, i cialis story this rather interesting. yet another tidbit to add to the story of the name.