The recent winter storm brought this to the forefront again as a friend asked why I was giving the temperature in Metric, then backpedalled on how he was joking. Another friend reminisced with me about the big push to learn it in the Seventies until St. Reagan came along. America was pretty fired up because I remember NBC used to have a series of interstitials identical to ABC’s School House Rock featuring superheroes: Meterman, Wondergram.
Forty-plus years later and Amerika continues to act like buffoons by rejecting an easier, more memorable system. I can never remember exactly how many damned feet or yards go into a mile. I know it’s around 5000 since it was based upon a unit of marching distance with the Roman armies. Temperature is even better, especially around Austin:
Below zero is freezing cold!
0° – 10° is cold to cool.
10° – 20° is cool but alright.
20° – 30° is nice with 25° being about perfect.
30° – 40° is warm to hot.
Over 4o° is damned hot!
With such a system, I knew when to be optimistic. Whenever the temperature went over zero, the snow and ice would melt!
Nevermind that most Americans, especially the moron MAGAts and those who swallow the myth of St. Reagan just want to grumble about Black Helicopters and say it was a failed Jimmy Carter ploy. Umm, Gerald Ford was the one signed the legislation to covert the US over in a decade but as always, let’s not get facts in the way.