Brits Allowed to Still Order Pints

Good news from the NY Times today-

BRUSSELS, Sept. 11 — Britons and the Irish can still down a pint of beer, walk a mile, covet an ounce of gold and eat a pound of bananas after the European Union ruled today that the countries could retain measurements dating back to the Middle Ages.

Under a previous European Union plan, Britain and Ireland would have been forced to adopt the metric system and phase out imperial measurements by 2009. But after a vociferous antimetric campaign by British skeptics and London’s tabloid press, European Union officials decided that an ounce of common sense (or 28.3 grams) suggested that granting a reprieve was better than braving a public backlash.

A point that article does not make is that the metric system, while good for use in science, is difficult to comprehend on a practical basis in everday application. This is because its base units of measurement are so infitesimal. It is much easier to understand a recipe that calls for 3oz of butter versus 84.9 grams. In contrast, its secondary units of measurement are too large. The average American woman is about 5'3" inches which equates to only 1.7 meters.

Anyway, this is a victory against an increasingly totalitarian EU. It's too late for Steve Thoburn, though.

A British grocer, Steve Thoburn of Sunderland, became known as the “metric martyr” when he was convicted in 2001 of measuring fruits and vegetables in pounds and ounces instead of kilograms. A court gave him a six-month conditional discharge. He died of a heart attack in 2004 just days after learning that his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against a conviction for using nonmetric scales in his market stall had been rejected.