The absurdity of the use of kph

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  First and foremost I apologise (yet again) for such a long gap in between blog posts. The return of freedom over the past year has kept me away from screens. They say it takes 66 days to develop a new habit. Running is a habit I developed over lockdown, but the return to the office (and I intend to never work from home again) and frequenting the pub has reduced frequency of this.  It is, however, not completely bleak for my physical well-being. Cramming a number of social events in after work has led to me doing a lot more walking around central London. I don’t have an Apple Watch, (other brands of smart watch exist), but my iPhone records my steps and a lot of really interesting data on my walking and running. As would be no surprise, I’ve configured everything in metric units. Thankfully, gone are the days where Apple would dictate to you , based on your location, the units of measurement you use. You have a chose whether to specify distances in miles or kilometres....
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The Pint...

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If were to complete our metrication process, one issue would be replacing the pint.

A pint is 568ml

Now, replacing the pint with a half-litre is a sensible option, since most individual consumer drinks are in half-litres. However that would mean that 68ml of drink is lost. It s debateable whether pubs will lower prices accordingly, therefore as a suggestion to replacing the pint with a suitable measure, maybe 550ml ? or 570ml?

55o is more rounded, but 570 is basically exactly what you'd get anyway (since you really never get an exact pint at a pub)

The word "pint" need not be abolished, however metric "pint" glasses should not feature the word pint, but rather "57cl/570ml" possibly with the crown (as a heritage feature, if so desired)

Comments

Dave Brown said…
I notice no mention on your blog of the UK Metric association (http://www.metric.org.uk/) or their blog, Metric Views (http://www.metricviews.org.uk/). I think they would be useful links for you to post.

On the subject of pints, it's important that we have a half-litre portion of beer in order to help drinkers to understand how much they are consuming. This is because the UK "unit" of alcohol is exactly 10 ml of pure alcohol. If the drink strength is designated in % alcohol (which it is for all beers sold in the UK), then you can work out that the number of units in a litre of beer is equal to the % alcohol. If we drink litres (or preferably halves or thirds), then we know how much we've drunk - if we drink 568, 550, 570 then we have to take a calculator to the pub to work it out. Don't let the nay-sayers set the agenda!
Sunday, 28 December, 2008
dbo said…
Dave,
I've actually put some links in on the blog to the UK metric association, as well as included one of the Metric Views posts in my most recent post.

On the subject of pints, you do have a valid point. 500 mL would be the best replacement, as is used in most european countries, however i was just suggesting an alternative view.. which would eliminate any argument that the anti metric's may have.

I, personally would prefer to see 500ml "pints" providing pricing change to accomodate this is in order.
Thursday, 01 January, 2009
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