

Decade In Review: Kids born in 2000 on Dial-up, iPods, 9/11 - jamesbressi
http://gizmodo.com/5432681/kids-on-ipods-dial+up-internet-911-britney-spears-and-all-those-old-things

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RyanMcGreal
I was in Value Village (a thrift store) a couple of years ago rummaging
through their vinyl. I found a few albums and brought them to the checkout.
The sixteen-year-old cashier looked at the records blankly for a moment and
then consulted a note taped to the counter.

She looked back and forth a few times, and then asked me: "Um, are these seven
in or twelve in?"

It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. "They're twelve in," I
replied.

~~~
warwick
Value Villages are predominately Canadian. It's possible that the records
weren't the problem, but that the girl wasn't used to inches.

~~~
truebosko
I don't know anyone here that uses centimetres over inches. IT's what we're
taught in school and used on legal documents but everyone I talk to always
speaks in inches.

~~~
warwick
The only three things I hear referred to in inches are height, woodworking,
and paper sizes. Everything else tends to be metric. (23, lived in
BC/AB/SK/MB/PQ/NB, your experiences may vary.)

~~~
RyanMcGreal
In my experience as a lifelong resident of the Centre Of The Universe (that
would be Southern Ontario to non-Canadians), we buy butter by the pound, not
by the 454-gram-package - no matter what it says on the wrapper.

Also on the cooking theme, oven temperatures are measured in Fahrenheit and
recipe quantities are measured in cups, teaspoons and tablespoons.

For weather, summer temperatures are generally measured in Fahrenheit (because
it's just not that impressive to say, "Man, it's 40 degrees out!") but winter
temperatures are generally measured in Celsius (because it _is_ impressive to
say, "Man, it's minus 20 out!").

~~~
warwick
I'll concede defeat on this one. I've heard most of those examples but they
never even occurred to me. Other than my grandparents generation, I _never_
hear temperatures in Farenheit. Weird.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
No worries. Canada is nominally a metrickified country, but the enthusiasm
kind of fell off somewhere in the 1980s, and we never progressed much beyond
_soft metric_. That is to say, we still extensively use imperial
denominations, but expressed in metric terms - like the 454 g bar of butter,
or the 341 ml bottle of beer.

Other areas, like home construction, are still exclusively imperial. We use 8
foot 2-by-4 boards, not 2.4 m 5cm-by-10cm boards.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Easily findable in many places, quite possibly not literally true as to its
provenance, but still enlightening:

<http://www.funny2.com/old.htm>

