Last week, La Pine experienced 10 degrees Fahrenheit. I thought that was pretty cold.

Silly me.

As I get up this morning and glance at the thermometer, I do a double-take and end up staring at the meter for longer than I ever have. It showed MINUS 6.

That's Fahrenheit however. It doesn't sound too bad, really. But if you convert that to Celsius, that's 22 freaking degrees below freezing. Now that's cold.

And here comes my issue with Fahrenheit vs Celsius. Really, Dear Americans, what the f**k were you thinking when you implemented this hair-brained measure of Fahrenheit? Did you know that the majority of the rest of the world uses Celsius as a measure for hot and cold? Ever wonder why? That's right. Cause Celsius actually quite accurately describes the temperature state of the environment at any given moment.

Water freezes at 0 degrees (Celsius). At that point it turns to ice - making your life usually a whole lot more miserable, unless you're a hockey player, an ice skater or into luge, of course. So, hmmm, why would you want to attach the number 32 to that? What does 32 have to do with the water freezing?

Oh, I get it. It's a challenge. Kinda like the whole ounces, pound, quart, pint, inches and feet thing, eh? Is it really that unreasonable to ask that those units of measurement make sense to the mere mortal?

So anyway. On top of the cold, the power went out at 6am and stayed off until 8.30am. I lit candles, made a fire in my wood-burning stove, popped a kettle on it, and voila, 10 minutes later I had a steaming cup of Chai.

That sort of made it all better, but I'm still a little disturbed about the whole Fahrenheit thing.

While I've read no good explanation for the F vs C degrees, the reasoning (I've heard) for the 16oz to a pound reasoning is that 16 (and 12, which is commonly used and for this reason they divided the clocck this way) have more divisors. In 16, you have 1, 2, 4, 8 (and in 12, you 1, 2, 3, 4, 6) while in 10-based systems, you have 1, 2, and 5.

That doesn't make it right, I know. I'm freezing my ass off, too, if it makes you feel any better (my office is warm, thankfully).

Yes, thank you, Jake, as a matter of fact, it does make me feel better, knowing that I'm not the only watching icycle shiver ....

But as a response to your reasoning for the ounce as a weight measure - it's nice that you can divide 16 in more ways than 10. I'm sure somewhere someone is real grateful for that.

But for the rest of us who have to live a practical world - how many times can you divide 500 (grams to the pound - at least outside of the US)? More ways than 16, right? How many times can you divide 100 (centimeters in a meter)? And how much EASIER is it to divide those numbers by whatever factor you choose to?

I think we all agree that Ronald Reagan was useless - but he sure was onto something when we contemplated converting the US to the metric system ...

Fahrenheit predates Celsius by some twenty years (1724 vs. 1742), and wasn't even replaced by the Celsius system around the world til the 1960s and '70s.

The story I like of how it came to be was that the physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit was devising the scale according to his body temperature; by putting his body at what he thought was 100 degrees, it yielded a 32 degree freezing point of water.

Thank you, Wikipedia...

-8 in lakeview earlier this week! and its been ass cold in KF. Y'know, i'll take the wet windy misery of the coast over this almost any day.

38º Celsius in Argentina (don't envy me, I'm sweting my *** off)

Simone: I really find your blog interesting and relaxing. Your views are a break off my regular, boring, busy time.

Welcome to my blog, Natalia! What a thrill to have readers from so far away. :-)

I must admit though - 38 degrees sounds mighty good to me right now. I'll choose sweating over freezing any day...

Argentina is far away for you, but it is not far for me. I love this relativity. In Spanish we say "as far as China is", but... would that be true if I were actually in China? =)

I guess that the climate is never good enough (you know... the grass is always greener on the other side). That's why I try to enjoy every season, thinking how cold was it a couple of months ago, or how hot it will be in a couple of months (here we have a wide termperature range that varies from -5ºC minimum on July -winter- to 42ºC maximum on January -summer-).

Have a great holiday season! =)


Natalia