The humorist Dave Barry has more than once suggested "millipedes" as an imaginary unit of measurement (for example, 120 miles = 2,342,424,323.3432 millipedes), poking fun at the inscrutability of the metric system, at least to us Americans. But in truth, it's our measurement system, often referred to as the English customary measures, that is the strange one. Twelve inches in a foot, 5,280 feet in a mile. And don't forget the furlong (660 feet), bushel (about 149 cups) and gallon (768 teaspoons). The English system of measurements appears to be the fever dream of a crazy person.

Anyone...