Three U.S. Speed Bumps

3 Inexplicable Things

As any fule kno, I yield to no man for the love of my adopted country.  I am an American by choice, and doubleplusproud I am to be that.

However:  there are three things peculiar to the U.S. that got up my nose soon after I arrived here, and they have continued to bug the hell out of me ever since.

1) Date format:  I know that we can do pretty much anything we want because Murka, but FFS why do we insist on mm/dd/yy (or /yyyy ever since Y2K) when the rest of the world uses dd/mm/yyyy?  It makes no sense, forces one to insert an unnecessary comma when writing out the date — e.g. November 19 COMMA 2024, to prevent numbers running into each other — when going with the universal format would just make things easier.  For everybody.

2) Gallons:  I have no problem with using Imperial weights and measures, because they make things easier for everyday life over the artificial metric system.  But why the hell do we have a liquid gallon that is smaller than the Imperial gallon?  I was looking at a lovely old car’s specs the other day, and saw that it had a “tiny” 15-gallon fuel tank — and then realized that it was a Jaguar, and they were quoting Imperial gallons (in this case 18 U.S. gallons).  I mean, we don’t have a mile that’s shorter than an Imperial mile — we could just go metric for that, don’t get me started — so why a use a smaller gallon measure?

3) Floor numbers:   When you step into an elevator / lift in any developed country outside the U.S., you see the selector thus:

…but in the U.S., it’s:    

Why no ground floor?  Once again, it’s something we do that nobody else does, and it often leads to confusion when talking to a non-Murkin.  FFS, every building has a floor that’s at ground-level, so why not use the “G” and say “ground floor”?

No doubt there are all sorts of sound reasons why we Murkins have gone our own way — and don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with that mindset, e.g.:

…but I do need to wave my hands when such non-conformity makes absolutely no sense at all.

In all three of the above cases.

34 comments

  1. I spit on your “dd/mm/yyyy”. It’s too difficult to sort.

    “yyyy-mm-dd” forever and devil take the hindmost.

    Why yes, yes, I have been drinking wine of various colours and provenances. My head doesn’t hurt yet, but it will.

    2. The Navy went to great lengths to browbeat me into ddMONyy, and thirty years+ since I retired I still use it everywhere. So far, nobody has raised an issuesd. 01AUG24.

      Why do the Brits insist on the Imperial gallon and furlongs per fortnight?

      Also, no 13th floor in Murica.

      Wait until you try guns in an air-conditioned space!

  2. These are all easy to explain.
    1. Do you say “One August 2024”? No of course you don’t. You say “August First 2024”, hence 8/1/2024 and very sensible. I can’t explain why I date checks and documents “1 August 2024”. Pure cussedness, I think.
    2. We don’t use Pounds, Shillings, and Pence, either and fuck the empire.
    3. Nobody counts from zero. You count starting at one. (Show me your zero finger, no not that one.) Also, zero-based systems have caused no end of trouble in the world and the G floor is floor zero. Programmers will tell you it’s one of the two biggest problems in software. Ask anyone.
    Fred’s right about the date, also.

    1. As an aside, someone tried to explain to me how Pounds, Shillings, and Pence was a genius system because workers, until fairly recently, were paid in cash and the PSP system allowed for even amounts and fractions whether the workers worked 5 days, 5 1/2 days, 6 days, 7 day, or whatever. I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now, but apparently, all that was jettisoned with decimalization and here’s your check, Bob.
      I imagine that 5-quarts-to-a-gallon is based on some equally arcane historical bullshit. And how can it be a “quart” if there are five of them?

    2. 1. Uncle Kenny’s right; aside from “The Fourth of July” we don’t put the day first when speaking so of course we don’t put it first when writing. I honestly don’t know: how do non-US countries speak a date?
      2. Not being a car guy where such an discrepancy might be a slightly confusing issue, this is a matter of complete indifference to me. But, really, how big of a deal is this? When you pull your car into the gas station you’re not doing math to calculate how many gallons to put in, are you?
      3. Again, how big a deal is this? It doesn’t take much thought to get in the elevator and recognize the pattern of the buttons. No G? Well then, 1 must be the ground floor. Besides, it’s far from universal that there’s no G; I’ve been in plenty of both methods and it’s only when they throw in a M that it gets dicey. Is that Main? Mezzanine? Something else?

      1. In modern elevators, the floor you generally enter/exit on is marked with a star, e.g., ★1 or ★L or ★G.

      2. I have a Brit co-worker (well, he’s Lithuanian, but he lives in Liverpool and has a STRONG Brit accent…) and he speaks the way they write it there — 1 Aug 24 (yes, they don’t do “2024” they just do “24.”). Seems that the speech has adapted to follow the writing.

  3. Today is 1 August 2024, as any veteran will tell you. Save all that 2024-08-01 crap for computers too stupid to sort ordered categories.

    As much as I like Imperial gallons, I’m mystified by the fact that they’re five QUARTs. Kinda messes up the whole binary-ness of our otherwise sensible liquid measures (2 cups = 1 pint, 2 pints=1 quart, 4 quarts= &c.)

    1. > Save all that 2024-08-01 crap for computers too stupid to sort ordered categories.

      It’s not that they’re too stupid, it’s that it adds un-necessary complexity to the code and means you have to add sorting algorithms into everything.

  4. So when I retire for the evening, I walk upstairs to my bedroom on the First Floor???

  5. I’ve designed thousands of buildings over the last half century. All of them have floors numbered 1 through whatever. The relationship with the “ground” is irrelevant. Ground frequently slopes, and in various directions. The front of a building might be at “ground level” and the back of the building might be “above ground level” or “below ground level”.

    I agree, the gallons thing is just a pain in the ass and I wish someone would get a handle on it.

    Same with weights, specifically tons, or tonnes.
    Also speeds, mph, and whatever they use for boats, and planes.

    Dates?
    01Jan1955, of course. It’s sort of self explanatory.

    1. I was going to raise the question of nautical miles vs. statute miles, but you already covered it.

      1. The nautical mile actually has some relation to reality, in that it is 1/60 of 1 degree of latitude, or 1 MOA. It’s also close enough to 2,000 yards that the difference is generally ignored.

  6. From a purely psychological vantage point I agree with Kim on dates (smallest unit of time to largest unit of time, or if you wish, the reverse order) but it took me YEARS to become automatic with the U.S. date system on correspondence and paperwork seeing as I too was an immigrant at age 18 onward (with a few twists and turns).

    As to U.S. gallons (yes, just telling King George to take a hike) and floors, well, whatever makes your socks roll down. I personally like -2 -1 0 1 2 3 etc. all numeric (engineer) since B and G or T make no sense to anyone that is not from NYC.

    So is second basement level for the parking garage is 2B or not 2B?

  8. The whole gallon thing is because the gallon was defined in the Magna Carta as being eight pounds. Thus leading to the whole cooking axiom of “A Pint’s a Pound the World Around.” The UK changed the definition of a gallon after the US split off, so we kept the old version.

    1. Sort of. The Magna Carta did specify 8 pounds to the gallon, but not 8 pounds of what. The volume varied based on what was being measured. They ended up with differently sized gallons for different things. There was a wine gallon, an ale gallon, and others. When we split off, we standardized the gallon and selected the volume of the wine gallon to be the universal gallon. When Britain eventually did the same, they selected the larger volume of the ale gallon. No doubt in a kind of dick measuring contest with their ex-colonials. 😉

  9. I have no idea whether this is still the case, but back in the 1960s, my dad attended the University of Cincinnati, which is in a very hilly section of the city, so you could enter a building, go up 3 floors, and exit the building on the other side. So what the university did was assign the same number to all of the floors at the same elevation. Thus, you could enter a building on the 2nd floor, go up to the 5th floor, exit the building on the other side, walk to the next building over, and walk in on the 5th floor. More importantly, this standard ensured that if they joined buildings by adding an extension, you didn’t switch from the 3rd floor to the 4th floor by walking down a hall until they renumbered all the rooms in one of the buildings.

  10. One last comment:

    If I write 2024-08-01, everyone knows that 2024 is the year, 08 is the month, and 01 is the day. If I write 01/08/2024, people don’t know if I’m an American referring to January 8th or a European referring to August 1st.

    You can, of course, use an abbreviation for the month instead, e.g., 01-Aug-2024. However, I’ve mostly seen that format with Oracle DBs and screw Oracle.

    1. The Air Force mandated 01AUG24 format until Y2K. Not sure about other services, or what the standard is today. I assume 01AUG2024, but IDK.

  13. As far as I know, there are 4 quarts to a gallon. At least, that’s what they taught us 3rd grade.

    1. There are. But as pointed out above, there were TWO definitions of quarts extant — wine, and all other liquids, e.g. water, milk and ale.

  14. Not mentioned here but in the title: actual speed bumps! First mentioned in 1906 in New Jersey then later “invented” by a physicist in in Missouri in 1953.. proving once again how dumb smart people can be.

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