THOSE CURIOUS METRICS. Atlantic Blog has returned from holiday with praise for York Minster. There are other reasons to commend York, where the streets are gates, the gates are bars, and the bars are pubs, and the main British historical railway collection is not far from the cathedral. The best time to visit a cathedral is for Sunday worship, as cathedrals are best observed in operation, although what surprised me most was how closely the order of worship followed that in use at the Underwood Memorial Baptist Church. (I began describing myself as raised in the Anglican Baptist tradition and substantially backslid from there.)

It is, however, the metric system I wish to address. A common theme I heard from schoolteachers was how "logical" the French system was, all those powers of ten, and how messy all those conversions (meters to yards, liters to pints) were. The logic only makes sense if you work with it a lot. Screw up your tablespoons and have the cake fall, then you understand why getting the measure, not converting it, is what matters. What I suspect really killed the French system in the U.S. was baseball's brief fling with it. Suppose it's 402 feet to straightaway center. Paint a somewhat smaller 122.5 next to it and watch the reaction: decimals, bleah.