I knew it was cold in Washington, but I did a sort of double-take at the TV when I heard one of the BBC correspondents say, “It’s below zero here today,” before I realized he was talking modern British and using Celsius. In light of this sort of thing, it has long struck me as odd that when Weather.com lets you choose how it reports temperature to you the choices are: English and Metric.

Americans, of course, even those who voted for Obama, know that metric, in all its forms, is a Communist plot—something like soccer—and reject it out of hand. It was below freezing, but nowhere near below zero. Now put on your helmet and tackle somebody. Then check the big machine for its BTU output.