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lah

lah on Chapter 2:
February 18, 2010 at 1:13 pm

I was not aware of Voltaire’s satire of the metric system. Measurement systems are an often overlooked aspect of cultural architecture.

When I read Boris Akunin’s excellent Russian historical novels, it’s not the social customs or geography that gives me pause as I read. It’s the Russian measurement systems. I’m reading along just fine and then I come to some measure of distance or volume that I don’t know, and the confusion unsettles me.

Note that the old Russian measurement system has two different kinds of “bottle” sizes for volume–vodka and wine. See Wikipedia for obsolete Russian measurements.

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