Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Mind those units!

We've never had this much garlic on hand. While shopping at safeway.com, Someone entered "1" next to Garlic, apparently missing that the units were "lbs.", not "heads". (Of all the perils of online grocery shopping, this is one I'd never thought of.) So over the next few weeks we'll need to consume garlic at several times our usual rate -- which will apparently present all kinds of benefits. Chicken cacciatore, Greek lentil soup, maybe hummus ... other ideas? One recipe calls for a whole chicken and 40 cloves of garlic; that would be the easy way out but I'm skeptical.

I once had a physics teacher who just couldn't stand it when we didn't pay attention to the proper units. Getting the wrong answer for mass or speed or charge was one thing, but writing that "the cyclist is moving at 60 km/sec" or "the water temperature drops to -23 K" would guarantee an exasperated little lecture in class. I wish he could see this.

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