Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for June 20, 2011

More Pecks and the world will be a happier place!

Hobbes is corn fusing the issue.

“Ohhhh, I love you a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck …”

Math and love are swimming somehow into one another!

A peck is the actor who played Atticus in To Kill A Mockingbird. (Gregory Peck)

A bushel is a unit of dry volume…this is an approved text book? At least Hobbes is accurate…

So, a bushel of volume is equal to 4 pecks of volume? That I understand….and was raised that way when we loaded up veggies into bushel baskets….so, did Bill Watterson mess up by dragging the weight factor into it?

The English system is now metric, thank goodness ;-). SI units are so much more logical for science and technology.

I’m old enough to have had to learn my 12x table, and 14x for stones (which Americans don’t seem to use) but pecks and bushels had dropped out of use way before my time.

You’ll get it someday Calvin.

Love and math are 2 words I have never used in a sentence together – until now.

Good Morning, marg, Mike & ♠Lonewolf♠!

adubman,“More Pecks and the world will be a happier place!”A peck on the lips [smooch] is worth two in the bushel.You do the math!

… but it’s volume, not weight.

A peck is actually two gallons. I’m glad it’s a measure of dry volume, because two gallons would make for one really wet smooch!

It’s like comparing Granny Smith with Cortland apples. Not all pecks are the same, Calvin. With your extensive vocabulary, you should know that “a peck is a peck is a peck” doesn’t always apply. Some pecks are different from others.Consider the source; Hobbes has a one-track mind where quick smooches (pecks) are concerned. Think Susie!

I had a science teacher many years ago that took the old saying “A pint’s a pound the world around,” and told us why that is not true.

This was one of my favorite C&H comics growing up! Do I say that a lot? Probably. But this one—seriously.

One of the reason the US (well, English, actually) system is so screwed up is that originally, the next unit of measure was created by dooubling the previous one. Over time, some of the intermediate units dropped out, leaving us with the awkward system we have. Originally, it was:2 gallons = 1 peck2 pecks = 1 kenning2 kennings = 1 bushel

Yes, we’re right up there with those two other advanced nations, Myanmar and Liberia, in being the three countries in the world not using the SI measures. Funny thing – the US threw off the British monetary plan in favor of decimalized currency, but we didn’t adopt a similar measurement system from the one country that supported the revolution the most. One of the reasons is that the 19th century American religious nuts (yes, we had those people back then, too) felt that the metric system was “atheistic”. Here’s what they had to say:

“A periodical called The International Standard was published during the 1880’s by the Ohio Auxiliary of the Society, in Cleveland. The president of the Ohio group, a civil engineer who prided himself on having an arm exactly one cubit in length, had this to say in the first issue: ‘We believe our work to be of God; we are actuated by no selfish or mercenary motive. We depreciate personal antagonisms of every kind, but we proclaim a ceaseless antagonism to that great evil, the French Metric System. . . . The jests of the ignorant and the ridi­cule of the prejudiced, fall harmless upon us and deserve no notice. … It is the Battle of the Standards. May our banner be ever upheld in the cause of Truth, Freedom, and Universal Brotherhood, founded upon a just weight and a just measure, which alone are acceptable to the Lord.’”Actually, in 1866, congress oficially adopted the metric system but failed to enact actual implementation of the standards. Officially, US weights and measures are defined by metric standards.

Look at that 3rd panel. Calvin is still puzzling over the math, and Hobbes is daydreaming about a "quick smootch’ with a far-away expression in his eyes and a whimsical smile on his face.And we know exactly what each is thinking. How did Mr. Watterson DO that with a few lines of ink on a piece of paper?

Bushel and a peck is another song you can’t get out of your mind. The all time favorite at being unabe to quit humming is Its a small world isn’t it. Oh hell, now I’m stuck on it —-Isn’t it? isn’t it? isn’t it????

LOL This strip is good!

Calvin’s in good company; Isaac Asimov used those very units arguing for the Metric System in one of his columns. “Two quarts make a pottle. A pottle? Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of a pottle!”

I think it’s funny when they refer to miles or Fahrenheit on Star Trek — apparently the One World Government of the distant future will still use antiquated American units. At least by the time of Voyager they’d switched to ‘C’ temperatures! So in 400 years, the U.S. will finally have caught up to the rest of the world…

Hobbes preferes the love version!

It’s funny.

I am feeling a bit peckish!

I don’t know how much they weigh, but a peck , in the long run, can be very very expensive

You can tell I’m a teacher. If Calvin asked me what’s a peck, I would respond, “A quarter of a Bushel.”

Quick smooches to Susie?

And just what is wrong with as system wherein a measure of length is “4 barleycorns round and dry laid end to end.?”

Hee hee…my grandmother used to sing me “Bushel and a Peck” when I was a kid! One of my faves. :)

JohnnyDiego: Guys & Dolls by Frank Loesser, In the movie version, a nightclub act sung by Vivian Blaine (who also created the role on Broadway) and the Goldwin Girls. I have often wondered if the chorus girls’ off key nasal sound is in the score, or if they audition the chorus members from those who naturally sound that way.

Calvin! Switch to metric system and your life will be easy.

Smooching . . . that’s just about all Hobbes ever seems to think about these days! Can’t say as I blame him though. I think pecks in the form of smooches are much better than the mathematical variety too!  ;-)

Shouldn’t the book define “peck” as well? And who studied this in first grade?

I remember studying this. Ugh. And then when we got that down pat, metric happened (In Canada.)

I was always really good at mathematics until we got to addition and subtraction….

khpage said, less than a minute ago

I was always really good at mathematics until we got to addition and subtraction….Me too! :-D

The USA flirted with the metric system a couple of decades ago. The height of that absurdity was the labeling of baseball fields with distances from home plate in both English and metric units. Fortunately, football fields resisted that temptation. Of course, we could have kept the English system for sports fields and switched everything else to metric, but for some reason we did not. In a sense, though, the English system is more modern in that it is mostly binary, which is computer-friendly, Vs. the decimal metric system, which is not. Now, why are there 12 inches in a foot rather than 8, 10, or 16? Why do all nations measure time in base sixty and 12, rather than in base 10? This all has to do with an ancient civilization which is no longer around. Personally, I think we should have a number system where pi is exactly equal to 3. That would make my work life simpler, but I would have 1.9099 kids. That would be more complicated.

I don’t think I’d heard “A bushel and a peck / And I’ll break your pretty neck,” but I can pretty much guarantee it wasn’t made up by any horror writer. Kids are always making up violent and/or insulting lyrics to syrupy-sweet songs.One thing I’ve noticed in TV and movies from the UK is that people still don’t use the metric system consistently when they talk, but I suppose that’s because they didn’t go full-on metric until 40 years or so ago.

We sang it, “And a rope around your neck!” Geez!

Calvin was smarter than I am know ,but I personally do not care what a peck is.

Also, don’t forget that a US gallon is not he same as an Imperial (UK) gallon. 1 Imp gallon = 1.20095 US gallons.

Wait till Calvin finds out about the Metric system…

Thanks for telling me to stop 9 hours after I posted it. Even though I specifically requested no thank you’s, several have been posted, so I guess not all feel as you. Not everyone follows the same comics you do. I for one don’t follow this one. I’m only looking today to see if there was an issue with using my recipe that made it unclear.Since I don’t follow this, any comment you post in reply will probably go unread by me.No good deed …

Huh, that’s funny. Cause in first grade I was learning addition and subtraction, not bushels and pecks.

tries Cal it ’s for you ….

It’s all about the smoochies for Hobbes. Nothing adds up quite like it.

I think Hobbes isn’t good at math because Calvin isn’t.

@JohnnyDiego:The original song “A Bushel and a Peck” is from the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls and I believe the correct words from the musical are what margueritem put in. However, there are lots of parodies of Broadway songs out there, so that’s probably what you learned.