Most people I know prefer being warmed up from the cold rather than cooled down from the heat. I am sure that this is selective bias – there are plenty of people that love the summer. I, however, do not.

  My ideal temperature is between fifteen and twenty degrees Celsius. I would rather not deal with any temperatures above that. However, where I live, the average temperature is consistently above twenty degrees from October to April – which is to be expected, that’s about half of the year – but still. I wish I could live somewhere colder. I probably could. But I like Canberra, so I’ll probably just stay here and complain.

  I, like most sane people, use Celsius rather than Fahrenheit. Apart from being easier to spell, Celsius has has been made the standard around the world, and all but thirteen countries use it. The history behind the switch is quite interesting. Unlike the rest of the world, the United States did not make the switch from Fahrenheit to Celsius mandatory, instead making it optional. But of course, in true United States Capitalist fashion, it was too expensive to remake all their gadgets and gizmos to measure in Celsius and retrain workers.

  I’ve heard that one of the arguments for Fahrenheit is that the temperature scale is more accurate because the size between each degree is smaller – when that’s total rubbish. Not in the sense that it isn’t true, but in the sense that that doesn’t make it more useful. In fact, the smaller variation in degrees can hinder your description of temperature. It is so much simpler to have the “outside temperatures” as a scale from minus five to forty-five than twenty to one hundred and fifteen. Celsius can be very easily broken up into five five-degree sections.

Minus five to five: Frosty lawns. Meat will be okay for a few days if left outside.

Five to fifteen: Chilly.

Fifteen to twenty-five: The “ideal” temperature. Not too cold, not too hot.

Twenty-five to thirty-five: beach weather. Air-cons and ice-creams. Both things you can eat.

Thirty-five to forty-five: Literal death. I’d rather die than be in these temperatures. Get me out of here or I’ll boil into steam.