Scale it (up or down) but scale it, please!

My brother and his family were visiting over the Summer and one of the questions he asked us was if, after so many years in the US, there were still things that shocked/surprised us... or whether we were so used to our environment that we did not even pay attention anymore.
We got use to the big cars, gallons of milk,  having pharmacies that look more like a supermarket than a pharmacy, people eating all the time.... but here are the answers I gave him:
1) The status of the infrastructure. We live in the wealthiest country in the world... and yet when I look at the status of the bridges, when I zigzag through the Center City streets to avoid foot-deep potholes, when I see all those shredded tires on the highways, I am still shocked.
2) The ramping obesity of the population, especially among young adults and children...
3) Everybody seems to have a lawyer (and a therapist?)... to the point that part of our life is defined by what I call the "fear-of-lawsuit", which in some way limits creativity, spontaneity and research.
4) The fact that millions of Americans still lack proper access to healthcare.
5) The fact that some streets in the suburb don't have a sidewalk for people to walk on...
6) On a more funny, albeit tricky, note, the fact that it's the only country that does not use the metric system (except in scientific settings). Think about it, even the Canadians and the Australians have adopted part of it... After so many years in the US, I still can't picture out a set amount of square feet, or worse, cubic feet. The first time I sat foot on a scale in the US, I had a 1/10th of second of scare because all of a sudden I felt really heavy!!
This system is so unpractical that bypass tools were invented to simplify it: nobody knows what size a queen/king size bed is in inches and very few people know how much a cup of flour weighs... The only time Americans use (most of them without realizing it) the metric system is when they go skying. "180 skis" actually mean that the skis are 1.80m tall...

All that to say that I was REALLY happy to read an article about digital scales in the New York times the other day (disclosure: the picture of the scale on this post comes from the article)...
While I would not be able to comment on the different brands displayed in the article, the additional comment I will make is that I love to have my children use our cooking scale and start experimenting with weighing different things (I don't like it that much when everything they weigh end up on the floor!!)  For bigger kids (and adults!!) it's obviously great for calculus... So don't be intimidated; you'll see that, like with most things in life, you'll get used to it. "Most things".. I am not sure I'll be able to still get used to all my points above!
Scale it! If not for you, do it for your children...