Re: Different Formats for Different Countries -- Variable Density B&W

John wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 30 Oct 2006 10:00:57 -0800, David Nebenzahl
> <nobody@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 
> >And why, pray tell, would I want to do that? Just as I may ask why we
> >(the U.S., and even, for that matter, parts of the UK) should abandon
> >our venerable measurement system in favor of the metric system? (Don't
> >know if you're aware of it, but there's *trememdous* oppostion to
> >metrificiation both here in the U.S. and abroad.)
> 
> As someone who considered being a machinist, I can think of a huge
> number of instances where the metric system is vastly superior. For
> starters is't a base 10 system. How many fingers do you have ? It's
> natural to use a base 10 system of measurements. Now it might have
> been quite different if we were all born with 5 fingers + 1 thumb  ;>)
> But just think of the implications of using a base 10 system of
> centimeters/decimeters/meters and milliters/decaliters/liters versus
> inches/feet/yards and ounces/pints/quarts/gallons. It's much the same
> as using the precision of decimal versus fractions. It's still my
> opinion that this was one of the major factors that helped Japan
> production quality outstrip American engineering in the late 50's ~
> 70's. Have you ever worked on cars built in those years ? Man did they
> have quality issues !
> 
> In short the metric system is far more precise and natural than using
> any other common set of measurements.

I would say it's more precise, but not more natural.
Listing my height as 1.8292682927 meters instead of
simply noting I'm 6 feet even seems rather clumsy..
In any case, I function perfectly well with both
systems (because I choose to...) and would always 
resist any "one size fits all" system being forced 
onto us citizens by any government.