Peter Samuel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Thu, 5 Oct 2000, Dave Sill wrote:
>>
>> >It's like comparing America
>> >to Australia. Why do America have to make everything back-to-front
>> >for us?
>>
>> Such as?
>
>I'll bite that one. Here's my short list off the top of my head.
Brett implied that the US was intentionally being different. I think
your examples are perfectly typical international differences.
> - we each drive on different sides of the road
US and Canada do it one way. UK and Australia do it the other. There's
no clear international standard.
> - we describe dates differently mm/dd/yy vs dd/mm/yy
mm/dd/yy is silly. dd/mm/yy is better, but I use yyyy-mm-dd, which is
ISO-compatible and sorts nicely.
> - we tell time differently, eg quarter past 9 vs quarter after
> nine
Same difference.
> - we're metric, the USA isn't (and Canada still hasn't quite made
> up its mind yet, even after almost 30 years. And if you think
> otherwsie, why do they sell coffee/meat by the pound here?)
We do some metric. E.g., nutritional information labels are metric. UK
is half and half, too.
> - North American light switches are up for on, but in Oz they are
> down for on.
They toggle, for Peter's sake! If it's dark, flip the danged switch
and see if it gets brighter. Sheesh. :-)
> - Australian power points (or power outlets if you don't know what
> I'm talking about) all have switches on the outlet itself, not at
> the wall.
Oh, that's *handy*...walk into a room and fumble behind the furniture
looking for the light switch. Gee, I can't imagine why we put them on
the wall...
> - typically, North Americans have a North American centric view of
> the world, while people in Oz tend to be, on the whole, more aware
> of the rest of the world. (I know, a sweeping generalisation and North
> Americans have improved greatly since I first encountered them on
> mass in 1978).
Of course we have a North Amercian centric view of the world: we're
the most powerful and important country in the world. If we were a
backwater like Canada or Australia, we'd be paying a lot more
attention to other countries like the US, too.
1/2 :-)
-Dave
