Marco Cimarosti scripsit: > You could generalize it a bit: Alignment Of Metric And Imperial Units Whose > Difference Is So Small As To Be Pointless. > > E.g., I never understood why on earth metres and yards should be kept > different. In a public park somewhere in UK or Ireland I have seen the > following sign:
Because the yard isn't just an isolated unit, like the pound in various European countries. It's part of a coherent (if profoundly messy) system. If we reduce the yard by 9%, the inch has to shrink too, and the last thing we want is to try to fit a 1/4 inch bolt (6.35 mm) into a nut whose inside diameter is only 5.81 mm. It's bad enough to have to have two kinds of hardware already: having incompatible things both labeled "1/4 inch" would be the facilis descensus Averno indeed. -- John Cowan [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan "The exception proves the rule." Dimbulbs think: "Your counterexample proves my theory." Latin students think "'Probat' means 'tests': the exception puts the rule to the proof." But legal historians know it means "Evidence for an exception is evidence of the existence of a rule in cases not excepted from."
