> I just love the waving American flag on the initial page. Gotta slam home the patriotism angle right away, ya know, so you can hook the rednecks. If it's got a FLAG on it, it's *GOT* to be good!

Yeah, that was laughable. It so clearly wasn't trying to analyze the subject with any degree of objectivity -- it was trying to advocate its agenda using every conceivable angle imaginable. A simple well-thought out objective argument would have been more convincing for the people most likely to be making such decisions.

I was also dubious of the claim that unit conversion isn't important -- that manipulating multiple values of like units is far more common. Well, maybe, but it doesn't mean unit conversion isn't often necessary. I convert between units all the time. Plus, if you add up enough measurements expressed in "inches," sooner or later you're going to need to convert to feet or yards or miles just to visualize the value.

What I *do* think is true, however, is that the base imperial units seem to be more suited to measuring the things humans tend to observe. It is true that degrees Fahrenheit have a finer resolution than degrees Celsius -- and as I often find the difference of a single degree Fahrenheit to be noteworthy, I wouldn't think using Celsuis, nearly half the resolution, would be desirable. With regard to measuring length, I think the metric system is missing a base unit between the centimeter and the meter (even those that use the metric system aren't likely to use the decimeter or find it an intuitive base unit). Lots of things in the human world are best expressed in terms of feet that can't be as intuitively expressed in the metric system. "It's about a foot long" says plenty to me, but were I to give that measurement in centimeters or a fractional part of a meter, I don't honestly think that would be as effective.

Part of that stems from my upbringing using imperial units (although I'm familiar with the metric system and use it now and then). But I suspect this objection of mine is not entirely due to bias.

*shrug* It's a subject I've given thought to before and come to much the same conclusions. I agree that easy unit conversion is nice, but it's obviously not so important we must immediately make everyone switch over to an unfamiliar system just for a perceived convenience that really wouldn't pay off for a generation or two anyway.