Wow. I just must say all this is a new field of debate for me and I argue with everyone. When they started teaching us metrics in school, there was all this stuff about ease of use. They never told us why we might still use Imperial-- I didn't even know it was called that. The only reason teachers gave me for its use was that it was what everyone was used to.

There was even a filmstrip. Something along the lines of:

The Inchworm goes along marking rulers. Squeeze, stretch, notch. Squeeze, stretch, notch, all along the ruler every inch. Someone tells him about metrics.
Inchworm: Bah! Metrics-shmetrics. I'll go on using inches forever. [or some such argument]

Inchworm is taken on some excursion or another [never once while asking his boss for a vacation, just up and leaving.]

Others: Look how easy conversions are. 1 centimeter = 10 milimeters. One meter = 100 cm! Coooome, jooooooin us!

Inchworm: Wow, metrics really are easier!

He goes along his merry way, back at his place of work, marking off centimeters


At the end, you think the inchworm is stupid unless you have heard reasons for IS, which are only given out of school.

I'm not sure if this is true for all public schools, but my old K-8 encouraged normal thinking, of whatever the opposite of free is.
"Yay! You wrote the exact same paper as the rest of the class! Gold stars all around! Except for you, _____-- for your essay, entitled The Way the Pilgrims Really Treated the Indians: Separatists in the New World, which is NOT the heading I gave you, I sentence you to fifteen years of Re-education!" [Men in uniforms appear from shadows, dragging the screaming third grader away]. His/her parents are deemed unfit and their children are taken into custody.

Well, you get the picture.

Wow, now I have to sift through the other side of the argument and decide my position. How fun!

Chr"in my effort to cleanse myself of my ...s I am becoming punchy and uncreative-- thus the ramblings-on and such"is