"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
|
| The least he can do is extend the same courtesy to the
| metric system.

Yes, fair enough. I think my opinion lacks focus. You're obviously correct
in that any system intended to be consistent can be used consistently as
long as its practitioners take appropriate care. Obviously someone who uses
meters and kilograms may also (inconsistently, according to SI) use Celsius,
and that's not really any better than Fahrenheit when it comes to scientific
applications. That's why SI wisely uses Kelvin for temperature. If you're
asking me to justify the confusion between variants of English units, of
course I can't.

I think what I was trying to look at -- and what got sidetracked into the
consistency argument -- was the notion that SI was physically-based. That
is, derived from "natural" basic relationships and not from the size of King
George's shoe or whatever. When you get right down to it, the basic pieces
of any measurement system will be arbitrary.

Let me emphasize that I'm not trying to trash *any* measurement system. Are
there good arguments for using SI and also the metric system? Yes, there
are.

--
|
The universe is not required to conform | Jay Windley
to the expectations of the ignorant. | webmaster @ clavius.org