Dave Uhring wrote:
> On Sat, 10 May 2008 14:43:25 +0200, Dick Hoogendijk wrote:
>
>> So far universal languages/dates are only used in SF books.
>
> And units, too. I had a friend in Vancouver, BC, who after hearing the
> weather forecast using SI units on radio asked what the temperature was in
> REAL units.
>

It's all about what you are used to! I can convert Fahrenheit to
Celsius or vice versa but, having grown up with Fahrenheit I'm used to
68 degrees as "room temperature" and 98.6 degrees as the "normal"
temperature of the human body. I FEEL Fahrenheit whereas Celsius is
merely an intellectual exercise.

SI units are how the English units are defined but milk is sold in
quarts rather than liters and gasoline is sold in gallons. Butter is
sold by the pound rather than the kilogram. There was a brief period in
the late 1980s or early 1990s when an effort was made to sell gasoline
by the liter instead of the gallon. The idea failed to receive "popular
acceptance"! Things are marked with the SI units as well as English
units but that's about as far was we have gotten!