El Fri, Sep 12, 2003 at 09:51:12AM +0100, Howard Winter escribio: > > There's nothing "natural" about the metric system (see my other post) - the metre was supposed to be a > millionth of the distance from Paris to the North Pole, but I believe they got it wrong anyway. A year is No, it isn't, it's the 10000ave part of the distance from the equator to the poles. And was selected that way to be about the size of the former French unit of measure. Personaly, the metric system has much more sense than the imperial units. A cup is 1/4 liter, a long step is a meter, the mass of a liter of water is a kilogram, also here (in Chile, as many places in South America), the difference in numbers of adresses is in meters (so, my work is at 2247, my departament is at 924, so there is 1300 meters in between), the streets are separated by 100 meters (on average), etc. And here, half a liter of beer (or two glasses of 1/4 liter) is the right quantity! Daniel. -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body