On 23 Dec 2001, at 11:31, Fred H Olson wrote:

>I also regret the qwerty keyboard, inches and feet and the multitude of
>listserv email command formats but established standards or lack thereof
>are difficult to change no matter how disfunctional.

It's outside the scope of this forum, but some of us will fight you to the
death over arcane English measurements like "feet" and if you use these or
similar examples then you may have us wondering if you're missing something
about your other targets.
                                    -Kary

(Aside:  I can't think of anything good about "qwerty" myself but "feet"
are made up of 12 inches which is an easily factored number which is of
practical benefit to illiterates: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6 are all integers and
1/5 is rational (us idiots never divide by 5 anyway, we multiply by 2 and
shift the decimal point ;-), unlike the wonderful meter which trips you at
1/3 with an infinite fraction.  Secondly, our computerized society can do
any required conversions to other systems transparently and thirdly real
men ain't afraid of no stinkin' math and think the brain should be treated
like any other use-it-or-lose-it item).