@Eric: You hit on this in your post, but I'll say it simply: Standardization leads to greater communication, trust, and compatibility between products. All this leads to greater exposure to other cultures, which means richer diversity.
If I may go on a slight tangent: When I talk to people about SI, they usually say that the metric system makes a lot more sense, but then they keep on using the old measurement units. We need a way to show people that SI can make their personal lives much easier and to teach them how to integrate the metric system into their daily lives. Here are a few rules I try to follow: 1. When measuring something yourself, always use metric. 2. Never do any math with non-metric units without first converting them to metric values. 3. Never record any non-metric measurements. Always convert them to metric first. 4. When buying, always prefer products priced and/or labeled in metric. I know the USMA doesn't like the idea of doing conversions, but it seems to work well for me, and it's not a problem as long as I have a unit converter handy. Here are links to unit converters: GNU units: https://www.gnu.org/software/units/ For Android: http://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=units&fdid=info.staticfree.android.units (I'm a free software geek, so I must recommend GNU and F-Droid over Windows and Google Play.) Luther
