>Being originally from Brazil, I was intrigued by the statement by
>Richard Park:

I thought it was Brasil?

>According to the following Wikipedia page (hardly the most
>authoritative source, but often helpful), only three countries (USA,
>Liberia, and Myanmar) do not use the metric system:
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system

They only forgot Britain... a minor oversight.

>It seems that the world is divided between "point" and "comma"
>countries. I don't think it is fair to say that one use is superior
>to the other, but it is rather a matter of tradition and history.
>And yes, it can be quite confusing if you do not know which system
>is being used.

It's not a matter of superiority. One applies where the other does
not. Language or nationality doesn't come into it. Decimals give the
meaning to "decimal currency". A comma is not a decimal and the two
forms of punctuation are not interchangable. In mathematics a decimal
point denotes a fraction; a comma doesn't even exist in math (I
think). And a written decimal currency sum IS a mathematical (or at
leadst arithmetic) statement.

>To keep the message shell-related, how did they represent decimal
>separators when using money cowries or scaphopods as money? :-)

Wampum (or equivalent) beads...

>Let us not tackle the question of decimal separators until we deal with a
>more fundamental and problematic item; DATES!
>
>Americans abbreviate dates as month/date/year [8/22/07] whereas Europe
>seems to use date/month/year [22/8/07]. Not much of a problem for
>Aug.22nd, however, it can cause a problem for May 10, 2007: 5/10/07 (USA)
>vs. 10/5/07 (Europe)[I would read this as Oct 5th, 2007].
>
>This difference in style causes me more headaches than commas and periods
>in currency.

Yes, terrorism struck on 11/9. Date form intuitively is from one end
of the scale to the other ie smallest to largest unit or vice-versa.
Only the US uses the counterintuitive M-D-Y. It's about time the US
gummint did something about that.

>I think in Japan they always (or most commonly) use 4 digits for the
>year, but if only two digits are used, then the potential for
>confusion with the two styles you provided can be even greater. I am
>not aware of other style that uses year/day/month, so if you see a
>date entry starting with a four-digit number (year), it is very
>likely it is in the Japanese style.

Actually the Japanese have their own calendar, and this is used in
official paperwork. Date/month are OK, but their years date from some
Japanese historical decision, not western. I imagine that foreign &
Japanese dates cause a lot of headaches in Japan!

>On a shelling note; do you suppose that the right-handed snails look down on
>the left-handed ones as wrong?

Mit certainment. That's why sinistrals are in the minority, though
there are those who regard sinistrals as of more value.

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