Python "why" questions

[Dan Sommers]

On Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:56:22 -0400, AK wrote:

> Contrast this with _one_ example that was repeated in this thread of
> there being ground floor, 1st floor, 2nd, and so on. However! Consider
> that ground floor is kind of different from the other floors. It's the
> floor that's not built up over ground, but is already there -- in case
> of the most primitive dwelling, you can put some sawdust over the
> ground, put a few boards overhead and it's a "home", although probably
> not a "house". But does it really have what can be officially called a
> "floor"?

That's the perfect example, although perhaps for an [apparently] 
unintended reason <g>:  I think that the notion of a qualitatively 
different "ground floor" is European, or at least that's the way I 
remember it from my high school French class way back in the late 1970s.  
In the U.S., when you walk into a building (even a very tall commercial 
building), that's the first floor, and when you go up a level, that's the 
second floor, and all the room/suite/office numbers are two hundred and 
something.  I also seem to recall that some European buildings have a 
mezzanine floor between the ground floor and the floor whose reference 
number is 1, but again, high school was a long time ago.

Dan