The following was sent a moment ago to the editor of my local paper, with copy to the Associated Press's feedback address.
Jim Dear Editor: The Post and Courier has been running a series of features on the Olympic sports. The one in Sunday's edition is called "Spotlight on: bobsled". In this one, as in all but the first couple of "Spotlight on:" features, the dimensions have all been coverted from the original metric units. Virtually all Olympic event rules are given in metric units, which anyone completing high school since 1960 has been exposed to. The rules for this sport state that the track is to be between 1200 and 1300 meters long and today's writers say that this track is 4400 feet long (which is more than 1300 meters, by the way). Why did they give us this length in feet? The Associated Press publishes a Stylebook in which their writers are told to use metric units where those appear in the original. The AP writers for this feature are not doing that. Why not? I urge the Post and Courier editors to take up this matter with the Associated Press and let us know what resolution was obtained. If they claim that "most Americans don't understand metric units", ask to see their data. Previous feedback sent by me to the AP has yet to result in a reply. Thank you. James R. Frysinger -- James R. Frysinger University/College of Charleston 10 Captiva Row Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Charleston, SC 29407 66 George Street 843.225.0805 Charleston, SC 29424 http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cert. Adv. Metrication Specialist 843.953.7644
