Below is an e-mail sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED] today. Floods of these kinds of comments to these blind filmmakers will speed up the metrication process in the US. Go to it.
Sirs, How disappointing that Stephen Baldwin, the narrator of Power Zone (a Discovery Channel documentary about satellites and the ski dome in Tokyo) used only your customary units to describe all the measurements and dimensions in it. It's hard to imagine in this day and age that you Americans are completely blind to what's going on in the world right now, and, worse, that you're all so arrogant that you really don't care what people think about you. How can you possibly carry on like this, not even realising that you're the last country in the world to use the metric system? Your documentary was completely spoilt because of the use of measures that only people within your country can understand. What's the point in sending your documentaries outside the US if no-one can understand them? People like you should not be perpetuating the acute embarrassment caused to your countrymen every time you show scientific documentaries like this by using an antiquated and dead system of measures. It's really time you do something and ask your film producers to use metric measurements. EVERYONE (including Americans) can then understand what you're talking about. This is the 21st century in case you don't realise it, and at present you're alone in a metric world. No more 'feet' and 'Fahrenheit please. Our kids don't want to know. Sincerely, Mike Joy Perth, Australia cc: US Metric Association listserv.
