I have interspersed some remarks about each of your paragraphs in blue.
on 2005-11-21 19.13, Ezra Steinberg at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Here's an open question to Pat McNaughtin about a program I just saw tonight on PBS ...
My name is Pat Naughtin. I have not seen the program you refer to.
The program in question was about the effects of wild fires on plants an animals. It featured wild fires in Australia but later talked about wild fires elsewhere. The narrator sounded Australian and the show included news footage from what I presume was ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp) concerning the Australian wild fires and later the wild fires in California that were discussed.
It is interesting that you use the heritage word, 'footage'. This is also common among television journalists in Australia who also use this word. In doing so, of course, they are unaware that this single word gives the impression that videotape is measured in feet (and perhaps inches). The truth is that videotape is designed and made in millimetre widths and metre lengths. These are then dumbed down in the (USA dominated) film production industry to fractions of inches (as in 8 mm = 1/4 inch see the third dot point at: http://photoimagenews.com/videotap.htm ) or described in lines such as, 'The video tape had a 'footage' of 63 minutes'. Television folk are also influenced by imported programs from the USA such as, 'The Biggest Loser' that does everything in pounds and ounces, and 'Myth Busters', that is a masterpiece of 'dumbing down' as they have to take many aspects of science and engineering and then 'translate' these for the USA public from metric into old pre-metric measures.
The purpose of the above paragraph is to try to give you an idea of the muddle in the minds on journalists, editors, and television producers when they dumb down the data they are given by professional people who invariably work with metric units only.
Take the case of Australian fire fighters who, because of the number and danger of wild fires are extremely professional people. In the 1970s, fire fighters decided that using feet, inches, yards, miles, degrees Fahrenheit and other old pre-metric units was a 'reportable offence' because it endangered the lives of everyone on each fire truck and made fires much more difficult to fight. As a result of comprehensive training since then, metric units have been obligatory on every fire fighting unit in Australia.
I suppose that the purpose of the dumbing down of the television program is to cater to an 'international market' meaning retrograde people in the UK and USA who will scream loudly if they use the same metric units that Australian fire fighters use.
The two odd things I noticed were in the news footage and in the program narration. The news footage (with voice-over by the Australian reporter) repeatedly mentioned the size of the fire in "acres", but then talked (as I expected) about the temperature in Celsius. Can you tell us, Pat, if Australian news media still refer to large land areas in "acres" rather than "hectares" (or better "square kilometers")?
Australian fire fighter use Australian Ordnance maps that have been exclusively metric since the mid 1970s. To be able to report in acres requires a few things:
1 A desire to dumb down the data for your intended audience.Sadly for Australians, this 'dumbing down' mindset sometimes means that material that was produced for an international audience (UK and USA) is also played on Australian television to the detriment of our Australian metric culture.
2 Someone who can read the scale on an Australian map and can identify 100 metre intervals.
3 The ability to multiply 100 metres by 100 metres to find out the area of the fire in hectares.
4 A conversion table to convert the hectares read from the map into the old pre-metric acres.
In the program narration I heard what sounded like an arbitrary mixture of Imperial and metric. Examples of the first were "miles", "feet" and "gallons of petrol", whereas I also heard "centimeters", "meters", and "degrees Celsius". So, distance was at different times described in Imperial and at other times in metric with no apparent rhyme or reason.
It is highly likely that these would be an arbitrary mixture of measures. However, I doubt that you could use the word, 'Imperial' in this context. Television journalists, editors, and producers have little knowledge of metrology, the theory underlying modern measurement, so when they look up a table or a website to dumb down data for their selected audience you cannot be sure which data they would use. They could use Imperial, or U.S. Customary, or any of the old references that appear in their old home encyclopedia.
I didn't watch the final credits so I don't know the names of the organizations that produced the show, but I am presuming it was destined for the American market (at least this version of the program), which I assume (hope?) explains the use in some parts of Imperial units. Should I deplore the fact that part of the narration used Imperial units or should I rejoice that metric is so ingrained in the Australian psyche that at least some of the time metric surfaced in the narration despite the intention of the producers (if I'm guessing right) to provide a narration strictly for a US audience?
You should rejoice that predominately Australians use the metric system for almost all that they do every day. You could also wonder at a society that tolerates the dumbing down of reality to pander to a small minority of nay-sayers by a group in the media, many of whom are functionally innumerate. The costs of doing this are enormous, (see 'The costs of non-metrication at: http://metricationmatters.com/articles ) but perhaps the Australian experience might provide some thoughts and directions for policy makers in the USA as you proceed toward your inevitable metrication.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin ASM (NSAA), LCAMS (USMA)*
PO Box 305, Belmont, Geelong, Australia
Phone 61 3 5241 2008
Pat Naughtin is the editor of the free online monthly newsletter, 'Metrication matters'.
You can subscribe by going to http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
* Pat is the editor of the 'Numbers and measurement' chapter of the Australian Government Publishing Service 'Style manual – for writers, editors and printers', he is an Accredited Speaking Member (ASM) with the National Speakers Association of Australia, and a Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist (LCAMS) with the United States Metric Association. For more information go to: http://metricationmatters.com
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