Dear Pat and others
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.
We get this
attitude in Britain as well. I'll never understand why it is that the media will
readily pander to those who claim not to understand perfectly simple concepts
such as temperatures in degrees Celsius or rainfall in millimetres, and yet are
quite dismissive of those who ask them to adopt a rational policy of a single
system of measurement in factual broadcasting and news reporting, with all the
convenience, simplicity and immunity to conversion errors that would
bring.
I could
understand it if they had a policy of dual measurement for British audiences
(imperial and metric) which they abided by until such times as the demand for
imperial were to decline to insignificant levels, but they don't do this. If you
listen to BBC news reports and weather forecasts you'll see and hear a random
mixture, sometimes in metrc sometimes imperial but rarely both at the same
time.
Now, obviously I
don't advocate dual measures and have no wish for that to become the norm, but
when as a viewer I complain about their inept handling of the issue
I resent being told that they have to continue to broadcast in imperial
units for the poor old folk who don't understand metric, when in fact those poor
old folk, if they were really that obtuse, would must be having a hard time of
it as it is. There is no way that their patterns of broadcasting can possibly
serve the needs of those who are genuinely left cold by metric only reporting,
nor those who unfamilair with imperial. In short it satifies no
one.
They are clearly
unwilling to burden themselves with consistent dual reporting or to clutter
their narrative with it. So I don't see any logical way out apart from the one
that most of us here would like to see.
Phil
Hall
