This seems to be the divide between science and perception. When citing
the science literature, the author pulls up metric units, since he/she
is reading them from the source article. I'm assuming that the authors
are U.S.-based, because then, they rely on their own conceptions of
distance units (i.e., in their own words) when noting distances in their
report. They are not "thinking metric." On the other hand, I recently
received a reply from the public relations director of the Royal
Melbourne Hospital in Australia. She was responding to my expression of
gratitude for the hospital's lobby memorial to the U.S. Army for its
renovation of their hospital during World War II. In noting the 1942
U.S. Army "tent city" near the hospital (BTW, my father was in that tent
city!), she said that it went on "for 180 hectares." This wasn't
"scientific." It was just plain modern Australian.
Michael Palumbo wrote:
I was listening to NPR (National Public Radio) this morning while
getting ready for work, and they aired a story about soy farming in
the Amazon. What caught my ear was that they used hectares when
talking about land size, but then used miles to describe the distance
between a region in Brazil and the mouth of the Amazon river.
I wrote them a polite message thanking them for using hectares, but
encouraging them to be consistent and use kilometres as well. If
anyone else would like to do the same, I would certainly encourage it.
If anyone wants to hear or read the story, here is the URL:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11375220
Additionally, I had previously written to my local affiliate (WHYY in
Philadelphia, PA) requesting temperature in both degrees Celsius and
Fahrenheit, but no change on that front. I'm not sure what else to do
there, except encourage further letter-writing.
Cheers,
Mike
--
Paul Trusten, R.Ph.
Public Relations Director
U.S. Metric Association, Inc.
www.metric.org
3609 Caldera Blvd., Apt. 122
Midland TX 79707-2872 USA
+1(432)528-7724
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://oleapothecary.blog.com
