I would have been impressed with the Federal agency releasing the
amount of land in metric. But the Beeb? No...not impressed. They
report in near 100% metric anyway.
Quoting Ezra Steinberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Dear USMA mailing list:
Too often we see shared on this list instances of information
originally given in metric units (from an organization or
governmental body located outside the USA) that is "dumbed down" (as
many list members have put it) to Imperial or US Customary units in
news reports, magazine articles, etc here in the States.
Tonight I was pleased to hear an instance of "smarting up". The BBC
(broadcast over our National Public Radio network) reported tonight
that a US Federal agency announced it was going to auction off
concessions for drilling for oil off the shore of Alaska. That was
the sad part. The positive part was that the announcer gave the size
of the off-shore drilling area in square kilometers only.
Clearly, the US Federal agency must have originally announced the
size in square miles. I was quite pleasantly surprised to hear that
the BBC had converted the area to metric and gave only that figure
in their reading of the news.
With continuing influence like that, there's hope for us yet, boys! ;-)
Cheers,
Ezra
