Agreed. I think it would be a safe bet that 95+% of Americans could not define a stone correctly or convert a weight into mixed base stones and pounds. The fact that we don't use stones is why our hundredweight is, duh, 100 lb.
--- On Sat, 10/29/11, John Frewen-Lord <[email protected]> wrote: From: John Frewen-Lord <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:51289] Re: So, A Snake Eats a Deer To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Date: Saturday, October 29, 2011, 9:50 AM But the Mail was technically wrong when they quoted: "Skip Snow, a python specialist who conducted the autopsy at Everglades National Park, said the animal had a girth of 44ins with the 5st 6lb deer inside its stomach." I doubt that Skip Snow has any idea at all what a stone is (other than something you dig up in your garden), and therefore he didn't actually say what the Mail attributed him as saying. Another example of unnecessary 'dumbing down' by journalists who insult their readers by following outdated corporate mantra. John F-L ----- Original Message ----- From: John M. Steele To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 1:58 PM Subject: [USMA:51288] So, A Snake Eats a Deer but this is mostly about how the media fiddles with numbers. The AP item on Yahoo news and this paper report it as a 16 foot (4.88 meter) snake that consumed a 76 pound (34.47 kilogram) deer. Another paper said the snake was between 16 and 18 ft, so not too precise and a bit of decimal dust in the numbers above. http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Huge-python-found-in-Florida-had-eaten-a-deer-2241725.php Obviously, no one in Florida is of foreign origin and everyone understands Customary, so may as well strip out the metric. http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/8479673-418/deer-eating16-foot-python-killed-in-florida.html Of course, readers in the UK can't understand it unless the deer is converted to stones (5st 6lb) and no metric. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2054968/Peckish-python-16ft-long-snake-South-Florida-Everglades-adult-deer-stomach.html (caution, this last link has some gross photos) I'm sure the Canadian and Australian press would have used metric but had the good taste not to cover the story.
