One thing that is pushing more metric is cable television, with its
international channels and coverage of foreign events. For example, this
weekend is the Open de France golf tournament being played just outside of
Paris. Although the commentators on cable's Golf Channel are American,
they are almost always using meters for distance, and even used degrees
Celsius for the temperature. Every once in a while they'll throw in a
conversion to yards, but not too often. The on-screen display
unfortunately still shows yards.
I think that this metric usage is mainly a matter of convenience.
Probably the data being fed to the commentators by the tournament
organizers is in metric units, so they just use them. It would be a real
inconvenience to have to keep "translating" into U.S. customary units.
So they just give up and use metric. No problem. When they gave the
temperature (a warm 32-33 degrees Celsius), they didn't even bother to
"translate," saying that it had been 34 the previous day.
All this goes to show that metric is really no big deal. If we could just
stop arguing "conversions," mathematics, and history, we could convert
practically overnight. The key is just to start using metric exclusively,
to think metric.
I wonder how the European players react when they play in the United
States. I'll bet that they still think and plan in metric units.
