Space News Editor, MSNBC Dear Editor, I just read the MSNBC online news note quoting the Russians as stating that Mir missed its intended splashdown point by 930 miles. Obviously a misquotation has occurred there. Russians are metricated and your number (930 miles) amazingly equals an nice, round 1500 km. I saw that the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to the story. Reuters happens to report virtually all of its news in metric units, especially that from outside the U.S. The Associated Style book instructs reporters to use metric units when they were used by the original source. NBC televised the Olympics, in which all events were measured using metric units and which Americans watched with apparently great understanding. So why did you "dumb down" your story? Was it due to an internal problem that you have or do you reckon Americans are too dumb to understand kilometers? Either way, you should be ashamed. James R. Frysinger -- James R. Frysinger University/College of Charleston 10 Captiva Row Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Charleston, SC 29407 66 George Street 843.225.0805 Charleston, SC 29424 http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cert. Adv. Metrication Specialist 843.953.7644
