Ezra:

The Nature of Things used to be presented by David Suzuki, who always did use 
metric in the past.  Do you know who the presenter was on the program you 
watched?  Unfortunately, this is one of those programs that don't stream 
outside North America.

John F-L

PS We haven't yet switched so summer time here in the UK (last weekend in 
March) - but I wished we had.  Evenings still too dark! 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: ezra.steinb...@comcast.net 
  To: U.S. Metric Association 
  Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 6:47 PM
  Subject: [USMA:46928] Disappointing science program ... and it's Canadian!!!


  Just watched an otherwise terrific show on the Canadian Broadcasting 
Corporation (CBC) thanks to cable TV on alternative energy generation.

  I say "otherwise" because, while the content was most interesting and well 
presented, I was quite surprised to hear the narrator, who sounded Canadian and 
was presenting on a science show (The Nature of Things, I believe), talk about 
how many miles of tubing a solar plant in the Mojave desert had and how many 
acres it occupied and that he didn't translate the American plant engineer's 
use of Fahrenheit when giving the temperature of the solar heated oil in the 
tubes into Celsius.

  On the other hand, he did give the span of the wind turbine blades being 
manufactured in Denmark in meters, so it wasn't a total washout for metric. 

  I guess I was not expecting that a Canadian educated his whole life in metric 
and who I presume was consistently exposed to kilometers and hectares on 
Canadian TV and who was presenting a science program to a Canadian audience 
would use mostly US Customary units.

  I conclude we have more of a "bad" influence on Canada than I had ever 
suspected!

  As an aside, I hope everyone is adapting to Daylight Saving Time here in 
North America. I rather wish we had kept to the old schedule of waiting until 
early April to switch, but that's just me.

  Cheers,
  Ezra

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