Well how old was the woman? How long has the country been metric? Is she a native? These could always be factors as old habits are hard to break.
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2011 4:21 PM To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:49573] More dumbing down via NPR I am listening to NPR and Atlanta Public Media. An Australian woman is describing her journey from Sydney to the protected reserve where aborigines live up north (closest large city is Darwin). The aborigine could be heard telling the woman that they had 10 liters of water just in case they break down, which was nice. But when the woman was describing the height of some things she could see while trraveling in the reserve, she used "feet" rather than "meters" (not even saying the height n meters first). I'm quite sure the American producer asked her to convert to feet or else the Aussie woman just assumed she needed to convert since she knew the program was for an American audience. Too bad.... another chance to give Americans a clue that Australia is fully metric was lost. Ezra
