I was pleased to see that the information on this morning's small
earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area was given entirely in metric
units. It was obvious that the information box broadcasted was cribbed
unedited from the U.S. Geological Survey site, which gives information in
kilometers.
What was remarkable was that the news stations didn't bother to convert
the units to miles. To me, this policy indicates an increasing acceptance
of metric units in news broadcasts, when those are the units in which the
original information comes.
Martin Morrison
USMA Today Columnist
