(via Mary)

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Synchronizing five metronomes. Ingenious.

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Evidently, yes.

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DOF points to an article about the metric system and What's Kind of Wrong with America (The Island of Doubt : I HATE Fahrenheit ... and its link to presidential elections).

Now, let me say up front, I like the metric system. Yes, cleanly divisible-by-ten stuff is very keen and helpful and all that. If the US switched over to metric ("SI") magically overnight, I would weep few tears.

That said, a lot of the arguments for the metric system -- especially when you get beyond the "it's just plain easier to use and convert and do things in decimal" -- begin to approach the righteous finger-waggling that most of the arguments against conversion take on.

I mean, what could make more sense that setting the freezing point at 0? Degrees Fahrenheit, on the other hand, are just plain inscrutable. How is one supposed to know the difference between +7 and -7? They're both cold.

Well, depending on where you live, you can also have +/-7C, too. And having "100" as (inadvertently) the threshold for Bloody Hot is kind of convenient, too.

Why doesn't the US join the Metrics Bandwagon?

The answer, I have concluded, is that this country is currently in a backwards-looking phase. Change, progress, reform — they're all bad. Let's not expand the definition of marriage. Let's not tell our kids that evolution explains the diversity of life. Let's not invest in embryonic stem cell research. let's keeping burning coal like it's crack cocaine. And let's not ever use Celsius.

Which would make sense, except that metric has never gotten any traction in the US, except in the Groovy 70s. 

The real answer -- if we're going to wax philosophical -- is not that we're backwards-looking, but inwards-looking. "We're Number One!" as they say, so why should we follow the same system as all those Foreign Types do?

And, in fact, we don't because we don't have to. The US is still a huge exporter and a (more) huge importer. By and large, nobody else has declared that, by gad, you'll buy (and sell) things in metric and darned well like it. Or, where they have, it's not caused anyone any particular cognitive grief. Nobody really paid attention as liquor turned into mL bottles; the measurement folks went by was "bottle," and if the wine/liquor folks got away with having slightly smaller bottles out of it by rounding down to an even measurement, the small grumblings were brief. 

Familiarity is all.

Similarly, nobody works on their cars any more, seriously, so if some cars nuts and bolts are metric and others are fractions of inches, nobody much cares. Adjustable crescent wrenches work on both. It just means some extra shelf space at Home Depot to carry both set of measures.

Further, from a local perspective, while the Canadians and Mexicans both use metric, there's little enough cross-border travel (from a US population perspective) that there's little incentive there to make metric distance markers and the like. We don't expect the Canadians or Mexicans to change their system to ours, so why should we change to theirs? This is unlike Europe, where close proximity of dozens of countries means the potential for significant confusion if everyone does things differently. Thus, for (relatively trivial) things, most of those differences have been ironed out -- euros, typography, monetary units, etc.

Given how little most US folks travel out of country, confusion by a small group of Americans over what the weather man is reporting on the weather is not a huge deal.

You can see the same thing with the Brits. They held onto Imperial measures until their need to be more integrated with the rest of Europe -- and the costs of not doing so -- made the change necessary, despite the existential angst of doing so.

And, to take that a step further, as keen and easy as the metric system is, the advantages of changing are perceived as being trivial compared to the costs. Replace all those highway signs? We need to spend money on repaving, not new signage. Worse, the units of measure aren't (from lack of exposure) intuitive, so telling people they should start working things out in kilometers and liters sets up an element of confusion; it's not rocket science mind you, but the question comes back to, "Why should I?" 

(And that's another answer -- the US lacks a strong, centralized authority to just make it happen by fiat. Even if Congresscritters and the President were inclined, they can't ignore that it would torque off a lot of inconvenienced people.   In which case, the answer is, again, that we don't because there's nobody to tell us we have to.)

The impact on most people's lives of working with the old system rather than the new is relatively trivial, even in the areas where you'd expect it to be greatest. Yes, it's easier to remember that there are ten 100m lengths in a kilometer, vs. 5,280 feet.. But how often does that math really come into play in most people's lives? Adding up various sets of inches and dividing by 12 to come up with feet is sometimes annoying and error-prone -- but, again, a lot less annoying than figuring out taxes, and I'd say that's on most people's preference list to fix first.

Still unconvinced? Ask, then, why even the most rabid metriphiles don't seroiusly propose changing our time system to metric (hundred minute hours, ten hour days, ten day weeks, ten month years, whatever). Ask why folks in France, home of SI, still use compasses with 360 degrees on them. Heck, if you want standardization, why doesn't everyone shift their language to Esperanto? The answer is, there's not a compelling reason to, and the costs of changing everything to make it happen becomes less and less palatable over time. As long as it doesn't interfere with everyday life, folks aren't likely to change something something fundamental. And the US shifting to metric -- or a change in the Gregorian calendar -- is a fundamental, deep-reaching change that would require pretty much everyone to be willing to go along with it.

Indeed, that calls to mind the one place the US did go metric, and long before most of the world. Money, as we rejected the British pence-shillings-pounds for metric-based dollars and cents. Because that's something that lent itself to decimals (for accounting), because pricing was fluid (inflationary) enough that the change in "what something costs" from changing units was relatively trivial -- and because we were starting with something fresh. Today, pretty much everyone uses metric money.

And, who knows, eventually the US might very well shift. But it will have to do so based on immediate, acknowledged problems in people's lives that shifting will solve. Failing that, there's not a good enough reason to do it -- and I say that, again, as someone who wouldn't at all mind seeing it happen.

Filed under :: Geopolitical Brouhaha :: Science
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Summoning a lightning bolt with a freaking laser! 

The researchers used their laser pulses to rip away negatively charged electrons attached to molecules in the air around thunderstorms. These freed electrons behaved like conducting wires. The team reports in Optics Express that while full bolts of cloud-to-ground lightning were not formed, the lasers did create increased electrical activity in which charged particles followed the laser-generated path for a short distance. The result looked like corona discharges, known to mariners as St Elmo's fire—ominous flickering lights sometimes seen above the masts of a ship about to be hit by lightning.

Dr Kasparian thinks that more powerful lasers will be able to draw lightning to the ground.

I think that's how Vaal did it ...

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1. Shamos: Why e-voting paper trails are a bad idea | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com - Are e-voting paper trails actually useful, or desirable? I think what the whole e-voting thang has raised is how secure (or insecure) our voting process is, and what risks we need to take (and which we need to work on reducing).
2. When the Ex Blogs, the Dirtiest Laundry Is Aired - New York Times - I don't know if it's a good thing, or a bad thing, that my divorce from Cheryl was in pre-blogging days.
3. The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure DVD news: Announcement for DC Super Heroes: The Filmation Adventures | TVShowsOnDVD.com - This makes me sooooooo happy! The SAHoA was dearly beloved by me as a child -- esp. for all the non-Superman/Aquaman bits, which is what this DVD set will collect. Glee!
4. BMWSportTouring Forums: Space Shuttle Processing: Rarely seen by the general public - How to assemble a space shuttle for lauch. Cool. (via GeekPress)
5. The Art of the Title Sequence - This looks like an extraordinarily cool site, looking at TV/movie title sequence. Pretty. (via kottke)

Filed under :: Blogging :: Love and Marriage :: Media :: Media - Cartoons :: Politics & Law :: Potpourri :: Science
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Suspended animation without freezing (and all the crystalline-meat-hashing that ensues). Might have to revise a good many sf movies and novels if this pans out -- nobody ever mentioned rotten eggs before ...

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New computer models show that Alpha Centauri B may very well have an Earth-sized planet within the habitable orbital zone  

At four light years away, these are the closest stars to our solar system. Of the 276 extrasolar planets we have found so far none of them have been that local. Now two of the co-authors are about to start a campaign at Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile to observe Alpha Centauri to test methods to look for these planets.

Alpha Centauri is a good target because, like the Big Dipper in the Northern Hemisphere, Alpha Centauri is almost always up in the Southern Hemisphere night sky for observing. Being so bright and nearby would also help researchers detect the tiny wobble a small terrestrial planet would impart.

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Florida's state board of education has (gasp!) adopted new guidelines that (shock! horror! dismay!) require that evolution be taught in schools.

What sort of crazy-ass atheistic commie regime are they running down there, anyway?

A bitter debate over how to teach evolution in Florida's public schools ended — at least temporarily — with a compromise Tuesday. The state Board of Education voted 4-3 in Tallahassee to adopt new science standards that for the first time require evolution to be taught.

The majority selected a last-minute alternative rather than the original document created by scientists and science teachers after months of work. That compromise, introduced late last week, inserts the phrase "the scientific theory of" in front of evolution and certain other concepts.

Opponents, who disliked both options, plan to shift their fight to the state Legislature.

Remember, this was by a mere 4-3 vote.

The adopted version, as the original, spells out for the first time that evolution must be taught in schools as the "fundamental concept underlying all of biology" and one that it is "supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence."

[...] More than 10,000 people logged onto the Florida Department of Education's Web site to comment on the new standards. Many wrote that teaching evolution — the theory that all living things evolved from a shared common ancestry — was in direct conflict with their religious faith.

No doubt God will smite those 4 wicked state school board members any moment now.

I would critique the whole "it conflicts with my religious faith so it shouldn't be taught as science" thing, but my vision just goes all red whenever I contemplate it.

Filed under :: Religion :: School Daze :: Science
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