Metric Stream of Consciousness

milky-way-black-hole

By The Metric Maven

Metric Day Edition

I’ve had a difficult time coming up with a subject for this year’s Metric Day essay, so here are my random observations since the last Metric Day.

The two metric stories which dominated what little publicity metric received over the last year were 1) Lincoln Chafee mentioning that he thought the U.S. should become metric and 2) The possible replacement of the only metric road signs in the U.S. with non-metric versions.

Lincoln Chafee tossed out the idea of converting to the metric system as a bit of a throw-away line, but the metriphobic press reacted like a duck on a June bug. Anti-metric poster-child John Bemelmans Marciano penned No, America shouldn’t go metric with all the Pavlovian fervor he could muster. CNN was only too willing to publish Marciano’s reactionary polemic. John Stewart of The Daily Show, who, like any comedian, goes for laughs first, and thoughtfulness—whenever it works out, said this to his two million viewers:

Jon Stewart: Alright Chafs, hit us with your Hillary crushing vision for America.

Video of Chafee: Here’s a bold embrace of internationalism. Let’s join the rest of the world and go metric.

[Audience Laughter] Stewart blankly stares at the camera.

Jon Stewart: The time has come America, to switch to centimeters. [Audience Laughter] And why use cars when we can relax and exercise by traveling only by recumbent bicycle. Wait where’s everybody going I haven’t passed around my homemade .. blondies yet. Why would you launch your campaign by evoking one of Jimmy Carter’s most notable non-hostage related failures?!

Video of Chafee: Only Myanmar, Liberia and The United States aren’t metric…

Jon Stewart: You want to be our president and yet you don’t know we don’t give two shits about other countries? Or…or if I may, to put that in metric terms, point oh two millifeces.

Which I’m sure Mr. Stewart knows is actually 20 microfeces. Of course Stewart would use centimeters, without any irony, and assert that President Carter was actively for the metric system (he wasn’t, he’s a Metric Philosopher).  Beating up on the metric system is fun!

Beaver County Times 1979-08-05 Beaver Pennsylvania
Beaver County Times 1979-08-05 Beaver Pennsylvania

Stewart has also gone after metric ignorance at times, such as when he lampooned Rick Sanchez for asking how high nine meters is in English, but this segment only pointed out that England actually uses metric.

Not all the coverage was uniformly negative. NBC News on their website had the headline: A Case for Liter-Ship: Advocates Cheer Lincoln Chafee’s Metric Proposal. CNN had Lincoln Chafee: Go bold, go metric.

The changing of metric signs on I-19 provided an opportunity for CNN to publish the lack of the metric system in the U.S. as “A Great American Story” entitled Refusing to Give an Inch — Why America is Anti-Metric. This vapid and vacuous article did not educate or inform, it merely parroted the conventional mythological narrative, and provided yet another soap box for John Bemelmans Marciano to release incoherent and content free criticism. The I-19 road signs are being changed because they don’t meet new reflectivity requirements. It is interesting there is total silence about the cost of changing the signs because of their reflectivity, but if they were Ye Olde English, and they were to be changed to metric, then metric signs would be “too expensive.” As I said previously, if all the road signs in Arizona need to be replaced, then why not with metric? If not now–then when? Clearly the road sign arguments over cost are just a regressive political position dressed up as “fiscal responsibility.”

I saw a reminder this year that basic roadway measurements are important. In Westwood Massachusetts a bridge which is 3200 mm in height above the roadway (10′ 6″ for those who need two units to describe a distance) often tears the tops off of trucks. This happens often enough that the police have set up a camera to record the intersection and document the truck shredding. Over the years, about one truck per month is decapitated by the bridge. Some truck drivers believe they are going to make it without consulting any arithmetic and discover the hard way that Seeing Is Not Measurement. While implementing metric cannot help truck drivers who estimate distances without numbers, it can make it simpler for those who do.

truck-tease

My attention this metric day is drawn away from the two flash-in-the-pan mainstream metric stories, and to personal everyday hidden stories of metric in the U.S. My friend Lapin has attempted to persuade the principals in his small engineering company to go metric. Lapin pointed out how much easier millimeters are to use, but the metric system was yet again dismissed, and inches remain the default. One person there indicated that the best place for a millimeter only tape measure was inside of a hydraulic press, so that it could be as completely destroyed as possible. Engineers I know who work in Aerospace have long ago given up any thought of a metric switch-over. These stories clearly tell me that without government intervention, a U.S. metric changeover will not take place in the next 1000 years. The workings of our Frozen Republic are so slow, that it will probably take 1000 years before congress even returns to the issue. The 2013 We The People Petition was summarily dismissed with a missive from the former Director of NIST, that was pure anti-metric Edward Bernays. There appears to be no hope in the U.S. for a metric change-over.

Is there any other possibility? I can think of only one, and, although it’s almost certain not to happen, it probably has a higher probability than the U.S. government affecting change. It is that the rest of the world finally tires of our pig-headedness and directly punishes the U.S. economically for its continued non-use of the metric system. I could still see this failing, as what little manufacturing is left in the U.S. would probably just design one product for the U.S. market and another for any other place in the world they sell goods. Cost is never as important as maintaining the Ye Olde English “Heritage.” Americans are also notorious for resisting any “outside ideas” unless they can quietly co-opt them. After World War II the U.S. created the interstate highway system after experiencing the German Autobahn. There has been very little exposure to efficient use of the metric system in the U.S. and so people either react in a positive way or viscerally in a negative way depending on what their model of truthiness tells them.

There is little to celebrate on this Metric Day other than the simplicity and elegance of a system that is as unknown in the U.S. as fortune cookies are in China.


If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page and contribute. Also purchase his books about the metric system:

The first book is titled: Our Crumbling Invisible Infrastructure. It is a succinct set of essays  that explain why the absence of the metric system in the US is detrimental to our personal heath and our economy. These essays are separately available for free on my website,  but the book has them all in one place in print. The book may be purchased from Amazon here.


The second book is titled The Dimensions of the Cosmos. It takes the metric prefixes from yotta to Yocto and uses each metric prefix to describe a metric world. The book has a considerable number of color images to compliment the prose. It has been receiving good reviews. I think would be a great reference for US science teachers. It has a considerable number of scientific factoids and anecdotes that I believe would be of considerable educational use. It is available from Amazon here.


The third book is called Death By A Thousand Cuts, A Secret History of the Metric System in The United States. This monograph explains how we have been unable to legally deal with weights and measures in the United States from George Washington, to our current day. This book is also available on Amazon here.

Bonfire of The Vanity Units

HH-Growler

By The Metric Maven

Bulldog Edition

John Bemelmans Marciano gave a lecture on CSPAN’s BOOK TV (2014-08-12) to promote his book Whatever Happened To The Metric System?, which neither answers the proposed question, nor discusses the metric system itself. In his lecture, Marciano makes straw-man statements like:

The reason  that the metric system was needed in the first place was that decimals aren’t such a great way to divide things. Have you ever tried dividing a pizza into ten slices or five slices it’s not very easy. It’s really easy in four, six, eight, if you have a Sicilian pie you might do it in twelve or sixteen. … the only thing that ten is good for is counting on your fingers. ….they’re excellent for tallying, when you have to have a running tally of something, but they’re just not good for fractions.

Anyone who casually is acquainted with arithmetic will see that decimals are one of the most useful creations of mathematics. They are straightforward in magnitude, whereas fractions are an incomplete thought. The only way to further simplify numerical expression is with measures that can eliminate decimal points in everyday life. The metric system does this with grams, milliliters, and millimeters. The use of integer values in place of fractions is an upgrade from an abacus to a modern computer.  Marciano seems to have done little research on the metric system, or is willfully ignorant.

Marciano continues with both a revisionist and radically incomplete history of the metric system.  “So whereas decimals were supposed to make math and currency and everything available to everybody, it actually just made it available only to people who were really truly well educated.” Marciano appears to be implying that decimals were created and adopted so the power elite can rule over the innumerate populace. They are so complicated of a concept that only those who are highly educated can comprehend them? How on Earth does anyone use decimal currency? For Marciano, metric is not a commie plot, but a capitalist plot?  Decimals are apparently an antidemocratic force in our society?

He goes on to argue that the return of kings to Europe was very sad for John Quincy Adams “who had about the biggest crush on the metric system of anyone.” That statement is amazingly off the mark, perhaps by a few Gigameters? You are invited to read my essay about John Quincy Adams, and you will find that JQA had nothing remotely like a “crush” on the metric system, which is well documented in his own words. John Quincy Adams was the John Bemelmans Marciano of the 19th Century. Marciano clearly did not spend any time reading John Quincy Adams’ Report on Weights and Measures, or he would have known this. But this does not stop Maricano from interpreting it: “He [JQA] actually wrote, while he was Secretary of State, the greatest work ever written about measurement, and he talked about all the great things about the metric system….” JBM’s assertions are clearly at odds with JQA’s Report.

Marciano protests too much when, after he was asked by an audience member if he is anti-metric, he states:  “I am pro-metric, but I am also pro-customary measures. … I think we should keep it all.”

I see this statement as completely disingenuous. I’ve read Marciano’s book and his online editorials, listened to his NPR interview and this BookTV presentation. Marciano’s pro-metric assertion is doublespeak. Keep it all? Is Marciano for everyone choosing an old measure and using it if they want?

Marciano then states, to prove his pro-metric bone fides, that he thinks liquid measures should be metric. Marciano then reaches down and produces a bottle and states:

One fascinating thing of measurement is the growler. The growler started up… the growler is actually an old system of measure that was revived .. I think they were Wyoming brewers who..who restarted it. A growler is half a gallon .. its filled with four pints .. what I think the growler speaks to is that the craft brewing movement came out of the U.S. and it’s… I think the reason that the pint gets to be used is …it seems like this more honest system of measurement. Ben and Jerry’s when they wanted to have sort of a more .. homespun they revived the idea of using a pint for ice cream .. a pint really sounds like ..it comes right off of the farm. …almost all of our dairy is still in — solely in customary measures.  ..when you realize it’s still ingrained in people’s minds is when you actually buy in a whole unit. You’re not just buying 14 ounces of something you’re buying a pint of it, a quart of it, you’re buying a half-gallon of it. If it’s just something like 14 ounces or you know point four six milliliters we just pay no attention to it.

Growler-Fixed

Well, Marciano stops there when talking about liquid measures. I don’t see any argument using actual numbers with the metric system, or where he thinks one should use metric units for liquid measures. (Perhaps he could mention mis-dosages?) He does not follow through with his assertion that he is pro-metric for liquid measures. Marciano instead explains why people in the U.S.  just love the current mess. Marciano’s final statement  about 0.46 milliliters could be taken as hyperbole for how clueless people are about measures, or worst of all, it could be he is numerically clueless that 0.46 mL is 460 microliters, a value that would probably not be found on a store shelf.

HH-Fucking-Pint
— click to enlarge

What caught my attention more than all of the muddled assertions, was the notion of a growler. When I first heard Marciano discuss this unit, I figured it was just one more of the thousands and thousands of confusing pre-metric units that have existed in history. I have a number of engineering references for measurement units, and none of them mention a growler. I looked on Wikipedia, no entry for a measurement unit called a growler exists, but there is an entry under “beer bottle” with a reference to 64 ounce or 32 ounce growlers. The 32 ounce is sometimes called a howler for half-growler. This smells like marketing, and not measurement. The growler is almost certainly a made-up vanity unit for the microbrewing industry, which does not see the irony in using a metric prefix for self-identification and then marketing in Ye Olde English.

The growler is just a vanity unit, made up for marketing purposes. It appeals to novelty/pseudo-nostalgia and has no standing for measurement. It’s no different than using coffee speak to order  a tall cafee au lait dry single skinny. A growler is simply a hipster vanity unit.

There is a long worn pre-metric unit for one-half gallon. It is the pottle, and it is also equal to 32 gills to make the quantity plain for my U.S. readers who we can assume understand English measures and not metric. As Marciano is for all of them, perhaps we should include all gills:

Gills-1850

This reference from 1850 helps us to understand this new and important faux unit—the growler—even if there is no entry for it. One notes that U.S. measure is Great Britain’s old measure. Because when it comes to measurement, Marciano is for all of them, we should include all known growler quantities. Assuming a 32 gill growler:

  • British Growler = 4545 mL
  • Irish Growler = 3263 mL
  • Scottish Growler = 3389 mL
  • U.S. Growler =  3785 mL

So the growler varies from 3.26 liters to 4.55 liters. Yes, clearly the old measures are, as Marciano asserts, much more honest. Perhaps we should create a unit called the Enron?

I’m very surprised that an expert on measures like Marciano missed pointing this out to his audience, especially when following up on his assertion that he saw the metric system as a better idea for liquid measures. Why the imaginary growler? Perhaps pottle doesn’t have the marketing appeal of a growler and sounds too much like what one does after drinking said imaginary unit. Marciano likes to use Tom Wolfe as an A-list metric opponent, but Marciano, despite his protestations, seems to relish representing contemporary Bonfire of the Vanity Units.

Related essays:

John and the Argot-nauts

Whatever Happened to the Metric System?

Postscript

A member of my Sunday morning coffee klatch came across nothing but metric signage at a prison museum in Deer Lodge Montana. He took a photo of the sign which explains what a meter is for visitors who are unfamiliar with it:

DeerLodge

If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page and contribute. Also purchase his books about the metric system:

The first book is titled: Our Crumbling Invisible Infrastructure. It is a succinct set of essays  that explain why the absence of the metric system in the US is detrimental to our personal heath and our economy. These essays are separately available for free on my website,  but the book has them all in one place in print. The book may be purchased from Amazon here.


The second book is titled The Dimensions of the Cosmos. It takes the metric prefixes from yotta to Yocto and uses each metric prefix to describe a metric world. The book has a considerable number of color images to compliment the prose. It has been receiving good reviews. I think would be a great reference for US science teachers. It has a considerable number of scientific factoids and anecdotes that I believe would be of considerable educational use. It is available from Amazon here.


The third book is called Death By A Thousand Cuts, A Secret History of the Metric System in The United States. This monograph explains how we have been unable to legally deal with weights and measures in the United States from George Washington, to our current day. This book is also available on Amazon here.