Monday, May 30, 2005 9:30 AM
Chris Jones
Space, Time, and Drivel
Hey, we Americans need to reco'nize that our system of measurement
is no more logical than King George's turds. The metric system is
fantastic. Do you understand? Tens, hundreds, thousands...
what could be simpler?
Thus, Americans are gravely wrong in our arbitrary assignments of
quantity, and just as entrenched as we are wrong. Even a foot,
which seems like it could be a good idea, is twelve inches.
Why? The only thing I can dig is that somebody said, "If we stack
up five thousand two hundred and eighty of these twelve-inch
feet, there's Mile-High Stadium, so we should just call five
thousand two hundred and eighty feet 'one mile.'"
But there's another illogical measurement to which the entire world
subscribes: sixty seconds a minute, sixty minutes an hour, twenty-four
hours a day. You can't convince me that it is beyond human
enginuity to come up with one hundred seconds a minute, one hundred
minutes an hour, ten hours AM, ten hours PM. When a hundred-yard
(that's three hundred twelve-inch feet) dash is won or lost, it's by
tenths, hundredths, and thousandths of a second, not, "Wow, he lost
that heat by only seven-sixtieths!" We could even have ten months
a year if we wanted. Obviously, the actual "time passage" of days
and years is dictated by our solar system, but the specific lengths of
things (e.g. seconds, minutes, etc.) was decided by us. It hurts.
Thank you, good night.