Unsought Input

Before we answer that question, take a look at the video below. This is Jon Stewart interviewing Chris Matthews about his new book, Life’s a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation, and Success:

This is very different from most interviews with authors touring news and talk shows in support of their new book. The most obvious difference is that Stewart has a strong opinion and actually takes Matthews to task for what in the book. Most interviews consist of fluffy questions like, “so what inspired you to write this book” followed by 60 seconds of uninterrupted marketing while the interviewer casts loving gazes the author’s way.The most shocking thing for me, though, is that Stewart has actually read Matthews’ book and come up with his own, very informed, opinion about it. It sounds disgusting, but I don’t think I’ve gotten this impressions from any “real news” shows in the past.Take a look at The Daily Show interview with Alan Greenspan:

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Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors, died a few days ago on April 11th. You may or may not have heard by now. The New York Times wrote a nice piece on his life and a large number of blogs and forums have filled with discussions of his books, essays, and politics.

If you haven’t heard by now, I guess I’m not too surprised. Ablogistan took a look and found that there were more twice as many mentions of Anna Nicole Smith in the news than Vonnegut.

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There is a problem facing society, but no one is willing to talk about it. Virtually every journalist, television reporter, and blogger has personally encountered this problem, and yet – silence.

The problem is the metric system. Not just the metric system, but the US customary units as well. Basically, in order to be useful, a measurement system must:

1. Have well-defined units that everyone agrees on.

2. Give people the ability to measure things and understand quantities.

Neither system really meets both of these criteria. The metric system, although it meets the first point, fails miserably on the second. The US system fails the first point semantically, and does a really poor job on the second point.

Allow me to illustrate:

Scenario 1: The news has just reported that a 4,081,440 - foot wide asteroid is heading toward the Earth.

Scenario 2: You just heard on the radio that a 695,622 km² area of the ocean has become an oxygen-free dead zone.

Now, think quickly – how do you react to this news? Do you panic? Do you relax, secure in the knowledge that the asteroid will burn up in the atmosphere and the dead zone will clear up in the spring?

Nobody knows! What the hell is a kilometer? How I measure something be that many feet wide, when I only have two feet, and neither one is a foot long anyway?

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