For your consideration:
This is not a joke. Not a hoax. That comes straight from Wikipedia, from one of the pages contained in Wikipedia today, as of this writing, in a context that leads me to believe that someone typed it in there fully expecting us to accept the truth of it!
Don't these fools realize the implications of such a change? Not only would the kilogram be affected! But the gram as well. And the milligram! - and the centigram! Though indeed, who really cares on that last one? Centigrams are rarely seen in nature, being highly unstable and prone to decaying into milligrams outside of very specific, controlled laboratory conditions.
But the point is that if this change goes through, the whole integrity and credibility of the metric system is shot. These people, so desirous of making this so-called "improvement" (though who has even called it that, I'd like to know!?) to the kilogram are in fact doing nothing but proving that even the most elementary units of measurability must be considered to be subordinate to law. Who can swallow this preposterous notion! Science must bow to law? This is a tyranny intolerable! To claim that the fundamentals by which the very stars themselves are measured and governed in their smooth paces around the cosmic block are subject to being overruled - overturned and redefined according to the whim and whimsy of our puny, human courts! What a preposterous fraud we perpetrate upon the very foundations of the galaxy, if this change goes through!
I call upon all those who uphold REASON and SCIENCE as paramount over "legal process" - I call upon you all! I call upon you now! Rise up! Rise now while we still have the chance! The General Conference on Weights and Measures will be convening in 2011, to discuss this and other weighty matters. Rise up now! Arise, and make some very unambiguous objection to these pedants (literally, "they who stride with the feet of ants") and sophisters (not a word, but easy enough to glean meaning from context) who would put the folly and pageantry of human law above the eternal and sacred definition of the kilogram that was handed down to us from on high, encoded in the provable observations of the stars themselves in their very courses! Or if that wasn't it, then - the true and proven kilogram, as it has been formed and validated down throughout the ages via evolution by means of natural selection! Either way, this is science business! Once we let law have its way here, the precedent will be set. And I assure you: once law gets its fingers in with a precedent, you have no idea how smug that bastard's going to be about applying it everywhere. Science will just have to bow down and take it. We will have lost our chance, and we will have to admit law's supremacy in all matters scientific.
I don't need to belabor the horrors that could result! Why, the very stars themselves could be undone in their sure courses, by the misguided passage of some pork-chocked special-interest bill into law! We'd need to put Gravity into the Constitution as an Amendment, just to safeguard it against being repealed as a law - lest we all float away!
Human law has proven again and again that it cannot be trusted with science. To protect the meaning and integrity of the kilogram is our first stand in the coming battle – but if we fail to hold fast now, there may be no chance for a second stand. To quote Captain Jean Luc Picard, "The line must be drawn HEAH!"
KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF OUR KILOS.
Wait. That sounds like we're running drugs. Unfortunate choice of words, but anyway. It's clear enough from context.
"The legal process to change the definition of the kilogram is already underway,[23] ..."
- Wikipedia.
This is not a joke. Not a hoax. That comes straight from Wikipedia, from one of the pages contained in Wikipedia today, as of this writing, in a context that leads me to believe that someone typed it in there fully expecting us to accept the truth of it!
Don't these fools realize the implications of such a change? Not only would the kilogram be affected! But the gram as well. And the milligram! - and the centigram! Though indeed, who really cares on that last one? Centigrams are rarely seen in nature, being highly unstable and prone to decaying into milligrams outside of very specific, controlled laboratory conditions.
But the point is that if this change goes through, the whole integrity and credibility of the metric system is shot. These people, so desirous of making this so-called "improvement" (though who has even called it that, I'd like to know!?) to the kilogram are in fact doing nothing but proving that even the most elementary units of measurability must be considered to be subordinate to law. Who can swallow this preposterous notion! Science must bow to law? This is a tyranny intolerable! To claim that the fundamentals by which the very stars themselves are measured and governed in their smooth paces around the cosmic block are subject to being overruled - overturned and redefined according to the whim and whimsy of our puny, human courts! What a preposterous fraud we perpetrate upon the very foundations of the galaxy, if this change goes through!
I call upon all those who uphold REASON and SCIENCE as paramount over "legal process" - I call upon you all! I call upon you now! Rise up! Rise now while we still have the chance! The General Conference on Weights and Measures will be convening in 2011, to discuss this and other weighty matters. Rise up now! Arise, and make some very unambiguous objection to these pedants (literally, "they who stride with the feet of ants") and sophisters (not a word, but easy enough to glean meaning from context) who would put the folly and pageantry of human law above the eternal and sacred definition of the kilogram that was handed down to us from on high, encoded in the provable observations of the stars themselves in their very courses! Or if that wasn't it, then - the true and proven kilogram, as it has been formed and validated down throughout the ages via evolution by means of natural selection! Either way, this is science business! Once we let law have its way here, the precedent will be set. And I assure you: once law gets its fingers in with a precedent, you have no idea how smug that bastard's going to be about applying it everywhere. Science will just have to bow down and take it. We will have lost our chance, and we will have to admit law's supremacy in all matters scientific.
I don't need to belabor the horrors that could result! Why, the very stars themselves could be undone in their sure courses, by the misguided passage of some pork-chocked special-interest bill into law! We'd need to put Gravity into the Constitution as an Amendment, just to safeguard it against being repealed as a law - lest we all float away!
Human law has proven again and again that it cannot be trusted with science. To protect the meaning and integrity of the kilogram is our first stand in the coming battle – but if we fail to hold fast now, there may be no chance for a second stand. To quote Captain Jean Luc Picard, "The line must be drawn HEAH!"
KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF OUR KILOS.
Wait. That sounds like we're running drugs. Unfortunate choice of words, but anyway. It's clear enough from context.
Comments
Almost.
What next?... WHAT NEXT?! Messing with the Dewey Decimal System? Mixing up the hierarchy of the biological classification's eight major taxonomic ranks?
Is nothing safe?
These are the rhetorical questions that will now keep me awake at night.
We'd all get way better gas mileage that way--nobody would even need to waste their money on hybrid cars!
Say. How many stone did you say you weigh again?
Shit. Shit shit shit!
I am sorry Edana, I have to delete your comment, I simply cannot risk a practical rationalization like this catching on at large. It's bad enough they want to make an arbitrary change - but when you bring in these environmental angles, suddenly the politicos and legislatoes feel like science has got even more reason to yield. With the environment at stake! It's too polarizing to throw that out there on their side. I'm truly sorry, it's nothing personal and I don't mean to censor you, but there it is. My duty is to science.
I can't participate in a hush-up.
Good times, good times....