Magellan's Log: How Bigz Ur Booty? Page 1 of 3

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Page 1 of 3

How Bigz Ur Booty?
by Staff of Magellan's Log

dubyascale.jpg (15271 bytes)
See explanation below.

To quantify or not to quantify? That is no question at all in this digital age. Why not? Because this culture is hell-bent on counting EVERYTHING, and things we can’t count we break up into little pieces so we CAN count them.

My Mona Lisa is better than your Mona Lisa because mine has TWICE as many pixels and FOUR times as many colors.
My SUV is more phallic than yours because it not only has FOUR-wheel drive it has FOUR wheel steering and its gas mileage is TWO miles per gallon less than yours.
My CD player is better than yours because it reads EIGHT times as many bits per second and sounds TWICE as shrill to a musically trained ear.
My nuclear weapon is superior to yours because it kills THREE times as many people and simultaneously does HALF as much property damage.
My corporate Ponzi scheme disguised as a global corporation is more successful than yours because it drains the retirement funds of TWENTY times as many employees.
My particle accelerator is SIX times faster than yours which means I can smash SIXTY times as many subatomic particles.
My government is more desirable than yours because it concentrates EIGHTY percent of the wealth in the hands of ONE percent of the population.

And so on.

Given the all-pervasive compulsion to enumerate, only a fool would try to resist the momentum of the Zeitgeist. Successful persons these days are those who not only embrace digitalization of everything but who work to reduce the entire universe including all human experience to That Which Can Be Counted.

Recently thinking about this cultural reality and at the same time pushed by the ever-present desire to be Better Digital Citizens, we here in this little cultural backwater calledl Magellan’s Log realized that what the world needs is MORE scales of measurement. Sure, we have rulers, clocks, thermometers, speedometers, NASDAQ graphs, and so on. But is that really enough?

It happened that, as we were discussing this problem, CNN (which we of course keep on constantly in the background of our cultural endeavors) was reporting on a seismic event. The words "5.2 on the Richter Scale" impinged on our digitizing consciousness.

Enlightenment was at hand!

Have you ever noticed how, in news reports about earthquakes, it’s never,

"There was a 5.2. earthquake," or,
"There was an earthquake that measured 5.2," but ALWAYS,
"The earthquake measure 5.2 ON THE RICHTER SCALE"?

Who, besides geologists and members of the Richter family, cares what scale the earthquake was measured on?

Do the Weather Channel’s imperturbables ever say, "And the temperature in Des Moines is minus 20 on the Fahrenheit scale"? "The temperature in Beijing is 18 on the Centigrade scale"?

What’s happening here is a compulsion not only to measure but to show the hip, scientific correctness of one’s measurements.

If you think about this, immediately two avenues combining cultural enrichment and the making of a lot of money open up.

Go to "Modification of Existing Scales of Measurement" >>

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