Pixel Scroll 7/24

Editor’s Appeal: Is “Pixel Scroll” a good title for these daily posts? If so, I still think there needs to be some adornment and variety to keep it fresh. Can anybody think of a scheme to generate a brand of subtitles? (The “Pixel Scroll” title could be changed to something else to facilitate a winning idea.)

(1) George R.R. Martin is coming to Sasquan after all and has declared he is taking back the Hugo Losers Party from the boring souls who have sanitized it and disguised it as the “Post-Hugo Nominees Reception.” GRRM and Gardner Dozois held the first one in 1976 and it immediately became de rigueur.

Gardner and I ran another one at Suncon in 1977, and yet another at Iguanacon in 1978 (I lost my first novel Hugo that year). I don’t think there was one in 1979, but don’t know for sure… that year worldcon was in England, and I didn’t have the money to go. But the Hugo Losers party came back big in 1980, at Noreascon II. That blurry picture up above? That’s me, entering the Hugo Losers Party with two Hugos in my hands. Such hubris cannot go unpunished. Nor did it. Please note the man lurking behind me. That’s Gardner, smiling innocently. A few moment later, when my back was turned, he produced a can of whipped cream and sprayed it all over my head. Sic Semper Victorius.

So George says:

Fuck 1999. Let’s party like it’s 1976.

(2) Those looking to practice their party skills should show up for Prolog(ue), the relaxacon being held in Seattle the weekend before the Worldcon (August 14-16). Ulrika O’Brien has posted a progress report at the link. The international array of Persons of Interest coming to the con includes TAFF winner Nina Horvath and —

Charles Stross – Hugo- and Locus-Award winning author of the Laundry Files series, the Merchant Princes series, and too many stand-alone novels and short stories to mention, will be reading from his latest Laundry Files book, The Annihilation Score (released July 7) and possibly unreleased upcoming stories. You Heard It Here First.

(3) “Portlander Ursula K. Le Guin is Breathing Fire to Save American Literature” in Portland Monthly begins, “At 85, she may be Portland’s greatest writer. She may also be the fiercest.”

Foremost among her concerns these days, it seems, is what Le Guin considers a worrisome literary shift whereby writers—squeezed to make a living in a world that attaches less and less financial value to their profession—view themselves more as brands and “content producers” than artists. “I see so many writers getting pushed around by the sales department, the PR people, and being led to believe that that’s what they do,” she told me. “That’s a terrible waste.”

Artistic resignation in the name of pragmatism—“letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write,” as she put it in her National Book Awards speech—elicits Le Guin’s especial disapproval precisely because she herself spent an entire career bucking what others thought she should write. Yet even now that her own science fiction has been lofted into the modern literary canon, praised by no less an elitist than Yale’s Harold Bloom, Le Guin remains more interested in keeping the good fight going than in declaring victory. “We’ve come a real long way,” she admitted, “and in fact I think essentially these genre walls are down. But you would not believe how contemptuously reviewers and other people still just dismiss sci-fi. There’s still so much ignorance, and that bugs me.”

(4) GoodReads has blogged their choices for “10 of the Best Narrator and Audiobook Pairings of All Time” which includes numerous SF/F entries:

Ready Player One

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS Written by Kurt Vonnegut Narrated by John Malkovich (Dangerous Liaisons, Being John Malkovich)

READY PLAYER ONE Written by Ernest Cline Narrated by Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stand by Me)

THE HANDMAID’S TALE Written by Margaret Atwood Narrated by Claire Danes (My So-Called Life, Homeland)

A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS Written by Lemony Snicket Narrated by Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, It)

FAHRENHEIT 451 Written by Ray Bradbury Narrated by Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption, Mystic River)

(5) Robert J. Sawyer admits he is skeptical about newer writers crowdfunding their novels.

So, I’m still struggling with this. I’ve supported some Kickstarters for projects that clearly are not commercially viable that I’d like to see done. But early books in a writer’s career? Those have rarely been commercially viable for anyone, and have always represented a substantial degree of risk and commitment on the part of the author.

(6) Bradbury, the Building makes for good reading, too, on LA Curbed.

The timeless, fantastic Bradbury Building at Broadway and Third Street is a much-beloved Downtown Los Angeles landmark, most widely known for its significant appearances in movies including Blade Runner, (500) Days of Summer, and Marlowe, starring the late James Garner. But before it was a popular film set, it was the idea of a gold-mining magnate who really wanted to put his name on a building. His vision led him to turn down a prominent architect and mysteriously commission a totally untrained one instead, and that not-quite-architect, George H. Wyman, turned to ghosts and literature to pull it off. Avery Trufelman, producer of the design and architecture podcast 99 Percent Invisible, talked to Esotouric operators Kim Cooper and Richard Schave about the eerie history of what 99 PI calls “arguably the biggest architectural movie star of Los Angeles.”

As the story goes, Lewis Bradbury, a gold-mining millionaire, decided he wanted to build and put his name on a building, so in 1892 he commissioned prominent architect Sumner P. Hunt, who alone and with partners would design the Southwest Museum, the Ebell Club, the Automobile Club in University Park, and loads of private homes for wealthy clients throughout the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Hunt prepared some plans for the proposed building, but when Bradbury visited the office to check them out, he wasn’t taken with any of them. Here’s where things get weird…..

It’s said that Wyman’s inspiration for the building’s design was directly inspired by a novel, Looking Backwards by Edward Bellamy, a popular science fiction novel about a utopian society that was published in 1888. A passage from that book describes this incredible building in the future (which, in those days, was 2000): “a vast hall full of light received not alone from the windows on all sides, but from the dome.

(7) Pluto appears to have glaciers of nitrogen ice, judging by the latest pictures from the New Horizons probe.

….But the mission team cautions that it has received only 4-5% of the data gathered during 14 July’s historic flyby of the dwarf planet, and any interpretations must carry caveats.

“Pluto has a very complicated story to tell; Pluto has a very interesting history, and there is a lot of work we need to do to understand this very complicated place,” explained Alan Stern, the New Horizons principal investigator.

In a briefing at the US space agency’s HQ in Washington DC, he and colleagues then outlined a number of new analyses based on the limited data-set in their possession.

These included the observation that Pluto has a much more rarified atmosphere than previously predicted by the models. …

Pluto atmosphere(8) Don’t miss out — here’s info about how to submit yourself for casting calls for the next three Star Wars movies.

The Walt Disney Studios and Lucasfilm in association with Kasdan Pictures and Genre Films will begin production on “Star Wars: Episode VIII” on January 16, 2016. Casting is now officially underway for new lead roles and supporting roles. Filming will take place at the Pinewood Studios in London, England among another undisclosed locations in the United Kingfom. Casting director information is posted below. Experienced film crew members can now submit resumes to the production office email below. All actors, extras, and film crew members must be legally eligible to work in the entertainment industry in the United Kingdom….

(9) Speaking of available work, Vox Day posted a Tor job announcement today – they’re looking for a publicist. See how helpful he is? Not just trying to create openings at Tor, but willing to fill them too!

(10) I enjoyed Spacefaring Kitten’s spin on this nominee –

(11) Sarah Lotz, in a Guardian book blog post titled “The Hugo awards will be losers if politics takes the prize”, has this to say —

It raises the question: who should nominate works for awards anyway? A select jury (a la the Man Booker or Clarke) or the fans who actually buy the books? Clearly there should be enough room – and integrity – for both. Yet this year’s Clarke award shortlist was almost universally praised, while, in contrast, the Hugo nominations were met with derision and incredulity (for example, so-called “rabid puppy” Vox Day, who has called women’s rights “a disease to be eradicated”, is up for two awards). You might say that this is democracy at work – the fans have spoken! – and that would be all well and good, but, tellingly, two authors recommended by the Sad Puppies have already pulled their work from the nominations, saying that they want their writing to be judged on merit and not on their assumed political affiliations. It goes without saying that all books, whatever their authors’ political stance, should be judged on whether they’re any good or not; but with some factions suggesting fans vote “No Award” on categories that they believe have been hijacked, and the Puppies urging their stormtroopers to stick to their guns, the whole thing has slipped into farce. And this is a great pity.

(12) Here’s a dissenting theory.

(13) And now you need a laugh.

A Italian western parody, of Sergio Leone’s THE GOOD, THE BAD and the UGLY…but with Star Wars characters. With respect to Ennio Morricone’s unforgettable and entirely iconic film score.

 

[Thanks to JJ, Paul Weimer, SF Signal and John King Tarpinian for some of these links.]

158 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 7/24

  1. The Good, the Bad, and the Pixily
    The Weirdpixel of Brisingamen
    If You Were a Pixel, My Love
    High Pixel
    Fear and Pixels in Las Vegas
    Edward Pixelhands
    Pixels of the Caribbean
    Pixels of the Asteroids
    Pixelmancer
    A Song of Scrolls and Pixels

  2. Subtitle suggestion: just replace “puppy” with “pixel” in all my previous Hugo roundup title suggestions.
    KTHXBYE

  3. Lenora Rose on July 25, 2015 at 4:17 pm said:

    M/D/Y is based on North American spoken convention, where one is more likely to say “June 25th” than “25th of June”. The latter is considered to sound exceedingly stilted.

    Hmm don’t buy it. June 25th would be common in British English and Australian English also. I suspect it is more just a chance thing – a 50/50 chance that either M/D would be the convention or D/M. The US went with M/D – which is fine by itself but is just plain wrong when a year is appended.

  4. Eh, over here we remember, remember the Fifth of November, and November the Fifth, as well as Guy Fawkes’ Night, so I’m not sure that I can believe in the sacred status of the day/month form of “Fourth of July” as opposed to the profane month/day of e.g. “July Fifth”. It all sounds a bit of a post facto rationalisation to me.

  5. I think “file” might work better than “pixel” and tie thematically to the site overall. And it’s no harder to fit in–“Lord of the Files” “File Away Home” “The File is a Harsh Mistress” etc.

  6. Yes, we often say July 4th, too–but it’s one of the few dates that routinely gets the Day/Month format. Really, the only one I can think of offhand.

    When I see a date formatted day/month/year, or year/month/day, I blink momentarily, realize what I’m looking at, and move on. I really don’t get this need to lecture other people about Not Doing It Our Way, Which Is Obviously Right.

  7. RedWombat on July 25, 2015 at 4:56 pm said:

    I think “file” might work better than “pixel” and tie thematically to the site overall. And it’s no harder to fit in–“Lord of the Files” “File Away Home” “The File is a Harsh Mistress” etc.

    The File, The Witch and the Wardrobe
    The File in the High Castle
    Versus
    The Lion, The Witch and the Pixel
    The Man in the High Pixel

  8. It’d be great if the people who have that vocation would write a single “master comment,” perhaps including a index of links to their rebuttal of various points, and just rubber stamp that in where needed.

    It could even include the questions he won’t answer…

  9. Lis Carey on July 25, 2015 at 4:56 pm said:
    I really don’t get this need to lecture other people about Not Doing It Our Way, Which Is Obviously Right.

    🙂

  10. jcr: I only made it through the first 1/3 [of the Hot Equations], and I am certain that lots of things in it were wrong. It read like something written by someone who understood the principles in his high school physics text, but with no practical experience or more in depth study to tell him when he was missing major concepts or making bad assumptions. Technical terms were used oddly, as if by someone who had no familiarity with them.

    My reaction to the piece was “WTF???”. According to LinkedIn, the author has a Bachelor’s degree in English, and the entirety of his work experience is in the realm of administrative and sales tasks for business, with a bit of game design and marketing thrown in. As far as I can tell, he’s got no meaningful science-oriented training or job experience, so I was more than a bit surprised that he would have the hubris to write a piece on hard science.

    Then I just figured, “he’s a Puppy, this is par for the course”, left it off my ballot, and moved on.

  11. +1 to The Pixellent Prismatic Spray !!

    Let’s make them Vancian titles for a month

  12. Riffing on AD&D…
    Pixelmatic Spray
    Pixelmatic Wall
    Pixelmatic Sphere
    Brian’s Lamentable Belaborment
    Standlee’s Instant Summons
    Mikenglyer’s Lucubration

  13. @Camestros

    Also metric is SF and feet and inches are fantasy.

    Wouldn’t this exacerbate the Paulk’s Tavern problem?

    :-p

  14. And I’ve been trying to write a poem about the problem; it’s just as well I’m a lousy poet, since there are a lot of better people to give it a try…

  15. Re Brian Z: may I remind folks of the bingo card? Yes, it’s inherently disrespectful. That’s the point: what’s being said is so tired and boring and already-heard that look! it slots into this bingo square.

    And it’s so much more concise than actually responding. Anybody who wants to bend over backwards to accommodate his trolling can link to explicit rebuttals; everybody else can look at it, shrug, and scroll past.

    ObSF: I bought Archivist Wasp based on recommendations here and just finished it. Excellent; highly recommended; currently in my “top releases of 2015” list. I’d love to cosplay Wasp if I thought anybody would get the reference (and if it didn’t mean needing to grow my hair long enough to braid other hairpieces into it).

  16. snowcrash on July 25, 2015 at 7:56 pm said:

    @Camestros:Also metric is SF and feet and inches are fantasy.

    Wouldn’t this exacerbate the Paulk’s Tavern problem?

    Oh yes indeed:
    The mighty goblin army advanced upon Castle Barg, kilometre by kilometre. The goblin general Yurk stood 3 metres tall and massed over 300 kilograms and yet ran with all the grace of a deer – assuming the deer was green, armed to the teeth and had a deep and lasting hatred of kittens.

    Mind you the metric distinction doesn’t work for the southern anglophone nation distinction: NZ is fantasy and Australia is SF but both are metric.

  17. I read a British printing of an originally American book once where distances were oddly precise – 304 meters, for instance. Then I realized they must’ve taken a vague “thousand feet high” and converted it.

  18. The US sort of went stealth metric years ago

    It’s a long time since anyone complained about 2-liter soft drinks or 750ml ‘fifths’. Knitting and crochet tools and materials are metric, too, and no one seems to have noticed.

  19. @Bravo Lima Poppa

    If you enjoyed the Sandbaggers, have you tried Rucka’s Queen and Country comics? It’s very much a love letter to the series. Ed Brubaker’s Velvet might be of interest as well.

    Yep, read both. Quickly saw the Queen & Country connection.

    Big fan of Rucka and Brubaker. Velvet I was not as big a fan of, I liked the premise but it quickly dropped that and became a normal spy adventure – still good but disappointing to me because I liked the idea of Mrs. Moneypenny being a master spy so much.

  20. I’d like to thank the Academy, Will R. for stepping into my former role when the call came, and last but not least JJ’s gifted understudy Cubist – although the difficult decision was made to cut Cubist’s lines from the film, we are hoping to assemble a sort of “greatest hits” for the DVD. “Fly, you fools!” meant this would be easier if you just sent the Eagles. I will always be grateful to Kate Paulk and Theodore Beale for securing me this nomination, and to whoever stands up at the Business Meeting to say “slates are an abomination, which is why we propose to ensure that they can occupy 80% of the ballot in the most vital categories.” I’ll be signing bingo cards a little later. Try the veal!

  21. P J Evans on July 25, 2015 at 9:28 pm said:

    The US sort of went stealth metric years ago

    It’s a long time since anyone complained about 2-liter soft drinks or 750ml ‘fifths’. Knitting and crochet tools and materials are metric, too, and no one seems to have noticed.

    Presumably some ammunition for guns is metric also?

  22. ObSF: I bought Archivist Wasp based on recommendations here and just finished it. Excellent; highly recommended; currently in my “top releases of 2015? list.

    Yay!

  23. I think we’ve become too fixated on the ‘pixel’ aspect to the detriment of the ‘scroll’ possibilities:

    Scroll Of The Wild
    Scroll Around The World
    Scroll Away The Stone
    The Brides Of Scrollrock Island
    The Apocalypse Scrolldex.

    And so on.

  24. JJ — I wouldn’t bash a writer for merely not having a science qualification. I’m a graphic designer by trade and qualification, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t do algebra or stats (calculus would need a bit of revision), do a little simple engineering, or quote the second law of thermodynamics and have some idea of what it means.

    Sure, I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone qualified in those spheres anything they shouldn’t already know — unless they were doing the equivalent of holding their scalpel the wrong way round — but that wouldn’t, and hasn’t, stopped me from applying my graphical bent to scientifical subjects.

  25. The Long Dark Tea Time of the Scroll
    Pixel Or It Didn’t Happen
    Well of Scrolls
    The Roads Must Scroll
    Scrolls to Newcastle
    Pixellent Prismatic Spray
    Nine Pixels in Amber
    The Scroll Who Loved Me
    Octopixel
    The Scroll Beneath The Skin

  26. Presumably some ammunition for guns is metric also?

    Funny about that: that didn’t result in the complaints that other stuff did. Possibly it doesn’t feel like ‘metric system’ to people. (Favorite complaint about going metric: ‘my car doesn’t use it’.)

  27. P J Evans on July 26, 2015 at 3:21 am said:

    Presumably some ammunition for guns is metric also?

    Funny about that: that didn’t result in the complaints that other stuff did.

    Presumably because some imported stuff must use it? Wouldn’t that be the same for cars? [I’m very deep into topics-I-know-nothing-about-territory here]

  28. @Elisa: “-500 degrees Kelvin”

    That is a remarkably mistake-dense phrase! Two errors in three words… I could almost commend the author for that achievement. Instead, I’ll simply remember it as shorthand and use it as you have.

  29. NelC: I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone qualified in those spheres anything they shouldn’t already know — unless they were doing the equivalent of holding their scalpel the wrong way round — but that wouldn’t, and hasn’t, stopped me from applying my graphical bent to scientifical subjects.

    But would you presume to write an article explaining hard science? Because I’ve got way more education and credentials at science than that author does, and I would never have had the hubris to write that article. I would have known that I didn’t know enough to do it well — without having someone far more knowledgeable and experienced to read it and correct it.

    What I find dismaying is reading all the comments from people who think “The Hot Equations” piece is good because they don’t have the knowledgebase to realize that it is bollocks.

    Of course, this is a cogent demonstration of Aristotle: “The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know”, and his Dunning-Kruger corollary: “The less you know about something, the more you think you are qualified to write about it”.

  30. JJ — Writing is what writers do, and if you’re an SF fan who is also a writer, you’re going to write about skiffy subjects. Do you have to be qualified in physics, engineering, biology, politics, sociology and scientology to write SF, let alone to write about SF?

    And I have written about science in fora and blog comments, to explain what little I understand to those who understand less, there being no more-qualified person to hand. Should I forbear from doing so because I’m not qualified? Or should the criterion — easier to state than observe, I’ll admit — be: don’t write about what you don’t understand, and damn the diplomas?

  31. Scalzi wrote a book about astronomy, and I’ve never heard that he did a bad job of it, despite his degree being in philosophy. Non-scientists can write about science, but they DO have to do a lot of studying, and they’d be wise to run it by field experts if they want to be sure it’s right.

  32. NelC: Do you have to be qualified in physics, engineering, biology, politics, sociology and scientology to write SF, let alone to write about SF?

    But that’s not what the author did. He didn’t just write about science-fiction. He wrote about science. And this wasn’t a fiction piece. It was supposed to be non-fiction.

    So I would say, Yes! of course he needs to be qualified in the subject about which he’s writing — or he needs to be getting his information from someone who is qualified.

    I can’t count the number of SF book forewards/afterwards I’ve read where the author thanks one or more high-powered scientists for informing and validating the science behind their stories. Professional authors understand that if they don’t have the knowledge, then they get someone who does have that knowledge to help them.

    And I will point out that your comments about science in fora and blog comments were just that — comments — and I strongly suspect that you qualified them with “I’m not an expert, but here’s what I think I know”. This is a far cry from setting yourself up as an authority on the subject, as the author did with “The Hot Equations”.

  33. JJ: I think that the qualifications for writing about the physics of rocketry are having studied the physics of rocketry…which doesn’t mean coursework, it means doing some reading, working the math, checking the math, and – for this kind of purpose – consulting with pros. There’s just not that much to an essay-length piece on the basics for use by writers. And the thing about science, after all, is that its facts and figures are out there for all to see. It’s a public universe. 🙂

    I’ve done some bouts of fairly heavy math myself for behind-the-scenes purposes in roleplaying game writing, despite my aborted-by-illness degree having been American history. I just took the time to double-check, and to read up on explanations by people actually doing the work I was borrowing from.

  34. JJ —

    So I would say, Yes! of course he needs to be qualified in the subject about which he’s writing — or he needs to be getting his information from someone who is qualified.

    Your second clause there contradicts the first, if we take the first to be an absolute. Which is what I was arguing against. If you didn’t mean it as an absolute, then perhaps you should have written your initial post on the subject better. Are you qualified to write about writing? 😉

    Yes, the writer needs to know something about the subject, and/or to do better at consulting texts and experts — but neither of those has anything to do with his own qualifications. Except insofar as, like an MBA, they need to know something more than what the diploma qualifies them for to actually be good at it.

  35. JJ —

    I strongly suspect that you qualified them with “I’m not an expert, but here’s what I think I know”.

    Well, perhaps less often than I should have. :s

  36. Metric has been in guns forever happily coexisting with English measurements. In this case it’s the Europeans that are more likely to change an ammunition name to a metric equivalent than Americans are. Of course with differences between 19th century and modern measurement methodology for bore diameter you end up with the weird situation where .38, .380, .357, and 9mm are the same bore diameter ( except where they aren’t since some 9mm uses the old measurement system and isn’t modern 9mm).

    Not related to any of the above: a really fascinating book on the history of the metric system:

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Measure-All-Things-Transformed/dp/0743216768

  37. When I was but a lad in the 1970s, the US made its first attempt to transition wholly to the metric system. It fell foul of classic American yahoo-ism. A popular syndicated columnist – I forget his name – devoted multiple essays across months of time to opposing it as unnecessary and foreign and sponsored formation of a supposed organization, WAM (We Ain’t Metric), to stop the adoption. (I have no idea how formal an organization WAM was. Like I say, I was but a lad.)

    As a science-minded little nerd the whole phenomenon galled me no end. But it carried the day. It’s impossible not to see it now as of a piece with the general reaction that gathered force throughout the 70s and culminated in the election of 1980.

  38. Your recommendation of “The Measure of All Things” reminded me of Linklater’s “Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy” which is a somewhat unfocused book about the history of measurement, why America wasn’t metric from the beginning (Caribbean pirates! Really!) and land surveying in the US. I found it truly fascinating.

  39. @Cally
    Just read the Amazon reviews for Measuring America. Catnip!

    Added to the to be read list (which File 770 is not helping shorten). Why aren’t you helping File 770? Let me tell you about my mother 😛

  40. In the year 1999 I worked for a small civil engineering company which had a contract with my state’s highway department to draw up plans for new state road traffic signals, often replacing old traffic signals (because they were changing the intersection layout, usually). When we were removing and replacing signals, the state gave us old “as-built” drawings of the intersections, (or as-built intersection construction plans where there had been no signals) so we could basically copy that information onto the plans with notes about removing such-and-such pole or handhole. The as-builts were in US Customary inches and feet (NOT “Imperial”. While US Customary shares some measurements with Imperial, it’s different. And yes, “US Customary” is the proper name), while the new plans for the First Time Ever were to be in metric. I spent a lot of time converting measurements. (What diameter is that conduit? How far is that handhole?)
    The worst was the “stationing”, aka “how far along the road you are”. In US Customary, stationing looks like 1+53.27, which means “150.27 feet from whatever your starting point is”. In metric, it’s 1+247.27 which means 1247.27 meters from the starting point. (it took a surprisingly long time to get used to three digits after the plus!) A perfectly easy conversion, you might think, except that survey feet are very, very slightly different from US Customary feet, and over the course of many miles, it starts to add up. And the basepoint for state roads is often very many miles indeed away. So do you assume the baseline is stationed in survey feet or US Customary? Much head-scratching ensued.
    Two years later, we had another contract with the state highway department. I was given as-builts in metric, and told to design in US Customary. To the best of my knowledge, the state highway department has been designing in US Customary ever since.
    And I’ve now used up my parentheses allotment for the day. Or possibly the week.

  41. Stoic, tell us us in single authors only the good things about your reading list.

  42. I’m excited that GRRM is planning to bring back the Hugo Losers Party in its correct form. This year, aren’t we all, in a way, Hugo Losers?

  43. Ack, I made a typo. Station 1+53.27 is 153.27 feet from your base point, not 150.27 feet. Of course, I noticed this just as the edit button disappeared….

  44. @Cally
    Reminds me of the story leading to the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter. I’m assuming it’s probably pretty well known but for anyone that hasn’t heard of it:

    http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/01/news/mn-17288

    We really should go metric. For modern usage it makes a lot more sense. I can’t imagine what an English like system would look like in electronics or computer science. Then again, outside those fields I don’t think in metric when I visualize measures. There’s no gut feel. I think that’s the main hurdle to America making the change. Any folks from countries that made the change recently (say 1960 plus) with insights on how the changeover went and the driving factors?

  45. Jim Henley – “We Ain’t Metric” was excreted from the typewriter of Bob Greene.

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