“Weights and measures may be ranked among the necessaries of life, to every individual of human society. They enter into economical arrangement and daily concerns of every family. They are necessary to every occupation of human industry, to the distribution and security of every species of property, to every transaction of trade in commerce, to the labors of the husbandman, to the ingenuity of the artificer, to the studies of the philosopher, to the reaches of the antiquarian, to the navigation of the mariner and the marches of the soldier; to all the exchanges of peace and all the operations of war.”

Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, 1821

A note on sources:

For the factual background of this article, I relied heavily on an article by Hector Vera at the New School for Social Research. It’s short, interesting, available here and well worth a read.

For pop culture uses of the English System of Measurement, I tried a crowdsourcing experiment, calling on friends and family to help me list instances of popular culture featuring units of measurement. Dozens of them responded to a query on Facebook or the hijacking of otherwise pleasant conversation. I am in their debt.

Since its introduction during the era of rationalism that followed the French revolution, the decimal metric system has spread to the vast majority of the world. Universally standardized weights and measures, easily converted even by those who can only multiply and divide by 10 provide obvious advantages to international science and trade. By the mid 20th century, the world was basically divided with the UK, its Commonwealth and the USA using the English standard system and everyone else on metric. Today, only three countries continue to reject the metric system: Burma/Myanmar, Liberia and the United States of America.

A quick look at those three countries:

Obviously, the US is a bit of an exception here, if for no other reason than that we finished our civil war a long time ago.

Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Josh McNeil to overthink the coming season of 24, the Golden Globes, the late night debacle on NBC (big winner: Arsenio Hall), and the misattribution of agency in argumentation.

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Download Episode 81 (MP3)

Few can deny the myriad benefits that the new era of action hero has brought humanity. He generates nonstop kinetic energy, capable of powering our modern conveniences like Blu-ray players or Bit-torrents with loads of extra features. He boasts levels of emotional endurance capable of withstanding stresses unheard of when our heroes were merely carved out of wood or stone, His delivery of satisfaction, in pain or in pleasure, is instant and constant. The modern-day action hero is many times more productive than his forebears: he is in more scenes and set pieces, he completes them faster in many more, shorter cuts, he kills more bad guys in slow motion than his grandfathers did on 16mm – he crashes more cars, he has more sex – the Gross Action Product of our modern day heroes makes the founding fathers of the genre pale by comparison. And he has impeccably photoshopped abs.

But one must at some point wonder – does this transformation in the basic action hero come with a cost? Sure, injecting a man with a poison so that he constantly has to supply his body with adrenaline or he dies is a great way to increase efficiencies and improve the general welfare, but is there a hidden cost to the action heroes themselves?

Or to all of us?

The In-Crank-rial Revolution’s human toll, after the jump –

Critics have certainly contested the merits of Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie’s historical drama Valkyrie, but everyone can agree that this film has raised historical awareness of the true-life 1944 plot by German high officials to assassinate Hitler and take over the government. Sure, the conspirators failed, but at least they tried. I’m sure many people left Valkyrie wondering, “Wouldn’t it have been great if they’d succeeded and brought an early end to World War II in Europe?” Their actions could have saved countless lives and may have prevented the East/West Germany division that lasted for over forty years.

For those people pondering such history, I say, not so fast. Killing the dictator and taking over the government is far easier said than done, and I have the historical proof AND the accompanying based-on-true-events movie to prove it: the 1979 assassination of South Korean strongman Park Chung-Hee, and the 2005 movie based on the event, The President’s Last Bang (그때 그사람들, for all you OTI Korean speakers out there):

Yup, that’s bubble gum in that guy’s mouth. One of many things that this movie and Valkyrie don’t have in common. Analysis, comparison, and a brief overview of South Korean history after the jump.