07 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The USA Should Adopt the Metric System
You, in this country [the USA], are subjected to the British insularity in weights and measures; you use the foot, inch and yard. I am obliged to use that system, but must apologize to you for doing so, because it is so inconvenient, and I hope Americans will do everything in their power to introduce the French metrical system. ... I look upon our English system as a wickedly, brain-destroying system of bondage under which we suffer. The reason why we continue to use it, is the imaginary diff... 1 
notes
notesKelvin predicts Britain is stuck with it, but America will adopt.
28 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Wonderful Factoids
1. If you condense the history of the universe to a single year, humans would appear on December 31st at 10:30 PM—99.98 percent of the history of the universe happened before humans even existed.
2. Look at a gold ring. As the core collapsed in a dying star, a gravity wave collapsed inward with it. As it did so, it slammed into the thundering sound wave heading out of the collapse. In that moment, as a star died, the gold in that ring was formed.
3. We are star material that knows it exists... 1 notes
notesTo instill in a child the sense of wonder.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Thoughts on a Collapsing Wall
One summer day, while I was walking along the country road on the farm where I was born, a section of the stone wall opposite me, and not more than three or four yards distant, suddenly fell down. Amid the general stillness and immobility about me the effect was quite startling. ... It was the sudden summing up of half a century or more of atomic changes in the material of the wall. A grain or two of sand yielded to the pressure of long years, and gravity did the rest. Folksonomies: geology
Folksonomies: geology
1 notes
notesA stone wall collapses, and the author imagines the half-century of atomic changes that brought about the mini avalanche.
30 NOV -0001 by ideonexus
Should Spelling be Modernized?
The time taken to teach the decimalised system for currency, temperature, weights and distances is far shorter and more certain than when 240 pence equalled a pound, 32 degrees Fahrenheit equalled the temperature of ice and pounds and ounces were taught. Already there is a generation that was spared these ancient measurements.
To improve literacy in the general population, modernisation of the spelling system will bring similar benefits to what decimalisation brought.Folksonomies: phonetics
Folksonomies: phonetics
1 It takes just one generation to fix spelling and improve literacy for future generations. Just as it took one generation to move to the metric system or change currencies in Europe.
