An interesting Deep Dive might be made examining how the establishment of an international standard of weights and measures was the first step toward the current system of globalisation of commerce. I remember in one of my early historical anthropology classes in Uni learning that standardised weights and measures was one of the great underpinnings of civilisation, and one of the very first things governments of places like ancient Sumer and the Hittite Empire and Old Kingdom Egypt involved themselves in. God-Kings with huge cults of priests, temples and pyramids, and one of the most important tasks of the priestly/scribal class was to make damn sure the bakers weren't shorting the loaves.
And of course, the big problem with "basing" your system of measurements on anything in the physical universe is that the physical universe itself isn't constant. Then there's the Mandelbrot issue - depending on how closely you measure a thing you're going to get a different measurement. Zoom in close enough and you'll find the smoothest object on earth looks like the Himalayas. Mandelbrot found out that it's actually physically impossible to measure a coastline accurately. It turns out that Zeno's Paradox is a thing after all.
I think about Mandelbrot almost every day, especially in the context of touch. Humans place so much value on the ability to hold things, other people, ourselves, but I can't let go of how wild it is knowing that the sensation of touch and all its power isn't actually the result of the measurement between two things being zero. We're not actually touching, it just feels like we are. Contact is more about perception than it is about reality. But aren't a lot of things!
This could be a post (and a thesis, of which I'm sure many exist) unto itself! In the spirit of keeping my word on "mini-posts" I decided to ditch the history piece, but I'm so glad you're here to...weigh in :)
I love these shorter posts! The long ones got saved up for the occasional Saturday morning coffee binge, but these ones are perfect rewards for clearing out my inbox in the morning.
Either way, please never stop the dad joke photo captions.
SO happy to hear it, Bronwen! You paint a gorgeous scene with coffee and weekend morning reads, too, though my own newsletter tendencies are similar and too often end up with more unread longreads than I can handle. I'd rather save inbox bankruptcy for other things. Shorter is good.
An interesting Deep Dive might be made examining how the establishment of an international standard of weights and measures was the first step toward the current system of globalisation of commerce. I remember in one of my early historical anthropology classes in Uni learning that standardised weights and measures was one of the great underpinnings of civilisation, and one of the very first things governments of places like ancient Sumer and the Hittite Empire and Old Kingdom Egypt involved themselves in. God-Kings with huge cults of priests, temples and pyramids, and one of the most important tasks of the priestly/scribal class was to make damn sure the bakers weren't shorting the loaves.
And of course, the big problem with "basing" your system of measurements on anything in the physical universe is that the physical universe itself isn't constant. Then there's the Mandelbrot issue - depending on how closely you measure a thing you're going to get a different measurement. Zoom in close enough and you'll find the smoothest object on earth looks like the Himalayas. Mandelbrot found out that it's actually physically impossible to measure a coastline accurately. It turns out that Zeno's Paradox is a thing after all.
I think about Mandelbrot almost every day, especially in the context of touch. Humans place so much value on the ability to hold things, other people, ourselves, but I can't let go of how wild it is knowing that the sensation of touch and all its power isn't actually the result of the measurement between two things being zero. We're not actually touching, it just feels like we are. Contact is more about perception than it is about reality. But aren't a lot of things!
This could be a post (and a thesis, of which I'm sure many exist) unto itself! In the spirit of keeping my word on "mini-posts" I decided to ditch the history piece, but I'm so glad you're here to...weigh in :)
Avogadro is one of my favourite words - next to gubernaculum and the "c" word (in top spot, of course).
GUBERNACULUM. Absolutely stellar.
I love these shorter posts! The long ones got saved up for the occasional Saturday morning coffee binge, but these ones are perfect rewards for clearing out my inbox in the morning.
Either way, please never stop the dad joke photo captions.
SO happy to hear it, Bronwen! You paint a gorgeous scene with coffee and weekend morning reads, too, though my own newsletter tendencies are similar and too often end up with more unread longreads than I can handle. I'd rather save inbox bankruptcy for other things. Shorter is good.
L O L the dad jokes are here to stay!!