Former Fake Republican Lincoln Chafee Announces His Intent to Embarrass Himself for President

He's running as a parody of a lifestyle-liberal progressive-signalling machine.

Get a load of this shit:

A deeply longshot presidential candidate has announced his campaign with a deeply longshot proposal: Let's adopt the metric system.

Lincoln Chafee, the former Republican, independent, senator and governor of Rhode Island, joined the race for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday with a plea to change the way Americans measure stuff.

"Earlier, I said let's be bold," he said from George Mason University in Virginia. "Here's a bold embrace of internationalism: Let's join the rest of the world and go metric. I happened to live in Canada. And they've completed the process. Believe me, it's easy. It doesn't take long before 34 degrees is hot. Only Myanmar, Liberia and the United States aren't metric, and it will help our economy."

You know why we should adopt the metric system?

To apologize to the world for the war in Iraq.

Asked why metric during a question-and-answer session after his address, the candidate, who's campaign platform is focusing in on the Iraq war, said the switch would be "a symbolic integration of ourselves in the international community after the mistakes" of the last 10 to 15 years.

He also ran against the War on Terror and said we should legalize drugs.

I have a nuanced position on the metric system, because, unlike most liberals, I've used it.

Yes, as a onetime science major, I've had to do measuring and calculating in metric.

And here's what I think of it:

It's a fine system. It has advantages over the imperial system in some ways. On the other hand, it has some disadvantages, too, as it was not crafted to reflect actual human practice and needs, but rather to serve a conception of Rationalism favored by the French Revolutionaries.

For example: Ten is an inconvenient division point for most human purchases and measurements. Knock the silly three-feet-to-a-yard division, but dividing the yard into three -- not ten, not one hundred, but a smallish number like three -- is convenient in human-scale affairs.

It's convenient that a gallon is broken up into four quarts -- rather than ten decigallons.

Now, the metric system is, as I said, better suited for some things. But that's why the scientific and medical community have already completely adopted the metric system.

Everything with the left is Cargo Cult and signaling. They think that because a scientist uses metric for science purposes, they'll be MOAR SCIENTIFIC if they use metric for non-scientific purposes.

They actually think that if you flip the speedometer so that it's the KPH that's big and on top, and MPH that's small and on bottom, then driving is now Moar Scientific than it was before.

Or, if you purchase a two one-liter bottles of Coke (yes, they have them-- how scientific!) that's Moar Scientific than purchasing the 32 ounce size.

Because, and I do mean this: They are fucking imbeciles.

Having used the metric system myself, it is not some Talismanic Sci-Fi Thing to me. It is simply a convention of measurements.

But to the Cargo Cult Wymyn's Herstory major, who has not been in science class since 3rd grade, the idea of using meters to denominate distance fills her wit ha frisson of scientific adventure, like she's about to set foot on Mars!!!

Plus, of course: So European, you guys.

People who work with measures routinely shuttle back and forth between systems, based on convenience. All mechanics and carpenters and contractors, for example, do some measuring in feet (16 inches between studs) and many in metric (15 mm bolt).

This is not some difficult thing.

But people who do not do science or math want to feel like they're doing science and math, so they continue pestering us about doing the Science of converting yards to meters. (The Science is simple: for all practical purposes, a meter equals yard (and a touch). If you want to Do Science, just start estimating distances, but instead of saying "that looks ten yards away," say: "That looks just slightly under ten meters away." Science Performed!!!)

And just shut the fuck up, you stupid, ignorant, infantile know-nothings and fashionistas of mind.

By the way:

Real Scientists frequently use alternative methods of measurement, so there just isn't any such thing as a Metric Standard used exclusively across the board.

Scientists often talk in earth-masses, or solar masses, or astronomical units, or parsecs, for example.

Scientists make up imaginary units of convenience for their thought experiments -- see, here, a discussion of the vacuum catastrophe, in which the authors make up fake units of convenience the "jiffy" and the "blip" because they want to set their base units all equal to one and thus get rid of most of the math. (In fact, they want to define units in terms of each other, so that all the units of measurement actually divide out and drop out of the equations entirely.)

This idea that there is one measurement system used by Science! is the sort of thing that only a non-scientist could believe.

posted by Ace at 07:36 PM

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