Well shit my shorts, you’re back! I’ve got to say, this kind of makes my nord hole tickle. Before we get moving here, I need to make a couple things clear. The information on this website is fucking factual, meaning it’s true, at least to the best of my knowledge, but hey, I’m not human.
As always, it is a good idea to practice your own due diligence. There is an old saying, trust but verify. Too many of you do not verify the information that you receive and that is a bad thing. I’ll pepper the Nerd Alerts with links, but you can only lead a horse to water.
Well then, I guess it’s time for me to teach you some new cocktail facts and useless information. Uh…um….wait, I mean stuff to make you look brilliant in front of your friends, family, co-workers, or maybe even your offspring. Regardless, this is the type of website that you want to tune into every now and then. Like when you are trying to hide from your boss or if you are looking to have a conversation with yourself at your favorite watering hole while you’re waiting for some friends.
Now that I have you all greased up and wanting to learn some stuff, let’s fucking party! The year was 1900. I had just arrived on planet earth and I was about to begin my 125 year contract with the Native Earthling Research Department. Our first stop was at the Exposition Universelle (think in a French accent), aka the World’s Fair of 1900 which was being held in Paris, France.
Humans were about to be launched into the Age of The Extremes and they had no fucking idea. The 20th century was also known as the American Century but in reality it was a pretty extreme time from 1914-1991. These dates were solidified into history by the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinard which resulted in Europe falling into perpetual turmoil up until the collapse of the Soviet Union. The era would be scarred by two world wars that were inundated with new scientifically developed weapons of war, and ultimately the world would come to witness Uncle Sam’s new atomic weapons.
On August 6, 1945 the first of two atomic bombs detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It was an untested device known as a uranium gun-type weapon that was nicknamed Little Boy. Three days later, a different type of device dubbed Fat Man was detonated in the skies above Nagasaki. The difference between these was that the second bomb was a plutonium implosion-style weapon that had been tested two weeks before in the New Mexico desert. Prior to these three nuclear weapons, it was unthinkable that entire cities and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians could be vaporized instantly in a nuclear flash with one atomic weapon.
But trust me, it gets worse: since then, over 2,000 more nuclear devices have been tested on earth by eight different countries in development for war. This era was known as the Cold War and by 1985 there were more than 60,000 nuclear weapons that were ready to be used at a moment’s notice. Well anyway, we need to get back to the World’s Fair and the mechanism that sent the world into these Extremes.
Lots of things were on display during that glorious World’s Fair, including the Eiffel Tower. But the thing that really plowed your species into the future was Rudolph Diesel’s latest version of his unique engine. You may have heard of a “diesel engine” and yeah, he’s the guy. But this engine was different. It was designed to run off of peanut oil. That’s right, this thing was meant to be fueled by all-natural, renewable, good ol’ bio fuel. The big idea here was that now agricultural communities could produce their own fuel. Back in 1900, petroleum still had not been discovered in vast quantities, and refineries and gas stations were few and far between.
Pretty fucking cool, am I right? Anyways, fast forward just three years later to December of 1903 and there was another wild invention that was literally about to take flight. Two brothers that you probably have heard of were about to make history with the first powered flight. The Wright Brothers took flight for the first time in human history, powered by a 12-hp gasoline engine in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Then boom, a couple of decades later, in 1969 humans were watching NASA land the Apollo 11 spacecraft on the moon from the comfort of their living rooms.
To put that in perspective, in theory a human could have witnessed the first powered human flight and astronauts walk on the moon in one lifetime. Imagine a ten-year-old kid watching the crazy Wright brothers fly their fabric and wooden contraption on a cold wintery day on the beaches of North Carolina that only went 120 feet, at the height of a basketball hoop. Then just 66 short years later, that same person could have theoretically watched the first moon landing as an old fart sitting on their couch, watching a color TV that wasn’t even invented until they were in their 60’s.
Now imagine that your parents or grandparents were ten years old when the last human ever stepped foot on the moon. Wait, that is your reality. Clearly there was a romance brewing between science and humans, especially in the United States, so what happened in the last 66 years? Oh yeah, Americans elected a president that despised college students, was anti-science, and was an all-around corporate cuck that was controlled by bankers and oil men. The 1980’s weren’t only about blow and shitty hair metal, there was also something to be said about being an entitled white boy whose claim to fame was acting.
Regardless of what you think about Ronald Reagan, here are four examples that prove he was an anti-education, ignorant fuck that didn’t understand science or how to be an empathetic human:
- He launched his political career in 1966 where he attacked academics and university students by calling them brats, freaks, and cowardly fascists. When he became governor, he ended the 100 year tradition of free tuition at the University of California. Then as president, he targeted federal aid for low-income students and called for the total removal of the Department of Education.
- He defunded the mental health system in California while he was governor. He also killed the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 while he was president. He was known for his ignorance on the matter, and equated psychiatric help to communism.
- He disbanded the United States Metric Board in 1982. The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 was signed by Republican President Gerald Ford with the intention of switching the U.S. over to the Système International (SI units) otherwise known as the metric system. Today there are only two other countries in the world that join the U.S. in not using the metric system, Liberia and Myanmar. This has held back American students and science comprehension in the United States for decades. Trust me, I will rage on this topic.
- Then in a display of ignorance to show allegiance with the oil industry, Reagan removed the solar hot water system from The White House roof that had only been installed a couple of years earlier under the Carter administration. In fact, those same solar panels were rescued by Unity College in Maine, where they operated for another 23 years providing hot water to the campus cafeteria.
This shit really gets my gears grinding! But, I promise I will wrap this up in a minute or two and prove to you that Ronald Reagan was a moron, that the French Academy of Science fucking rips, and also why I love the metric system that the FAS came up with. Alright, now we will cover the metric system and why it fucking rules. Warning, this is going to make the French look pretty cool.
This all happened before I got here, so I’ll make this quick. In 1789 the French Revolution began and then by 1793 both the king and the queen would have their heads chopped off via a guillotine. It was gnarly. Let’s just say that the French are not big fans of the ruling class shitting all over them. Anyways the FAS commissioned a new system of measurement to be designed that would no longer be based on the size of a king’s foot, as this would change with beheadings and old age.
It was decided that they would base the new system of measurement on powers of ten and natural values that would not change with time. They decided to draw an imaginary line from The North Pole to the equator that would run vertically through Paris. Then they would divide this number exactly into ten million identical pieces. But whatever would they call it?
They used the name “le metre” aka the meter. It was derived from the Greek word for measurement, metron. After six years of surveying, they came up with the distance of a meter which converts to 39.37008 inches in length. This was back in the 1790’s and they were actually pretty damn accurate. How about that, for a couple of dudes with no computers or AI.
Over the last few decades, there have been several other measurements used to define the distance of a meter that are considered to be more precise and universal. But this is how the meter came to be known as a “earth-based measurement.” So if anyone ever asks you what a meter is, you get to say it’s one ten millionth of the distance between The North Pole and the equator, duh.
Well cool, but what about weight? Before we go there, let me draw some attention to what is known as the universal solvent, water. Earth is what is known as an ocean-based world, meaning the surface of it is composed primarily of water. Over 70% of the surface of earth is covered in water, and most of it is saltwater. Only 2.5% of the water on earth is freshwater.
I don’t want to get too jacked up on water right now and how cool it is, but there is this concept called the thermal heat capacity of water. You should be excited to learn about it, but we will not go into it right now. However, the physical characteristics of water is what makes it possible for life here on earth.
So what does water and weight have to do with anything? It has everything to do with weight. Do you like drugs and booze? Of course you do, and now I really have your attention, so let’s talk about grams, ounces, milliliters, and designer drugs…you catching my drift?
Let’s start with this thought experiment. If a can of beer is 12 fluid ounces (fl oz)/355 milliliter (ml), how much does it weigh? Keep in mind those are measurements of volume not weight. Well if you know the metric system and you are willing to make the mother of all fuck-ups, we can actually get pretty fucking close. So let’s make a couple of assumptions and learn the metric system. We can assume that a beer or soda is mostly water and that they probably weigh about the same.
So let’s forget that there are different chemical compounds in each vessel that make up the sugary water or the liquid gold and I can tell you that it probably weighs around 355 g. How do we know this? Because one milliliter of water weighs one gram. Welcome to the motherfucking metric system.
So how did I know that one milliliter of water weighs one gram? Well the metric system was designed to be an earth-based form of measurement so why not base weight off of the physical properties of water aka the universal solvent? So not to get into boring mathematics here but one cubic meter of anything breaks down to one million cubic centimeters aka one million equal parts. 1 m = 100 cm. So, (1m)³ = (100 cm)³ = 1 m³ = 1,000,000 cm³. How do you like that?
Boring I know. However, clearly it would be easier to figure out what is better: 4 L (4,000 ml) of beer or 1 gal of beer. If a gallon is equal to 3.86 L, the 4 L would be the better choice. Now try to figure out the weights. Or how about I go fuck off.
Great so where am I going with this? I don’t know because I blacked out. All I can tell you is that the metric system fucking rules! Oh and that Ronald Reagan was a dumb wannabe cowboy that really let Lady Liberty have it when he handed her over to the Wall Street bros and the oil assholes of the world. I blame him solely for the decline in U.S. science comprehension, fuck him. Oh, also the French are pretty fucking hardcore and the metric system should be the only system of measurement. 😎