Why I Like the Metric System

I must like the metric system or I wouldn’t be at work on a documentary on the subject of its history here in the United States. However, that doesn’t explain why I like the metric system.

It’s not because I like numbers, in fact, math has never really been one of my strong suits. I’m more of a words kind of gal.

Over time, I found that I was getting involved in activities outside of work that used metric units. One was beading and jewelry making, which frequently had supplies  listed in millimeters. I ended up asking my daughter to buy me a caliper as a gift to use for things like figuring out just how big a 14mm by 10mm stone really was.

That metric use was forced on me.

At about the same time that I starting beading, I started working with essential oils for their medicinal properties. (Must have been in a creative period back then.) Again, many times I was forced to deal with metric units since many of my supplies used milliliters for quantities and I’d have to perform conversions so I knew how much I might be buying.

When making mixtures, I began by using my familiar units of teaspoons, tablespoons and partial cups. I suspect at one point, while I was measuring in one of my liquid measuring cups,  I ended up using those little milliliter lines already on the container since they were closer together and seemed a little more precise. And then, over time, I began to realize that it was easier to figure out percentages of essential oils to other ingredients using milliliters and grams.

I don’t know about you, but I can conceptualize a milliliter much easier than I can 1/5 or .20 of a teaspoon. (Technically, a teaspoon is 4.9289ml.) [*Please see note below] When dealing with essential oils, you’re usually dealing with very small quantities so milliliters were just much easier to work with in my mind (and on paper) than the much larger units used in our traditional system.

I just kind of evolved into it naturally and once I’d decided it was such a better system, I incorporated it into the essential oil classes I had started teaching. I guess that’s when I originally went on record as pro metric. That was about four years ago.

I’ve come across statements that say our students waste two years of their school lives since they don’t use the metric system. I suspect that number includes both having to learn both systems (most students learn metric units at some point in their education) but also having to use a system that isn’t very easy to manipulate since the units don’t logically relate to each other.

Isn’t it time that we reconsider how we are handicapping our children not only in how they relate to the rest of the world’s population but also how they relate to the world itself?

Note: An astute reader brought to my attention that the Food and Drug Administration defines a teaspoon as 5 ml so not even our government can agree what we mean by our own measures! For more, see the comments. [Amended 11/20/12]

International Documentary Association Application

One of my goals over the next couple of months is to apply for fiscal sponsorship through the International Documentary Association (http://www.documentary.org/). Success means that I’ll get an IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization status and that means donors will get a tax credit for money given to help fund the project. The caveat is that they cannot have received something in return. For those who don’t know how all that works, let’s say people donate $100 and I give them a T shirt through something like kickstarter.com.  They then have to deduct the worth of the T shirt from their donation since they received a benefit. So, if the T shirt is “worth” $15, they get an $85 tax credit. Hey, those are IRS rules, not mine. For more information, consult the IRS website or your tax adviser.

That said, the application is very detailed and putting all the information together will be time consuming. That’s okay. They need to do what they need to do. The thing I had been struggling with the most was the budget section. Happily, I found someone in the form of Scott Laidlaw (https://www.thebiggeststoryproblem.com/) who not only helped me sort this out yesterday, but has graciously consented to be one of my advisers on the project. Thank you Scott and Jennifer Lightwood!

I now feel much more comfortable about my application and didn’t really want to proceed until I had this semi-nailed down. (Haven’t added all my numbers up yet. May or may not have “sticker shock.”) There’s much more work to do, of course, but the support that I’m getting from a number of people will make all the difference as I move forward.

And they’re not all even related to me!

More coming, stay tuned.

Linda

P.S. I’ll try to get the project’s logo up soon. It didn’t like the file format I tried to use last time so I have to work with it some more.

My Project’s Public Debut

On Saturday I had a booth at Los Alamos’ “Next Big Idea” event. I was hoping to generate some interest in the project with probably the most sympathetic of all audiences: the scientific and education folks that make up quite a bit of Los Alamos County. I figured if I couldn’t get support from this crowd, I should probably pull up my tent stakes now.

I’m happy to say that during the course of the day, I probably talked to about 50 or 60 people, some of whom stayed to talk with me quite a bit about the project. I had a number of giveaways supplied to me by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), as well as some branded items for my documentary.

People were very supportive of the project. I also talked to some non U.S. citizens who were very proud that their countries already use the metric system, which did not surprise me. I also had conversations with a number of teachers who took copies of some materials that they could use in the classroom. Several people signed up to receive additional information about the project, which unfortunately, I was unable to have prepared in time for this venue.

There are only so many hours in my day.

Participation in this event did a few things for me. For one thing, it gave me an opportunity to help get the word out regarding the project. Second, it gave me an opportunity to respond to people’s questions. This will help me fine-tune my materials to respond to the questions that people will most likely have about the project. Third, while I’m already pretty grounded regarding the information that will be contained in the documentary, I did hear some new angles on things that could be useful as my preproduction continues. In fact, somebody sent me a conversion program that I will pass on to the folks at NIST since I have no idea how to evaluate such a thing.

As a result of this venue, I have been invited to another event at a prep school in Albuquerque for Saturday the 29th. I have been told that they expect between 400 and 700 people, depending on weather and other factors. Again, it’s just another opportunity to reach out to people and let them know about this project. I told someone the other day that I would not be at all surprised if I end up talking to 10,000 people by the time this project is over. That number may be low, but if you want something like this to take off, you have to be willing to put that kind of time and attention toward it.

Given the short amount of time that I have been working on this project, I’m very pleased at the warm reception that is getting so far. I’m hoping it will continue.

Thanks for reading this,

Linda

Tool Talk

Sure, they’ll come a day when the tools I’ll be working with will be a camera, lights, microphones, and possibly other props. But I’m not there yet.

Interestingly, I’m finding that several tools useful for pre-preproduction on this project, I already have.

One tool that I began using almost immediately, was Evernote (http://evernote.com/). I don’t remember for sure how I came across this, but when I did, I realized how important it would be to help organize my projects and my life. Basically, what it does is allow you to scan documents and house them on an external server for access to them from anywhere. The other thing that it does (which has been so helpful for me in this project) is the ability for it to capture webpages, articles within the webpages, or the web address itself, and put it into my Evernote files. This has saved countless amounts of printing and copying, not to mention organizing. For instance, I came across a video of a woman singing a parody song about the adoption of the metric system. There would be no way to print something like that, but in Evernote I can capture the video by capturing the web address and saving it to my documentary files. The files are also searchable. a very handy feature, and you can label them in any way that helps remind you of what the content is even without the preview feature.

Another tool that I’m using right now, is voice recognition software. I have used it sporadically in the past, but I’m coming to realize that even though I’m a relatively fast typist, I frequently make small errors that I then have to go back and correct. That really slows me down. While the voice recognition software isn’t perfect, I am finding that I can produce much more work in a much shorter amount of time which, given the amount of work I have to do for this project, is very helpful. And while I am using an older version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I picked it up for $50 at Sam’s Club. Definitely a worthwhile investment. Yes, I have to go back and correct my work, but I would have to do that even if I were revising stuff I had typed myself. I don’t know right now if I want to invest a couple of hundred dollars in the newest version, but we’ll see. I only have so much free time, so I have to use it wisely.

Another tool that I anticipate using more as I move forward in this project is  Workflowy (https://workflowy.com/). It’s basically an outlining tool that allows you to expand and collapse different lists. I’m not using it a lot right now, because the next things that I need to do are pretty obvious to me. But I suspect that as of this gets more complicated and I have to say, keep track of my various interviewees, and their contact information, available dates, and other information, it will come in pretty handy. In fact, it would probably be a pretty good idea for me to start laying this out right now, so I have it in place I move forward.

Two of these programs, Evernote and Workflowy have free, but somewhat limited, editions. That way you can try them out and see if they work, and if they do for you, you can pay a little bit more for the additional features that they have to offer  if you think it’s worth it. Both are modest expenditures.

The right tool can make a lot of difference in getting the work done. And I’m glad I already had these in my back pocket when this project started.

Who knows, maybe you’ll find them helpful as well.

Cheers,

Linda

Sorry for the Information Blackout

I had meant to add information at least once a week, more or less.

The last couple of weeks it has been “less” due to my holding the design competition to develop a logo and branding for this project.

During the enforced brevity of this activity by 99designs.com (not necessarily a bad thing), I ended up with 17 different artists submitting ideas and many of them submitted more than one design. That meant I had to come home every night and interact with them, letting them know what I liked and didn’t like (“Could you change this color?” and “Could you make that element pop a little more?”) It was both exciting and worrying.

It was exciting because I got to see all the varied ideas that people came up with. It was worrying because I didn’t know if I’d end up with something that I could live with for the rest of my life. (Yes, I’d planned this as a two year project, but with any luck it won’t disappear from the face of the Earth once I get it into distribution, so I’ll continue to have to live with whatever decisions I make now for a long time to come.)

I realized fairly early that I would end up with something I could use, so then it became an issue of how to tweak the designs and communicate with the artists in such a way that I could get my thoughts across without sounding like a visua idiot (probably lost on that point).

Then it became an issue of which of these great designs I should use, knowing that it might “make or break” the project in people’s minds. (Sorry, just got this month’s delivery of cliches. They really do save time.)

I will say that I was really impressed with the level of expertise and creativity they brought to this project and for that I will always be grateful.

(For those who participated in the design poll, thanks for your input. It helped me know that I was going in the right direction and the comments were very helpful.)

It was also difficult to communicate with the designers who were eliminated from the competition. I had had quite a bit of interaction with some of them and at times I felt that I was pulling money out of their pocket. (Not that anyone was begging, but it was clear some of them really wanted to win for reasons of their own.)

I am especially grateful to the designer who ended up “in second place.” That person pulled his designs early on, I think because he thought he was out of the running, but joined back in after I pleaded with him to, because his designs showed so much promise. But, ultimately I had one design that I did like above all the others.

So, you say, you’d like to know which design I picked?

Sorry, you have to wait a little while longer. I’ve decided to file for formal copyright  protection, but it shouldn’t take very long. It’s just $35 dollars online and I plan to file for it this weekend. So then I get to add one more design element into the logo: A circle with a “c” in it.

Will post again soon. Thanks,

Linda

Design contest-Join in

I need a brand for this project and so I launched a design contest through 99designs.com on Sunday night.

While the competition is not officially over, it only has another couple of hours to run. So, here is a link to eight of the designs. I had to narrow it down to eight, but there were quite a few more. These are the frontrunners right now. You can vote for which ones you like best. I’ll use your input to help determine who the finalists will be. This is a fast process, so vote right away please.

http://99designs.com/logo-design/vote-2j95ui

Please also keep in mind that I’ll be using this for everything going forward, from tweets, to promotional items, and possibly even a “movie” poster much further out. I’m going to have to live with the choice not just for the remainder of the project, but the rest of my life. I can’t rebrand the project once it’s complete.

And please feel free to share this as much as you want (but soon). The more input I have the better.

Thanks for joining in on this exciting “mile” stone.

Linda

Switching to Higher Gear

And the metric jokes begin.

I told a friend that I was progressing on my documentary by leaps and bounds.

“Is that metric?” she asked.

Hmmmmm. Yes.

Status report:
Had a great meeting with NIST last week. NIST is short for National Institute of Standards and Technology. They are the keepers of the metric system in the United States and helped fill me in on lots of details including some international perspectives on the metric system. (You can only get so much from books and reports.) Can’t say enough nice things about these folks. The headquarters also has a real museum and the website has a virtual one. You can visit the physical  museum if you make an appointment ahead of time.  (It’s a post 9/11 thing.) http://museum.nist.gov/

Just joined the International Documentary Association. With the right groundwork and a well-put-together application, I hope to obtain a fiscal sponsorship and a  nonprofit status.

Have begun work on developing a logo for branding. I am looking at 99designs.com right now. You basically fund a design competition and end up with a variety of designs from which you can choose. Looks promising.

Have a phone interview with an animator tomorrow. Since I anticipate that animation will take up a fair amount of my budget, it’s vital that I begin to pin these costs down as soon as possible. I’ll also need as complete and accurate a budget as humanly possible to apply for IDA fiscal sponsorship, so this is a biggie.

Other than working all these and other details, I have tons and tons (oops) thousands and thousands of kilograms of reading to do.

That’s all for now,

Linda

The Genesis

Welcome back.

So here’s the short version of how I came to embark on this project. It was due to number of factors coming together at the same time.

– I’m now in my fifties and I remember being taught the metric system while I was in elementary school. We were told we would soon be using it. I’ve always wondered what happened.

– After getting into a discussion near the end of last year on the what happened to the metric system here  (probably related to some metric conversion issue), I decided to do a little research and came upon the information that’s housed on the U.S. Metric Association Board’s page at: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/dates.htm.

– I remember thinking how sad the timeline was. Even with such a long history, it still is hardly being used here. I also discovered that we are pretty much out-of-step with the rest of the world. I actually thought it was kind of embarrassing for us as a nation and how our lack of the will to adopt the metric must look in the eyes of the rest of the world.

– Then add into the mix that I was a film major who used to produce videos for General Motors. I also recently began working in the video production arena again so that was reshaping how I was “seeing” information in my head.

– Then there‘s my constant watching of documentaries on Netflix.I think I had just finished watching “Absinthe” and thought what an interesting story the history of the drink it was.

I believe it was at that point that everything kind of came together, right down to the fact that there are more avenues for distribution than existed even a few years ago. You can even make and distribute a documentary without needing the buy in (both literally and figuratively) of a PBS or Discovery Channel..

– One last thing to throw on the heap. I work in a science-rich environment (a national laboratory) so I think that at a subconscious level, that played a role as well, since the metric system is the language of science.

After mulling all this over for a week, and a little more research to find out what information might already be available on the subject (not much from the history aspect), I decided to proceed.

And that’s the short version…….

The Journey Begins

Hi there. About a month ago I decided that I would take on the challenge of making a documentary about what happened to the adoption of the metric system in the United States. Over the course of this blog I plan to keep readers informed regarding my progress. As of yesterday, I registered a treatment with the Writers Guild of America that forms the outline of what I’m planning for its content. Now that that’s done, I can go public and hope that I can find others who are interested in the very long story of why we are still using inches, miles, ounces and pounds, when most of the rest of the world has gone SI (Système international d’unités), or what we refer to as the metric system.

Even over the last month, I think I’ve made a lot of progress, but the story is just beginning.

If this goes according to plan, it will not only be a story of the metric system in the United States, but also the story of how I’m going about putting together and distributing a documentary in this new landscape of social media, super-lightweight cameras, and streaming video services.

Join me. I think it should be both fun and interesting.

I expect that I will ask for help along the way. Maybe you can contribute an idea or two.

I hope to post at least once a week.

Just so you know, “Mile behind” refers to my working title: “More than a mile behind: America and the metric system.” The sub heading might change a bit, but I’m going to stick with “Milebehind” for other media, because it’s shorter.

In my next blog I’ll tell you what led me to where I am now.

Stay tuned.