Happy National Metric Day - October 10
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/metric-week.html
http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/NationalMetricDay.pdf
The following Letter to the Editor was published in the Statesman Journal newspaper in Salem Oregon:
Obama should have backed impeachment
July 20, 2008
Since April 2007, the Statesman Journal has published several of my letters extolling the virtues of Barack Obama, but recently, three issues leave me feeling betrayed.
I acknowledge that a candidate for national leadership cannot satisfy every citizen on every issue, but I think Obama has gone too far on mixing religion with government with his faith-based ideas. I also think he voted the wrong way on the recent FISA bill.
But something far worse than these two blunders is Obama's ignoring his duty to act in concert with Kucinich to take the necessary steps to impeach war criminals Cheney and Bush. I hold Obama to a higher standard because he taught courses in constitutional law at the University of Chicago.
I will surely vote for Obama this November, but with diminished enthusiasm.
— David Pearl, Salem
Governor highlights partnership between PGE, US Bank and the Oregon Department of Transportation
(Portland) – Governor Kulongoski today announced Oregon is installing the nation’s first solar demonstration project in a highway right of way, moving the state a step further in its role as a leader in renewable power development. The project is the result of collaboration with Portland General Electric (PGE), US Bank and the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), and the materials and installation will be provided by Oregon companies.
“Before the year is over, this ground will hold the nation’s first Solar Highway project, and Oregon will make history using the power of the sun to light this interchange,” Governor Ted Kulongoski said.
“More importantly, this project will represent a new era for energy in Oregon. It will represent a step forward toward our vision of an energy independent Oregon – and it will represent the endless opportunities before us to chart this course of clean, reliable and renewable energy for our state.”
The Governor and ODOT, in partnership with PGE and US Bank, unveiled the project that will help light the way for drivers at the Interstate 5 and Interstate 205 interchange in Tualatin. Governor Kulongoski, PGE President and CEO Peggy Fowler, and Oregon Transportation Commission Chair Gail Achterman broke ground on the project, placing the first of 594 solar panels.
The solar highway demonstration project is an “all Oregon” effort — Oregon companies will supply materials, design and install this collaborative project. SolarWorld AG of Hillsboro will supply the solar panels, and PV Powered, Inc. of Bend will supply the inverter.
“PGE is committed to developing and promoting more solar power in Oregon,” said Peggy Fowler. “We appreciate the innovative approach the Governor and ODOT are taking to support our solar industry and make Oregon first in solar highways.”
The 104-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system — covering about 8,000 square feet and roughly the length of two football fields — will produce about 112,000 kilowatt hours a year, or 28 percent of the 400,000 kilowatt hours used to light the interchange. The $1.3 million project is expected to be completed and online in December 2008.
Electricity for the highway interchange is provided by PGE and the added solar power will be handled through a net metering arrangement.
The solar panels will produce electricity during the day, supplying power onto the PGE grid, and PGE will return an equivalent amount of power at night to light the interchange.
The project will be designed, constructed and installed by SolarWay, a “turn-key” solar energy engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) consortium consisting of four Oregon firms: Aadland Evans Constructors, Inc., of Portland as the general contractor; Moyano Leadership Group, Inc., of Salem as the project manager and design leader; Advanced Energy Systems of Eugene as the solar power specialty designer and installer, and Good Company of Eugene as the community and sustainability specialist.
To access more information about the project, go to: OregonSolarHighway dot com
From: GOVERNORS Press [mailto: Governors.Press@state.or.us]
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 11:03 AM
Subject: NEWS RELEASE: Governor Unveils First in the Nation Solar Highway Installation
Theodore R. Kulongoski
Governor
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEWS RELEASE
August 7, 2008
Contact: Anna Richter Taylor, 503-378-6169
Shelley Snow (ODOT), 503-986-3438
Elaina Medina (PGE), 503-464-8790
The next time you are at the receiving end of someone pushing religion on you, and you actually feel energetic enough to engage the person in a dialogue that has some chance of turning the tables for a change, try this line of reasoning:
Question: Does God know the feeling of fear?
I have received four different initial responses from people: either 1. Yes, or 2. No, or 3. I do not know, or 4. The person will give some evasive answer in an attempt to derail your control of the dialogue.
If the proselytizer answers: Yes, then your response could be something like this: Oh, then God knows what it is like to feel powerless to overcome some threat, because after all, that is the meaning of fear, to know that you are not all-powerful.
If the proselytizer answers or changes the answer to: No, then your response could be something like this: Oh, then God does not know everything.
Either way, a reasonable conclusion is that no entity could possibly be all-knowing AND all-powerful. But then again, you are most likely in a dialogue with someone who is not reasonable. If you want more of this kind of thing, then consider visiting www.SkepticsAnnotatedBible.com where you can have hours of fun discovering how Steve Wells reveals the absurdities and contradictions of the bible.
Business development mission pursues business leads around renewable energy and electric cars that will drive green collar jobs back home to Oregon (Jerusalem, Israel) – Governor Ted Kulongoski continued his business development mission in Israel today where he met with officials from ORMAT Technologies, Solel Solar Systems and the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
The Governor has focused the mission on industries that are bringing renewable energy technologies to market. Oregon has been the location of choice for new business recruitments like SolarWorld, Solaicx and Peak Sun in the solar energy industry. The Governor spoke with Solel about operating in Oregon and discussed its business model.
“Oregon’s experienced semiconductor workforce, low energy costs and renewable energy tax credits make us a global competitor when it comes to solar manufacturing,” Governor Kulongoski said. “Oregon is on track to become the largest photovoltaic-producing state in North America next year.”
Solel specializes in the design, manufacture and installation of solar fields and critical solar field components for large-scale power generation. Solel is the world’s largest solar thermal company with more than 20 years’ experience in the sector.
Similar discussions are on the slate with ORMAT Technologies, a global leader in geothermal power equipment and development. The company has more than four decades of experience in the development of state-of-the-art, environmentally-sound power solutions, primarily in geothermal and recovered energy generation.
“Oregon is rich in geothermal resources,” Governor Kulongoski observed. “I am interested in learning more about harnessing this natural power resource to increase our renewable energy options.”
The Governor and state economic development staff also met with Israeli representatives to discuss Israel’s efforts to develop a nationwide electric car network to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
The Israeli government has announced a plan to install the world’s first electric car network in Israel by 2011. The U.S.-based company “Project Better Place,” owned by Israeli-American entrepreneur Shai Agassi, will provide lithium-ion batteries to power the cars and the infrastructure to refresh or replace them. One battery will enable the cars to travel 124 miles per charge.
Project Better Place will install parking meter-like plugs on city streets and construct service stations along highways to replace the batteries. Renault-Nissan will build the new cars and will offer a small number of their existing electric models at prices roughly comparable to gasoline models.
Governor Kulongoski is interested in the incentives, policies, construction needs and timeline of the project and if a similar idea would be feasible in Oregon.
“Oregon has established itself as a leader in renewable energy and clean technology industries,” Governor Kulongoski said. “Electric vehicles are a logical complement to lessen our dependence on foreign oil and advance our sustainable development strategies.”
The Governor started his trip in Amsterdam before traveling to Israel this week.
It could enable surgeons to do complex procedures previously possible only through more invasive techniques.
A team at Imperial College London has been granted £2.1 million for the work.
They envisage using the i-Snake - a long tube housing special motors, sensors and imaging tools - for heart bypass surgery.
But it could also be used to diagnose problems in the gut and bowel by acting as the surgeon's hands and eyes in hard to reach places inside the body.
The Imperial College team, which includes health minister and surgeon Lord Ara Darzi, will test the device initially in the laboratory before it is used on patients.
Minimally invasive surgery has obvious advantages - it can mean smaller scars, reduced hospital stays and shorter recovery times.
Surgeons are also . . . (click here for continuation http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7155635.stm )
source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7150879.stm
The European Commission will propose that any EU citizen should be entitled to care elsewhere, if the treatment is allowed in their own state.
But a patient may have to seek prior authorisation for hospital care.
The commission's proposals follow court rulings that patients should be reimbursed for care at home or abroad.
Controversial plans
Because of the controversial nature of the plans, the commission has spent months drafting and re-drafting them, but will still face opposition from a number of countries.
EXPECTED PROPOSALS Hospital care: allowed across the EU if allowed at homeUndue delay: treatment allowed abroad, if appropriate care cannot be provided in home country without undue delayReimbursement: government may require prior authorisation before hospital careNon-hospital care: reimbursement without prior authorisation, if entitled to care in own member states
In the UK, some Labour MPs fear the proposals will lead to an internal market for health and ultimately to the demise of the publicly-funded National Health Service (NHS).
The Department of Health has already made it clear that the commission's draft directive will be subject to change during negotiations.
A spokesman said: "We think it is critical that the legislative framework ensures that the NHS retains the ability to decide what care it will fund to meet the needs of individual patients."
Spain and Germany are also likely to oppose some of the plans.
Prior authorisation
Anticipating a frosty reception, the commission is likely to propose giving member states prior authorisation of reimbursement for a hospital stay abroad.
For that to happen, a country would have to provide evidence that the number of patients seeking hospital care abroad would affect the planning of their home country's hospital sector.
The commission spells out that anyone who cannot have "appropriate care" for their condition in their own country "without undue delay, will be authorised to go abroad, and any additional costs of treatment will be covered by public funds".
Non-hospital treatment would not require prior agreement.
Hospital compensation
There are also measures to help patients who suffer harm from treatment abroad.
Earlier this year, the European Health Commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, spoke of a patient who had claimed 100,000 euros (£71,000) in compensation, when the hospital itself was worth only twice that amount.
He wants to address that with plans for national contact points to give patients information and assistance if anything goes wrong.
The catalyst for these proposals was a ruling in 2006 on the case of Yvonne Watts, a 75 year-old British woman who paid £3,900 (5,450 euros) for a hip replacement in France because she was not prepared to wait a year for an operation in Britain.
The European Court of Justice decided that patients who were facing an undue delay, in the view of clinicians, should be allowed to seek treatment in other EU states at their own country's cost.
A 'sun tower' is one of the concepts being considered by researchers
Scientists are assessing the possibility of embarking on a space engineering project that would eclipse the effort to construct the International Space Station.
Researchers from Europe, Japan and the US are considering the viability of building giant solar panels in a low earth orbit that would supply cheap, inexhaustible energy to industry and homes.
Building a huge array outside the Earth's atmosphere would have the advantage of having no clouds to interrupt the flow of solar energy to the arrays.
Yet the sizeable downside would be the technical challenges of construction and of getting the power down to the ground.
It's an undertaking that has been likened to the building of the Pyramids.
It would require an armada of rockets carrying tonnes of material into space on a regular basis, says Lieutenant Colonel Paul Damphousse of the Pentagon's National Security Space Office.
"That's going to require repeated sorties; not one sortie every other week or every other month," he explains.
"We're talking hundreds of sorties every week and every month."
A new dawn?
A recent study by the Pentagon concluded that a solar array in space was close to being technologically feasible, and robotics should soon make the building of large structures in space safer and quicker.
Once we open up the medium, there's a whole new world waiting for us out there Lt Col Paul Damphousse,Pentagon's National Security Space Office
Nasa has already begun work on a successor to the shuttle, which should bring the costs of space transport down; currently, each launch costs nearly half a billion dollars.
Leopold Summerer of the European Space Agency believes the generation of solar power from space may be only 20 years away.
But he adds that the cost of the undertaking will mean it will have to be another international effort along the lines of the Space Station.
Robert Lainway from EADS Astrium, the Anglo-French space company, says private sector involvement could help reduce costs but governments would have to take the first steps.
"Sometime in the future it will be reality," he predicts.
"It's a matter of developing the technology to make the solar panels cheaper, to send them into the sky and have the energy conversion to microwaves or optical lasers which then beam the energy down to Earth.
"All of that is demonstrated to be technically feasible. Again it's a matter of economics".
For Lt Col Damphousse, despite the technical and economic challenges, the advantages are clear.
"It opens up all the other things that we are trying to do in space; our exploration strategy, our planetary defence, commercialism in space, space tourism.
"If we're able to do this as an international effort this helps to relieve some of those pressures on resource shortages, overpopulation. This is something that's in the interest of the entire planet.
"Once we open up the medium, there's a whole new world waiting for us out there."
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7131617.stm
Join the Vice President Speculation Forum [ http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/VicePresidentSpeculationForum ] if you want to share your ideas about who might make the best Vice President under President Barack Obama. I saw on TV someone ask Barack Obama whom he might choose as a running mate. His answer conveyed the idea that he is primarily focused on getting the nomination right now and that picking a Vice President this early would be premature. You might speculate that a reasonable choice might be one of the candidates running for President, like Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Joe Biden or Dennis Kucinich.
Share your ideas here. Post a blog. My wife thinks that Chris Dodd would make the best Vice President. Chris Dodd served as a Peace Corps volunteer in a small rural town in the Dominican Republic until 1968. While there, he became fluent in Spanish. In the debates, I think Chris Dodd shows exceptional intelligence and has a quick mind. Being bilingual is a big plus, especially since the United States routinely deals with our Latin American neighbor nations. Chris Dodd said in a recent debate that education is the most important issue because so many of our problems result from the lack of a good education. That makes sense to me.
What do you think? Join the Vice President Speculation Forum!
Please consider writing a letter or post card to the governor of your state asking YOUR governor to endorse Barack Obama for President. Now, if you get REALLY ambitious, you can do as I did and write to governors of other states too, but keep in mind that the governors of sixteen states have already endorsed a presidential candidate. The governors of Illinois, Virginia and Massachusetts (along with the Mayor of Washington DC) have already endorsed Barack Obama. The governors of New York, Michigan, New Jersey, Maryland and Arkansas have already endorsed Hillary Clinton. The governors of Texas, Indiana, Missouri, Minnesota, Utah, Rhode Island and South Dakota have already endorsed Republicans. And finally, the governor of New Mexico endorses himself, Bill Richardson. If I got some detail wrong, then please contact me so I can make a correction. These things change all the time. This leaves thirty-four governors who have not yet publically announced any endorsement for a presidential candidate. So, feel free to write to some or all of the thirty-four governors of California, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Washington, Arizona, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Colorado, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Kentucky, Oregon, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, Kansas, Nevada, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Montana, Delaware, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming asking them to endorse Barack Obama for President. Postage for a one-ounce letter is forty-one cents, but a post card only costs twenty-six cents postage. I sent a letter to my governor and post cards to the other thirty-three governors. You can find all the mailing addresses on the National Governors Association web page, which is NGA dot org: [ www.nga.org ]. I found the mailing addresses by clicking on Governors Home (near the bottom in that green box), then click on Governors' Contact Information (near the bottom in the white box). The resulting page [ http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.dc47d9cab98a90f68a278110501010a0/?vgnextoid=1af5c274eee62010VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD ] shows the mailing addresses. Here is a very short suggested message, but you can modify it however you want: October 28, 2007 Dear Governor _: Please consider making a public announcement that you endorse Barack Obama for President. It would make a big difference. Thanks. Sincerely, [type your name here] [type your phone number too if you wish].
“To see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.” — Benjamin Franklin
“Faith means not wanting to know what is true.” — Frederich Nietzche
“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” — Mark Twain
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.” — Reverend Martin Luther
In thinking about Islam, and about the risk it now poses to the West, we should imagine what it would take to live peacefully with the Christians of the fourteenth century--Christians who were still eager to prosecute people for crimes like host desecration and witchcraft. We are in the presence of the past. It is by no means a straightforward task to engage such people in constructive dialogue, to convince them of our common interests, to encourage them on the path to democracy, and to mutually celebrate the diversity of our cultures.
It is clear that we have arrived at a period in our history where civil society, on a global scale, is not merely a nice idea; it is essential for the maintenance of civilization. Given that even failed states now possess potentially disruptive technology, we can no longer afford to live side by side with malign dictatorships or with the armies of ignorance massing across the oceans.
What constitutes a civil society? At minimum, it is a place where ideas, of all kinds, can be criticized without the risk of physical violence. If you live in a land where certain things cannot be said about the king, or about an imaginary being, or about certain books, because such utterances carry the penalty of death, torture, or imprisonment, you do not live in a civil society. It appears that one of the most urgent tasks we now face in the developed world is to find some way of facilitating the emergence of civil societies everywhere else. Whether such societies have to be democratic is not at all clear. Zakaria has persuasively argued that the transition from tyranny to liberalism is unlikely to be accomplished by plebiscite. It seems all but certain that some form of benign dictatorship will generally be necessary to bridge the gap. But benignity is the key and if it cannot emerge from within a state, it must be imposed from without. The means of such imposition are necessarily crude: they amount to economic isolation, military intervention (whether open or covert), or some combination of both. While this may seem an exceedingly arrogant doctrine to espouse, it appears we have no alternatives. We cannot wait for weapons of mass destruction to dribble out of the former Soviet Union--to pick only one horrible possibility--and into the hands of fanatics.
We should, I think, look upon modern despotisms as hostage crises. Kim Jong Il has thirty million hostages. Saddam Hussein had twenty-five million. The clerics in Iran have seventy million more. It does not matter that many hostages have been so brainwashed that they will fight their would-be liberators to the death. They are held prisoner twice over--by tyranny and by their own ignorance. The developed world must, somehow, come to their rescue. Jonathan Glover seems right to suggest that we need "something along the lines of a strong and properly funded permanent UN force, together with clear criteria for intervention and an international court to authorize it." We can say it even more simply: we need a world government How else will a war between the United States and China ever become as unlikely as a war between Texas and Vermont? We are a very long way from even thinking about the possibility of a world government, to say nothing of creating one. It would require a degree of economic, cultural, and moral integration that we may never achieve. The diversity of our religious beliefs constitutes a primary obstacle here. Given what most of us believe about God, it is at present unthinkable that human beings will ever identify themselves merely as human beings, disavowing all lesser affiliations. World government does seem a long way off--so long that we may not survive the trip.
Is Islam compatible with a civil society? Is it possible to believe what you must believe to be a good Muslim, to have military and economic power, and to not pose an unconscionable threat to the civil societies of others? I believe that the answer to this question is no. If a stable peace is ever to be achieved between Islam and the West, Islam must undergo a radical transformation. This transformation, to be palatable to Muslims, must also appear to come from Muslims themselves. It does not seem much of an exaggeration to say that the fate of civilization lies largely in the hands of "moderate" Muslims. Unless Muslims can reshape their religion into an ideology that is basically benign--or outgrow it altogether--it is difficult to see how Islam and the West can avoid falling into a continual state of war, and on innumerable fronts. Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons cannot be uninvented. As Martin Rees points out, there is no reason to expect that we will be any more successful at stopping their proliferation, in small quantities, than we have been with respect to illegal drugs. If this is true, weapons of mass destruction will soon be available to anyone who wants them.
Perhaps the West will be able to facilitate a transformation of the Muslim world by applying outside pressure. It will not be enough, however, for the United States and a few European countries to take a hard line while the rest of Europe and Asia sell advanced weaponry and "dual-use" nuclear reactors to all comers. To achieve the necessary economic leverage, so that we stand a chance of waging this war of ideas by peaceful means, the development of alternative energy technologies should become the object of a new Manhattan Project. There are, needless to say, sufficient economic and environmental justifications for doing this, but there are political ones as well. If oil were to become worthless, the dysfunction of the most prominent Muslim societies would suddenly grow as conspicuous as the sun. Muslims might then come to see the wisdom of moderating their thinking on a wide variety of subjects. Otherwise, we will be obliged to protect our interests in the world with force--continually.
Statesman Journal Newspaper, Salem Oregon
October 8, 2007, Oregon's same-sex couples can enter into marriage-style domestic partnerships in January, after critics of the 2007 law failed to gather enough petition signatures to force a public vote on the measure.
Critics fell a mere 116 signatures short of making the ballot, based on a signature-verification process completed Monday by Oregon county elections offices.
A group of religious conservatives, led by Brooks activist Marylin Shannon, turned in 60,531 total signatures seeking to put the domestic partnerships law on the Nov. 2008 ballot. But the signature review found that 55,063 of the signatures, or nearly 91 percent, were valid. To qualify for the ballot, critics needed 55,179 valid signatures.
Elections officials haven't completed signature verification of a second referendum. That one aims to force a public vote on a companion measure enacted by the 2007 Legislature, which banned discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people.
Shannon has said that if the two referenda fail to qualify, her group will start anew with signature-gathering for an initiative campaign. That also could put the measures on the Nov. 2008 ballot. But it would mean the laws would be in effect for 10 months by the time Oregonians get to vote.
Japan has cars that are required by law to burn only about five liters per one hundred kilometers (5.2 l/100km). For Americans, that translates to more than 45 miles per gallon, which is about nineteen kilometers per liter (19 km/l). Europe is not far behind, and has passed new laws designed to surpass Japanese standards. Our friends in Canada and Australia are moving toward higher requirements of seven liters per one hundred kilometers (7 l/100km). For Americans, that translates to more than 30 miles per gallon, which is about fourteen kilometers per liter (14 km/l).
Yet the United States is dead last. Our low standards allow our gas-guzzling cars to consume about ten liters per one hundred kilometers (10 l/100km). For Americans, that translates to less than 25 miles per gallon, which is only about ten kilometers per liter (10 km/l).
We are told that we have to protect our automobile companies from competition in places like China where, it is said, their leaders do not care about the environment.
In fact, Chinese emissions standards have been raised and already far exceed our own. Ironically, we cannot sell cars made in America to China because we do not meet their environmental standards.
In California, the state legislature has taken the initiative to require higher standards for cars sold in California. But the auto companies are suing California to prevent this state law from taking effect because it would mean that ten years from now, they would have to manufacture cars for California that are almost as efficient as China is making today.
How much would you pay for fuel in your American-bought car compared to a car meeting the standards in Japan? Most Americans learned in school that such a drive from coast to coast would be roughly three thousand miles. Let us say you want to drive 4,791 kilometers from Albany New York to Salem Oregon? (I would love a visit from Obama supporters living on our East Coast.)
As of October 1, 2007, AAA says the current national average for regular unleaded gasoline is $0.74 per liter ($2.79 per gallon), so if your vehicle guzzles about ten liters per one hundred kilometers (10 l/100km) which is just over twenty-three miles per gallon (23 mpg) you would burn about 480 liters of gas and you would spend over $350 on that fuel. I bet the average vehicle in American right now gets even worse fuel efficiency than that.
But if our government would raise our standards to that of Japan, you would burn about 250 liters of gas in this hypothetical road trip and you would spend only about $185.
If you were to weigh 75 kilograms, would you think you were overweight or underweight?
If you were two meters tall, would people call you Shorty or would the NBA attempt to recruit you?
If the nurse pulled the thermometer out of your mouth (or from somewhere else) and said that you have a temperature of 37 degrees Celsius, would you have reason to be alarmed?
Did you know that the temperature at which water freezes is zero degrees Celsius?
Did you know that the temperature at which water boils is 100 degrees Celsius?
I have lived in the United States over forty years, and I still do not know, nor do I really care how many feet are in a mile, but any non-US school kid around the world can tell you that there are one thousand meters in a kilometer.
You might be interested to know that the Dead Sea is the lowest point on Earth at 400 meters below the level of the Mediterranean Sea.
An Astronomical Unit (AU) is the distance between Earth and Sun, about 150 gigameters (149.59 Gm).
A nanometer is the most common unit used to describe the manufacturing technology used in the semiconductor industry.
What about ounces, pints, gallons and how they relate to each other? You have a lot of odd numbers to remember in our out-dated US measurement system. Well, you might be interested to know that a kilogram is a thousand grams because the prefix kilo means a thousand. So a kiloliter is, well, you get the idea.
Metric prefixes consistently modify the basic units: meter (m), gram (g) and liter (l):
dekameter (dam), dekagram (dag) and dekaliter (dal) = 10 times the basic unit.
hectometer (hm), hectogram (hg) and hectoliter (hl) = 100 times the basic unit.
kilometer (km), kilogram (kg) and kiloliter (kl) = 1000 times the basic unit.
megameter (Mm), megagram (Mg) and megaliter (Ml) = 1,000,000 times the basic unit.
We use the following prefixes for fractions of the basic units:
decimeter (dm), decigram (dg) and deciliter (dl) = a tenth of the basic unit.
centimeter (cm), centigram (cg) and centiliter (cl) = a hundredth of the basic unit.
millimeter (mm), milligram (mg) and milliliter (ml) = a thousandth of the basic unit.
Check out Metric System Advocates and please consider joining: http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/MetricSystemAdvocates
Here is a handy site for Conversion Factors: http://mdmetric.com/tech/cf.htm
Here is a handy on-line Unit Converter: http://www.mobilefish.com/services/unit_converter/unit_converter.php?c=length
I learned something about the Health Care system in Japan during my discussion with Shintaro, my new Obama friend from Japan. Shintaro Tominaga is a business consultant who helps American and Japanese businesses learn how to establish business relationships with each other. Shintaro explains to me that the government-run Health Care system in Japan pays seventy percent (70%) of medical expenses and the patients pay the remaining thirty percent (30%). Japanese citizens have the option to buy additional insurance coverage that covers very high cost medical expenses, like cancer treatment, so I asked him what happens to people who do not have such optional coverage, but who have very high bills due to catastrophic illness. I asked him if anyone would go bankrupt because of medical bills. Shintaro explains that the government would "quietly" pay such expenses. By "quietly", I get the impression that it is unofficial, but a practical solution. Shintaro says that people do indeed go bankrupt in Japan for different reasons, like failed business, but NEVER for medical reasons.
Shintaro also explains the military relationship Japan shares with the United States. Shintaro answers my many questions with a happy attitude. We share so much in common in our political views. Shintaro very much supports Barack Obama for US president, but of course, can not vote, because he is a citizen of Japan. My wife Shawn, my son Itai, and I met up with Shintaro Tominaga on September 23, 2007 in Wilsonville Oregon. We had our visit at the nearby Starbucks, right near La Quinta Inn in Wilsonville, where he typically stays when he visits the Pacific Northwest on business trips.
Shintaro has a public Obama profile: http://my.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/public/gGjKgt
It is proposing to allow the UK to continue using pounds, miles and pints as units of measurement indefinitely.
The European Commission will announce later that it is leaving all future decisions to the British government.
The decision will not affect current law on metric measurements, but means imperial equivalents can be used too.
Click here for the rest of the story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6988521.stm
Our nation is still using an unjust, unnecessary and antiquated eighteenth-century, winner-take-all method to elect its governing officials, which shows just how silly we are.
Proportional representation is based on common sense and allows groups of like-minded voters to win legislative seats in proportion to its share of the popular vote, which promotes more accurate, balanced representation of the spectrum of political opinion in a given electorate.
Forty-one well established democracies with at least two million inhabitants earn high ratings from the human rights organization Freedom House. But of these 41 nations, only three (the United States, Canada and Jamaica) do not use a form of proportional or semi-proportional voting systems to elect one of their national legislatures. The majority uses a full proportional representation system for their most powerful national legislature.
Had proportional representation been in place, we would have proportionally elected Ralph Nader along with Al Gore and King George II (Bush).
Everyone who deep down inside is concerned about safeguarding our environment and who wanted to vote Green (but did not because of the system) should give serious thought to at least talking about election reform and the possibilities that proportional representation would allow.
David Pearl, Salem, Oregon. Originally written April 13, 2002
