Failure of Party Politics

Can humans reject political parties? How did Russia succeed against American rival? How is Mutually Assured Destruction a deterrence? How does survival of the fittest fit in with empathy? Is GOP death wish for Obamacare a worthy goal? Will China fill the void left by Russia and America? Can bids for independence succeed? Have England and America lost the measurement game?

George Washington

Rejection of Political Parties

George Washington was not a member of any political party. Indeed, Washington’s vision for the United States of America includes rejection of political parties, not the embrace that we see today. George Washington feared the inevitable conflict that would undermine republicanism. It turns out, unfortunately, that George was right about that. See how anti-functional the Trump White House is today. Party loyalty has become more important than empathy for the greater good. Can humans reject political parties? This is actually the most important question in the Anthropocene Epoch. Our survival as a species depends upon how we react to such a question.

Russian Success against America

His crops failing, Russian farmer finds magic genie lamp and makes wish for equal failure upon neighboring farms. (You would expect farmers to wish for successful crops.) This unexpected twist exemplifies Russian mindset reminiscent of Soviet communism. If I am miserable, then we all must equally share this misery.

Ponder for a moment what thoughts must be in the head of Владимир Владимирович Путин (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin). His nation relies on exports of petrol at a time when advanced nations are turning to clean energy. Russian population is in decline, down from 146 million in 2000 CE to 143 million in 2015 CE and expected to sink to 139 million in 2030 CE. Российский рубль (the Russian ruble) is only worth a penny or two. Vladimir must outsmart America by striking easy targets. America is already divided along ideological lines, so why not exploit that low hanging fruit? It is a lot cheaper than that old conventional Cold War that nobody was able to win.

The Kremlin successfully climbs inside the heads of weak-minded Americans and feeds them generous portions of half-baked, spurious nationalism. Facilitating the installation of a chaotic president in 2017 CE is a huge victory for Vladimir Putin, who is clearly winning the propaganda war.

The Democratic Party is in shambles with no apparent leader on the horizon. Bernie Sanders, clearly the popular winner of the Democratic Primary, was stabbed in the back by insider party rigging. His nomination was a sure thing if the primary process would have been fair. That Superdelegate nonsense is a crime against fairness.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. It is based on the theory of deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy from using those same weapons.

The North Korean Kim Dynasty finds a high degree of success with this MAD strategy now on its third generation of authoritarian rule.

Survival of the Fittest and Empathy

Nature seems savagely cruel sometimes. Some are born with severe abnormalities. Some receive devastating injuries. Some suffer from self-inflicted maladies caused by smoking tobacco or overeating. Juggling self-preservation and empathy is a precarious balancing act. Not everyone has the resources to totally fulfill those feelings of empathy. Some people who have such resources are willing to help the less fortunate in some cases, but more commonly not. Nations with more empathy like France are on the socialist end of the government spectrum. Nations with less empathy have a Wild West mentality where government does not care whether you live or die. After all, Nature weeds out weaker members of society so that the strong may carry on.

Abraham Lincoln

 

GOP Death Wish for Obamacare

The Republican Party, affectionately known as the Grand Old Party or GOP, has its first success with Abraham Lincoln, but the party has since ideologically swapped places with the Democratic Party. The GOP push to kill Obamacare is clearly inspired by the desire of the rich to keep their money and send the poor and ill to their unfortunate fate. The irony in all this is that the GOP lures voters by appealing to those very same weak-minded religious Americans mentioned above. The uneducated and poor are victims by their own hand at the voting booth. They vote against their own self-interests. Nature is indeed stranger than fiction.

China Fills the Void

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s re-engagement on the world stage shows that global leadership is shifting, not drifting, toward Beijing. The most vigorous defense of globalization and multilateral cooperation is mounted not by an American statesman, but by the president of the People’s Republic of China.

Independence Movements

People in the subjugated regions of Kurdistan, Catalunya and Scotland are seriously moving forward in efforts to win independence from their subjugators. European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker fears that such efforts would make governing the European Union too complicated and might even foreshadow a disintegration of the current structure.

England and America Lost the Measurement Game

Clearly Earth is a metric planet. And clearly England and America lost the measurement game. Isolationism is clearly a failed strategy.

Killing the inch would be a step in the right direction. Join our efforts here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/KilltheInch

FPLA Amendment would Permit Dual or Metric Labeling

Amending the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act (FPLA) would be a great American step forward. A proposed FPLA amendment would permit United States manufacturers to choose either dual or metric labeling for their products. Be part of the solution. Contact your senator and representative today and help us move this effort forward for the greater good of humanity.

At the very least, you could join other Americans and take the Metrication Pledge: http://metricpioneer.com/metrication-pledge

Earth is your home. Engage.

 

The Obsolete Ounce

Product labels in American grocery stores are cluttered with incoherently rambling scrawls of mixed measurement units all because the federal government is too incapacitated to allow metric-only labeling. Passing a proposed amendment to the U.S. Fair Packaging and Labeling Act (FPLA) is all it would take to bring Americans one step closer to sanity, but the Food Marketing Institute is blocking this amendment.

1 L = One Liter

Walk up to any American and ask (without being too rude) what the difference is between an ounce and a fluid ounce. Then ask about a troy ounce and whether the British also use ounces. More than likely you will either get a blank stare or the wrong answer. If you have not yet been punched in the face, and if you are brave enough to amuse yourself even more, ask which units we use to measure mass and volume. If you are an American, do not feel too bad if you struggle with such a seemingly simple line of inquiry. It is not entirely your fault; the American educational system utterly fails to teach students how to measure in the Modern Era.

Our English word ounce derives from Latin uncia, a unit that was one-twelfth of the Roman pound (libra). We incorporated this word into Old English as ynsan or yndsan from an unattested Vulgar Latin form and then into Middle English through Anglo-Norman and Middle French (unce, once, ounce). The abbreviation oz came later from the cognate Italian word onza (now spelled oncia).

Our English word inch comes from the same Latin word, but we gave it an i-mutation as we incorporated the word into Old English.

The obsolete apothecaries’ ounce is equivalent to the troy ounce. Maria Theresa ounce found its way into Ethiopia and some European countries and was equal to the weight of one Maria Theresa thaler, or 28.0668 grams. Both the weight and the value are the definition of one birr, still in use in present-day Ethiopia. By the way, the thaler was a silver coin used throughout Europe for almost four hundred years. The name thaler lives on in the many currencies called dollar.

People in England used the now obsolete Tower ounce of 450 grains in English mints, the principal one being in the Tower of London. The Tower ounce dates back to the Anglo-Saxon coinage weight standard, but Henry VIII in 1527 abolished it in favor of the Troy ounce.

The Yankees, Brits and former territories of the long-gone British Empire defined the avoirdupois ounce as exactly 28.349 523 125 g under the yard and pound agreement of 1959. In the avoirdupois system, sixteen ounces make up an avoirdupois pound, and the avoirdupois pound is defined as 7000 grains; one avoirdupois ounce is therefore equal to 437.5 grains. Laughably, the ounce is actually still a standard unit in the United States, while the English now mainly use the ounce informally. Nostalgically clinging to long-gone days of glory, some in England still use ounces in restaurants to describe steak or burger portion sizes even though it ceases to be a legal unit of measure in Britain way back in the year 2000.

A troy ounce is equal to 480 grains. Consequently, the international troy ounce is equal to exactly 31.103 476 8 grams. There are 12 troy ounces in the now obsolete troy pound.

Today, the troy ounce is used only to express the mass of precious metals such as gold, platinum, palladium, rhodium or silver. Bullion coins are the most common products produced and marketed in troy ounces, but precious metal bars also exist in gram and kilogram sizes. A kilogram bullion bar contains 32.150 746 569 troy ounces.

A fluid ounce is a unit of volume (also called capacity) a tiny percentage of humanity still typically uses for measuring liquids. People have created various definitions throughout history, but only two have survived the scrap heap of history: the British Imperial fluid ounce and the United States fluid ounce.

An imperial fluid ounce is  28.413 062 5 mL or 1⁄20 of an imperial pint or  1⁄160 of an imperial gallon.

A US fluid ounce is  29.573 529 562 5 mL or 1⁄16 of a US fluid pint and  1⁄128 of a US liquid gallon, making it about 4% larger than the imperial fluid ounce.

Instead of clinging to outdated legacy units of measure, Americans would do well to at least understand how things are measured on Earth. These charts show the vast superiority of the International System of units:

Earth and Water

What natural standard would one use if one were to design a measurement system from scratch? Does every person on Earth identify with some common natural standard? What do all humans have in common? How is Nature a standard?

Earth

People share Earth as a common home. We use Earth Circumference as a linear standard. What better standard is there for Earthlings? Earth measures ten million meters from equator to pole. Earth is actually the standard we use for the length of the meter. Did you know that? Primates share the common characteristic of having ten fingers. People all around our Metric Planet use a base-ten number system simply because it is part of our anatomy. Multiplying and dividing by factors of ten is the fundamental International System scheme.

Volume is simply a matter of using a linear measure for three dimensions. A liter is a cubic decimeter. So we have a natural linear standard and a natural standard for volume, but what about mass? A liter of air is much less dense than a liter of gold for example because different substances have different densities. What natural standard can we use for mass / weight? This question leads us to another standard we find in Nature:

Water

We all depend on water to sustain our lives, so we use the density of common water as a natural standard. A liter of water weighs one thousand grams, which is one kilogram. We measure things small and large in modern times with the International System (SI). We are no longer limited to those old quaint limited-range obsolete units of measure.

Scale

SI allows us to measure vastly smaller things like subatomic particles and DNA strands and vastly larger things like planetary orbits and intergalactic distances. It is only natural that people create appropriate units for appropriate uses. General consensus among archaeologists is that human life has its origins in the East African Rift Valley two million years ago. All humanoids ultimately emerged from a branch of primates from Africa. We are all descendants of our Paleolithic ancestors, ultimately quite African, having migrated prehistorically in successive waves to nearly every patch of habitable space on Earth. Humans have come a long way since we migrated out of Africa. No human is a foreigner when you consider Earth your home, so let us all use the same measurement system that is based on Earth and Water.

France and England

Rivalry between France and England is a complex and long story of slavery, conquest, war and alliance. For many years, these mortal foes sail all around Earth enslaving, colonizing and subjugating millions of people.

France had been a monarchy up until the French Revolution, when French citizens abolish slavery and replace thousands of confusing units of measure with the Metric System, which is based on Earth and Water. France knows how to handle a corrupt monarchy.

England is STILL a monarchy, even in these modern times. England finally abolishes slavery four decades AFTER France did so, but three decades before Americans finally get around to Abolition of Slavery in 1865 with the Thirteenth Amendment. “The sun never sets on the British Empire” was once a proud boast. But alas, the British learn too late that subjects of the Crown cannot be held under an oppressive thumb forever. Independence movements whittle their farcical monarchy down to a few remaining scraps that we see today.

It is pretty obvious how GBR (Great Britain) is a Non-FIFA Country Code. Great Britain is not a nation in a context of matches between nationalistic rivals. Men are instinctively warlike. Sport is a substitute for war. Scotland, England and Wales are distinct nationalities with distinct individual histories. Ireland has an unfortunate political border that should go away according to a majority of the people of Ireland.

Growing cries for an independent Scotland and decades of English occupation of Northern Ireland threaten the farcical British monarchy. Prince Harry answers his own question in an interview published 21 Jun 2017 CE in Newsweek magazine, “Is there any one of the royal family who wants to be king or queen? I don’t think so.”

We find strength in numbers. The purpose of a political union is to be strong enough to defend against rivals (or to offend against rivals). But there can be an inherent conflict of interest when a union is within a union, which is the case with the United Kingdom and with the United States of America. Brexit clearly demonstrates this fact. Both unions are too proud to admit that it is against their own self-interest to continue clinging to their dear old outdated, archaic units of measure. Misguided nostalgia for the Dark Ages only serves to weaken, not strengthen a union.

A growing number of people in England and America WANT to kill the inch and go completely metric. There is a UK Metric Association and a US Metric Association. Each association has a web site, a Facebook group and a Twitter account.

A growing number of people in England even want to “Abolish the British Monarchy before they suck us dry” and “Ban the Monarchy” and even go so far as to say, “Fuck the royals and let’s dump the monarchy” and also came up with “ROYAL ARSE-WIPE CENTRAL” for a Facebook group name.

Monarchy is perhaps a necessary evolutionary political stepping stone, so we should be grateful that kingship has allowed humanity to move through another stage of evolution. Similarly, the obsolete mile, inch, pound, gallon et cetera were units of measure from a bygone era. Thank you, Grandfather Inch, but we must now prepare for your funeral. It was great knowing you, but we have Mother Meter now.

Earth and Water

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Illusory Nature of Time

Walk up to any American and ask what century we are in and ask which year our current century began and ask the same about the millennium. Then ask what AD stands for. Most likely, you will get erroneous responses. Keep reading if you are curious about the correct answers.
We cover three topics: the mundane topic of Calendar Systems; the ponderous topic of The Nature of Time; and the critical topic of Finding Patterns in Nature.

Calendar Systems

Ancient people notice patterns in the sky probably even before the Agricultural Revolution. Ancient people notice that seasons change. Predicting seasonal change progresses from a delightful pastime to a matter of survival. People also notice how a Crescent Moon progresses to a Half Moon to a Full Moon then back to a Crescent Moon in a cycle of roughly thirty days. It would be so nice and tidy if an exact number of lunar cycles (months) would correspond to one cycle of seasons (a year) but alas! Nature is random. Knowing when to plant and when to harvest is critical for the people of the Agricultural Revolution, so finding patterns in Nature is critical for the survival of our species. People have invented three major types of calendar systems over the millennia: Lunar, Lunisolar and Solar.

A Lunar Calendar generally takes only lunar cycles (months) into account, dispensing with intercalation. Synodic months are 29 or 30 days in length, making a lunar year exactly 12 lunar cycles long. Your birthday may be in springtime when you are born, but as you grow older, your birthday gradually shifts into other seasons since a strictly lunar calendar is about 11 days shorter than a solar year.

A Lunisolar Calendar takes lunar cycles into account as well as annual seasons. This is how you can have a calendar (on Earth) that is nice and tidy! Sun, Earth and Moon return to the same alignment every 19 years. There are 235 actual lunar cycles in a 19-year period. Intercalation seems a little messy but inserting extra months is the only way to make a lunisolar calendar work. We insert a thirteenth month seven times in a 19-year cycle colored green in the chart above.

A Solar Calendar generally takes only the four seasons into account; the 12 months do NOT correspond to actual lunar cycles, but do indeed approximate the length of an actual lunar cycle. Months on a Solar Calendar are a little longer than a real month. Hey! You gotta make up for those lost 11 days somehow!

Common Era or Current Era (CE) is a year-numbering system for the Julian and Gregorian calendars that refers to the years since the start of this era. The preceding era is referred to as Before the Common or Current Era (BCE). The Current Era notation system can be used as a secular alternative to the Dionysian Era system, which distinguishes eras as AD (Anno Domini) and BC (Before Christ). The two notation systems are numerically equivalent; thus 2017 CE corresponds to AD 2017 and 400 BCE corresponds to 400 BC. The ratio of usage in books has changed dramatically between the years 1800 and 2008, particularly since 1980, with the CE-related variants increasing in usage.
The year-numbering system for the Gregorian calendar is the most widespread civil calendar system used in the world today. For decades, it has been the global standard, recognized by international institutions such as the United Nations and the Universal Postal Union.

The Nature of Time

Time is not a thing we can put under a microscope and analyze. Time is more of an inner idea than an external thing. Finding patterns in Nature is a strategy that many forms of Life exploit in a quest to predict and control Life-threatening events, so perhaps the substance of Time is actually the electrochemical interactions between the neurons of the brain.
All processes are irreversible. For example, it is impossible to travel back in time – according to the seventh assumption of science (Irreversibility) of the Ten Assumptions of Science written by Stephen J Puetz and Glenn Borchardt PhD in their book Universal Cycle Theory, Neomechanics of the Hierarchically Infinite Universe. That assumption probably disappoints many science fiction fans.
But there is another way to address the illusory nature of Time. What if Time is not even real? People are pretty good at surviving, but less talented at unraveling the mysteries of the Universe due to our limited range of thought, so we are ill-equipped to even ponder such things. People do not understand how substance even exists. We only have words for things we understand. We have no word that describes how matter can exist. It seems impossible for there to be Nothing, then Something, because Something cannot simply spring forth from Nothing. A reasonable conclusion might be that substance always existed; matter has no beginning. If all stars, galaxies, planets et cetera are moving about and colliding eternally with no beginning, then Time is not real.

Finding Patterns in Nature

Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan argues in 1999 that the Christian calendar no longer belongs exclusively to Christians. People of all faiths have taken to using it simply as a matter of convenience. There is so much interaction between people of different faiths and cultures – different civilizations, if you like – that some shared way of reckoning time is a necessity. And so the Christian Era has become the Common Era.

Whether Time is real or not is not really very relevant in a context of the survival of our species, which is in grave jeopardy. But finding patterns in Nature is a strategy that we exploit in our quest to predict and control Life-threatening events, so all people everywhere on Earth taking full advantage of a common system of measurement is ideal; anything less weakens our ability to coordinate. It is essential that we kill the inch. We must eradicate non-metric measures (having corresponding SI units) so we can fully benefit from the International System of units. A jumble of archaic, incompatible units of measure makes our species weak. The constant need to convert between systems makes us dumber and slow on the draw. One universal, International System makes our species strong and better equips us to combat Life-threatening events.
Just as finding patterns in Nature is so critical to our ancient ancestors during our Agricultural Revolution, so too it is critical now in our Modern Era. We must all get on the same page and use the International System that is based on the circumference of Earth and the mass of Water, NOT based on the length of the foot of some long-dead king.

One cubic decimeter is equal to one liter is equal to one kilogram of Water. Easy!

Measurements of the Middle East

Ancient people invent a base-ten numbering system correlating with our anatomy: ten fingers. Middle Eastern story-telling is characterized by embellishment and exaggeration. These masters of grand fictional drama have passed down a creation myth involving a talking snake and an invisible deity who also has ten fingers. Not surprisingly, these ancient people also have Ten Commandments, which are most likely derived from and based on the Code of Hammurabi.
Mel Brooks gives us a good laugh in his portrail of Moses starting off with Fifteen Commandments.
From a Jewish / Talmudic perspective, the first five specify how people are expected to revere their invisible deity (mostly proactive) and the other five prohibit certain mundane behavior. Let us analyze some of these laws in more depth.
The First Commandment might not seem like a commandment at all to someone who was not brought out of the land of Egypt. It is important to keep in mind that these people were polytheistic. Their particular deity with a very particular name brought a very specific group of individuals out of a very particular house of bondage. Here is the First Commandment rendered in its original language in Early Hebrew (Sinaiatic Hebrew) and Middle Hebrew (Paleo-Hebrew) and Late Hebrew (Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew) and Modern Hebrew (Square Script Hebrew):

The Second Commandment is four sentences long and overtly acknowledges the belief in other deities. This particular deity openly admits how jealous he is of all those other deities. Clearly, these story tellers reveal their openly polytheistic mind set.
The Third Commandment is a short one-liner that puts a kink in how people render Hebrew numbers. Each Hebrew letter has a numeric value, so people employ Hebrew letters to enumerate Hebrew biblical sentences and Hebrew calendar days et cetera. The first ten Hebrew letters represent numbers one through ten. Hebrew letters are combined for numbers larger than ten. The tenth Hebrew letter is combined with the first Hebrew letter to represent eleven. The tenth Hebrew letter is combined with the second Hebrew letter to represent twelve and so on. (We basically do the same thing when we combine 10 with 1 to render 11 and 10 with 2 to render 12 and so on.) But when we get to fifteen and sixteen, there is a problem. This Third Commandment forbids the flippant combination of the tenth Hebrew letter with either the fifth or sixth Hebrew letters, so consequently, this problem is avoided by combining letters nine and six to represent fifteen and letters nine and seven to represent sixteen as shown in the following chart:

Of course, the Catholics and Protestants have to put their own particular spin on how to enumberate the Decalogue. Catholics split the Tenth Commandment into two separate covet prohibitions so they can combine one and two in order to avoid that sticky wicket of their ancestors not having been in Egypt. Protestants are a little more subtle in how they rejigger the count; they split the Second Commandment into two separate ones and downgrade the First Commandment to just a sort of incidental introduction.
Holy books are loaded with ancient measurements – black ell, cubit et cetera. One would logically expect that more advanced nations in the Modern Era would be more inclined to replace any outdated ancient measures with modern measurements. You might also expect that nations known for their intolerant religious fanaticism in the Middle East would be more inclined to resist a pragmatic embrace of a system of international measurements. Surprisingly, the Middle East has fully embraced SI while America and England have not. What does that say about the nations that use the International System but still cling to older, outdated, irrational measures?

Russia and America

Россия (Russia) – World War Ally – Cold War Nemesis – Second World Country – Permanent Member of Security Council.

United States of America is large nation occupying almost ten square megameters with handful of mainland time zones. Russia has about twice as many time zones due not only to close proximity to pole but also due to sheer vastness – largest land area on Earth at seventeen square megameters.

Россия

English is main language in United States. Русский (Russian) is main language in Россия (Russia). Some Americans and some Russians speak wide variety of other languages.

English alphabet – twenty-six uppercase and lowercase Latin-script letters – Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

Русский алфавит Russian alphabet – thirty-three uppercase and lowercase Cyrillic-script letters – Аа Бб Вв Гг Дд Ее Ёё Жж Зз Ии Йй Кк Лл Мм Нн Оо Пп Рр Сс Тт Уу Фф Хх Цц Чч Шш Щщ Ъъ Ыы Ьь Ээ Юю Яя

Letters abolished in 1917–18 – Іі Ѳѳ Ѣѣ Ѵѵ and letters abolished before 1750 – Ѕѕ Ѯѯ Ѱѱ Ѡѡ Ѫѫ Ѧѧ Ѭѭ Ѩѩ

American Revolution – political upheaval between 1765 and 1783 – colonists in Thirteen American Colonies reject British monarchy / aristocracy and overthrow authority of Great Britain.

Great Britain

Русская Революция Russian Revolution – pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917 – Russians dismantle Tsarist autocracy – leading to rise of Soviet Union.

Imperial Standard 1700-1858

Flag of Russian Empire 1858-1883

Imperial Standard 1858-1917

Revolution

English dictionaries add гласность glasnost and перестройка perestroika in mid-1980s.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao decide to use Рубль (Ruble) and Yuan – their own national currencies – for bilateral trade instead of US dollar. According to The Diplomat: “The rise of a more politically and militarily assertive Russia and an economically and institutionally ascendant China may be characterized as the two principal forces challenging the United States in global policymaking.”

Ruble Currency Symbol

One Рубль (Ruble) is worth (at time of writing) about two cents. Рубль is subdivided into 100 копеек. Russia converts to decimal currency under Цар Пётр Вели́кий in 1704 thus making Russian ruble first decimal currency on Earth.

1 Ruble Coin

Thomas Jefferson in 1784 proposed decimal currency system with coins for 10 dollars, 1 dollar, 1/10 dollar, and 1/100 dollar. Euro and US dollar and Australian dollar and Canadian dollar all subdivide into 100 cents.

Копе́йка (Kopeck) coins come in denominations of 10 копеек and 50 копеек – 17.5 mm and 19.5 mm diameter, 1.25 mm and 1.5 mm thick, 1.85 g and 2.75 g

kopecks

Рубль (Ruble) coins come in denominations of 1 рубль and 2 рубля and 5 рублей and 10 рублей – 20.5 mm and 23 mm and 25 mm and 22 mm diameter, 1.5 mm and 1.8 mm and 1.8 mm and 2.2 mm thick, 3 g and 5 g and 6 g and 5.63 g

Coin Rubles

Рубль (Ruble) bank notes (150 x 65 mm) come in denominations of 50 рублей and 100 рублей and 500 рублей.

Notes 50-500

Рубль (Ruble) bank notes (157 x 69 mm) also come in denominations of 1000 рублей and 5000 рублей.

Notes 1000-5000

50 рублей = €0,78 = $0.82
100 рублей = €1,57 = $1.64
500 рублей = €7,85 = $8.20
1000 рублей = €15,70 = $16.40
5000 рублей = €78,48 = $82

United States of America is union of fifty states (and Washington DC and some territories) having relatively short history. Russia has long history going back many centuries. Russia is union of eighty-five federal subjects: forty-six областей (oblasts or provinces); twenty-two республиках (republics); nine края́ (krais or territories); four автономный округа́ (autonomous okrugs or districts); one автономная область (autonomous oblast – Евре́йская автоно́мная о́бласть Jewish Autonomous Oblast); and three federal cities (Москва́ Moscow, Санкт-Петербу́рг Saint Petersburg and Севасто́поль Sevastopol).

United States of America shares border with Canada (nearly nine megameters) and with Mexico (three megameters). Россия (Russia) shares border with Europe (five megameters) and with her Caucasus neighbors (one megameter) and nearly fourteen megameters with her Asian neighbors: Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China and North Korea. Russian border is nearly twice as long.

Road trip from Salem Oregon to Washington DC is about four and half megameters. Road trip from Москва́ (Moscow) to Владивосток (Vladivostok) is about twice as far – nine megameters.

Governments of both nations struggle to govern large populations, taking advantage of religious inclinations. Both constitutions provide for freedom of speech and press, yet widespread voter suppression in United States (especially South) continues unabated. Arrest, prosecution and detention of members of Pussy Riot is just one example of lack of freedom of speech in Россия.

propaganda

United States Republican Party and Еди́ная Росси́я United Russia Party find it much easier to manipulate and create consensus through propaganda by appealing to religious minds and appeasing religious extremists via anti-LGBT sentiment. Ten largest nations by human population:

Ten Largest Nations

Metric System becomes legal in Россия in 1899 and is adopted 1918 with compulsory metric implementation in 1927.

Metrication in Russia

Metric System becomes legal in 1866 in United States of America but adoption is still incomplete. Americans are still waiting for compulsory metric implementation.

Metrication in United States of America

You can join the American effort to kill the inch! Join your fellow Americans and add your name to the Metrication Pledge Flag.

Metrication Pledge Flag

Consider publicly showing your attitude by taking the Metrication Pledge right now.

Take The Metrication Pledge

A Divine Flow Chart

 

Clearly, the greatest barrier to United States metrication is irrational objection. Nearly every American scientist embraces SI but a majority of American religionists reject SI. So logically, as more Americans free their minds from religion, more and more of us would naturally want to hop on the Metric Bandwagon.
Does an all-knowing, all-powerful god know the feeling of fear?

A Divine Flow Chart

Yes. Then clearly, this god is not all-powerful.
No. Then clearly, this god does not know everything.
Other response. Can you think of a Master Plan for the universe crueler, more insane and more stupid than sending the vast majority of people to a never-ending torment?
Yes. Congratulations! You are crueler, more insane and more stupid than the people who invented the notion of Hell.
No. How in the world can you continue to believe in a god who is so cruel, insane and stupid?
Other response. Come on now! Be fair and focus on the question.

If you are still a religionist and if you have any integrity at all, then you are no doubt feeling the awkward discomfort of Cognitive Dissonance right about now.

Cognitive Dissonance

Experience the euphoric freedom of thought that accompanies your total riddance of religion from your mind. Throw off the slavery chains of religion. Free your mind to consider any thought. Refuse to limit yourself to the narrow confines of religion. Get rid of your self-imposed religious restriction.

Religion is doing what you are told regardless of what is right. Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told.

A god that does not manifest in reality is indistinguishable from a god that does not exist.

Religion is a crime against reality.

Size Matters

Open the paper tray of your printer and look at the available paper sizes. If you think that “Letter” size (8.5 x 11) is what most people use, then think again! Have a look at that A4 paper size. You may have never even noticed it before. Or perhaps you thought it is some weird size that nobody ever uses.

A4 Paper Size

Actually, you might be surprised to learn that A4 Size Paper is the most commonly used paper size on Earth. Your printer paper tray has an adjustment to accommodate A4 which is a little taller and a little narrower than “Letter” size. By 1975 so many countries were using A4 that it is established as an ISO standard, as well as the official United Nations document size.

A4 is official United Nations document size

International Paper Size A4 is the established ISO standard adopted by all countries in the world except the United States and Canada.
Unfortunately, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile and the Philippines are places where the US “Letter” size is still in common use, despite their official adoption of the ISO standard.
How does A4 have a dimension of 210 mm × 297 mm? Well, A0 (841 mm × 1189 mm) is defined so that it has an area of 1 square meter before rounding. Successive paper sizes in the series (A1, A2, A3, et cetera) are defined by cutting in half the length of the preceding paper size.
Well, if you think this is boring, then you have probably stopped reading by now, but since you are still reading, I guess you might be interested enough to receive ten free sample sheets of A4 Size Paper. There is no catch. Just tell me where to send it via MetricPioneer.com/contact-us/ and be sure to put Free A4 in the subject line.
Click on the image below to see a video on the subject:

How Britain Hinders Progress

Earth is undoubtedly a metric planet. More than ninety-three percent of us live in a place that has completed the metrication process, making SI compulsory. Sure, anomalies are still out there in a few places, like Guatemala and Honduras reckoning petrol in US gallons and US Letter Format still in common use in Mexico and the Philippines. But eradication of the inch is kind of like a virus that is mostly eradicated, but kept alive in some laboratory.

So where on Earth do people still cling to nonsensical measurements? Where are the fewer than seven percent? A clear pattern emerges here. Colonial imposition (mostly British) has brought the inch, mile, gallon, et cetera into nearly every place now still clinging to these obsolete measures.

The Pacific

Seven places in the Pacific (the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau and American Samoa) are incomplete as far as metrication goes. Here is the common theme: Indigenous people arrive to these islands Before the Common Era (BCE). Various colonial powers (Spain, Britain, Netherlands, Germany, Japan and the United States) invade and impose their customs, religion and measurements upon the long-time indigenous inhabitants. Wars erupt. Independence movements lead to throwing the invaders out, but much of the imposed culture remains, including those damn inches.

Asia

Hong Kong still has three legal ways to measure: The Chinese units of measurement of the Qing Empire (no longer in widespread use in Mainland China); British Imperial units; and SI.

Macau published Law No. 14/92/M on 24 August 1992 to order that Chinese units of measurement similar to those used in Hong Kong, Imperial units, and United States customary units would be permissible for five years since the effective date of the Law, 1 January 1993. This is on the condition of indicating the corresponding SI values, then for three more years thereafter, Chinese, Imperial, and US units would be permissible as secondary to the SI.

The traditional Burmese units of measurement are still in everyday use in Myanmar. Myanmar is preparing to adopt the International System (SI) as their official system of measurement, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

Africa

Liberia is the only place in Africa colonized by America. Slaves freed from the United States in 1822 settle on a coast of West Africa. In 1847, this new country becomes the Republic of Liberia, establishing a government modeled on that of the United States and names its capital city Monrovia after James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States and a prominent supporter of the colonization.

Caribbean and South Atlantic Ocean

Puerto Rico (United States Commonwealth Territory) and United States Virgin Islands (Insular Area of the United States) and Belize (United Nations Member since 25 Sep 1981) are incomplete as far as metrication goes.

The metric system has been legal since 1864 in a handful of British Overseas Territories; five in the Caribbean (Turks and Caicos Islands, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla and Montserrat) and one in the South Atlantic Ocean (Falkland Islands / Islas Malvinas). But compulsory metric implementation is rather incomplete in these six places, whose total population amounts to less than that of Poole, a large coastal town and seaport in the county of Dorset, on the south coast of England.

The government of the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda has adopted a policy of gradual shift to the SI since 1971. Road signs and petrol pumps are metric in Bermuda so we know that it can be done. Where there is a will, there is a way.

North America

Unfortunately, having the United States at the southern border hinders full metrication in Canada. Ask a Canadian how tall someone is and the answer usually involves feet and inches. When we visited British Columbia, I was unable to purchase a metric-only measuring tape at hardware store. How pathetic! Canada and the United States of America are incomplete as far as metrication goes.

British islands on London time

England leaving the European Union would no doubt be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back. Scotland and Ireland wish to remain in the European Union. The so-called United Kingdom might very well break apart into its distinct components.

It is pretty obvious how GBR (Great Britain) is a Non-FIFA Country Code. Great Britain is not a nation in the context of matches between nationalistic rivals. Men are instinctively warlike. Sport is a substitute for war. Scotland, England and Wales are distinct nationalities with distinct individual histories. Ireland has an unfortunate political border that should go away according to a majority of the people of Ireland. The Isle of Man (self-governing crown dependency) Guernsey (Crown Dependency) Jersey (Crown Dependency) and Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha (British Overseas Territory) are four insular areas still clinging to Imperial measures to some degree.

“The sun never sets on the British Empire” was once the proud boast, but alas, the British learned too late that subjects of the Crown could not be held under an oppressive thumb forever. Independence movements whittled the farcical monarchy down to the few remaining scraps we see today.

It is a tremendous hindrance to progress that these few remaining scraps stubbornly cling to Imperial measures.

Gain a Basic Understanding

Scaling Earth down to globe size (1 m in circumference) what length represents the distance between Moon and Earth?
1 m
10 m
100 m
1 km

Earth and Moon Globes

Visit Kill the Inch and Complete US Metrication to find the answer; now take this trivia survey and gain a wealth of knowledge about the magnitude of your planet:

Farcical Aquatic Ceremony

If you believe in a deity or in some divine authority, then stop reading, because this is probably not your cup of tea. You may be interested though if you are atheist. Be counted at AtheistCensus.com because numbers matter.
Two centuries ago, thirteen British colonies rebel against royal tyrannical repression in a Freedom quest and France wisely overthrows a repressive monarchy during the French Revolution as science, rather than religion, inspires people to measure wisely. Britain, on the other hand, still clings to an outdated royalty scheme of downgrading people to lowly subjects to the Great British Crown, supposedly operating under divine guidance. This scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail reveals just how silly such a farcical monarchy is in the Modern Era:
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don’t vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, how did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, [angels sing] her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur was to carry Excalibur. [singing stops] That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ‘cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin’ I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they’d put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! HELP! HELP! I’m being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
So you see, once a government employs mendacity as a foundation to maintain a façade of power, it must build lie upon lie in order to maintain the façade. But farces eventually fade. People start acknowledging that the Emperor wears no clothes. The Church of England is that mendacious foundation. The British government must perpetuate a farcical claim that the mile, inch, gallon, pound et cetera are measurements divinely passed down to subjects of the realm through a Great British monarchy. The truth is that there is nothing divine about those silly, obsolete measures, but the British government, intoxicated with the liquor of complacent mendacity, cannot now backtrack on historic farcical claims for fear of losing face.
Now the house of cards tumbles down all of a sudden. Brexit may very well result in Northern Ireland and Scotland and Gibraltar breaking away from the United Kingdom, which is not so united anymore.

England would be left all alone; no more United Kingdom, just an obsolete little kingdom with nothing to unite.
The Obsolete Mile, inch, gallon, pound et cetera can either die a slow, painful death by systematic organ failure or by a swift, happy, user-assisted suicide. One person at a time; start with yourself right now and kill the inch in your mind. Measure wisely, my friends. Join our effort to reveal the centuries of mendacity thrust upon the British people by the convoluted church / state façade of British royalty.
America should remove In God We Trust from the dollar and Britain should remove the bloody queen from the British Pound and abolish monarchy altogether. Both currencies are decimalised. Let us take the next evolutionary step and remove the façade of religion from all government-related affairs. We can kill the inch and fully embrace the International System. Both America and England have come a long way towards metrication; we are actually already about half way there. Let us not leave the job half done. Let us finish the job. If Australia and India can do it, then so can we!
Consider joining a few of these Facebook groups:
Kill the Inch and Complete US Metrication
Adopt the Metric System
Call for the United States to Convert to the Metric System
Metricate Hopkins!
U.S. Metric Association, Inc.
Americans for Metric-Only Labeling
Americans for a Metric Revolution
&*^# IT! I’M SWITCHING TO THE METRIC SYSTEM, WHO’S WITH ME?
Consanguinity for the Metrication of the United States
Go Metric!
Go Metric Now
The Metric Alliance
Foreign-Born for Measurement Reform
Turn Canada Fully Metric Now
Foreign-Born for Measurement Reform
Progressive Europeans – The purpose of this Facebook group is to promote a progressive agenda in Europe; promote the European Convention on Human Rights; promote a global embrace of the SI (International System); and continue our efforts to keep Europe at peace.
Go Metric Scotland!
Scotland – Remain in European Union
Go Metric Northern Ireland!
Northern Ireland – Remain in European Union
Gibraltar – Remain in European Union
Turn The UK Fully Metric Now
Britain should complete metrication as soon as possible!
I Want Metric Road Signs in Britain
UK Metric Association
England and the European Union
Foreign-Born for Measurement Reform