Have you ever wondered why an inch is an inch? According to some sources it started out as a twelfth of a Roman foot. Gee, that helps. In 1150 King David I of Scotland decreed that an inch was the width of a man’s thumbnail at the base. To guarantee some uniformity, it was to be averaged from the thumbnails of a small, medium, and large man. In the 1300s, King Edward II decided to get scientific about it and defined it as three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end-to-end. Later it was twelve poppy seeds. Life must have been hell for carpenters in those days. Since 1959, presumably no further definitions will ever be required because (start Wagner’s "Ride of the Valkyrie" as background music here) metric to the rescue! The inch was officially defined as 2.54 centimeters!

How much is a centimeter? Simple. It’s 1/100 of a meter. Of course, there’s an in-between measure, the decimeter, which isn’t used so much as a measure of length, but a cubic decimeter is a liter, which is a standard measure of volume.

See how nicely it all fits together? Multiply a meter by a thousand and you get a kilometer. Divide it by a thousand and you get a millimeter. By comparison, there are twelve inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, 5,280 feet in a mile. Our scientists have long since been thinking in milligrams and kilograms, centimeters and millimeters, and when the old system inserts itself, the results vary from funny to disastrous. (Don’t ask me for specifics: You know how to use Google!)

The Celsius scale for temperature is also beautifully simple. Water freezes at zero, and boils at one hundred. There’s also the Kelvin scale, which I don’t know much about. It’s based on absolute zero, and it’s only applicable in outer space, in cryogenics, and in Chicago at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive in January.

OK, now this means something new to learn, right? I’m used to thinking of a 12-ounce bottle of beer, a hundred-yard football field, how many extra POUNDS of blubber I carry around my middle, and so on. I know my waist size in inches. I know how far it is from my home to the nearest town in miles. At my age, those templates won’t be easy to dislodge. (Although I read and travel enough that I also have wispy metric and Celsius templates to draw on.) Contrary to what a quick learner some of my professors called me, I can be thick headed when it comes to change. As a writer, I fought tooth and nail against converting to an electric typewriter, and later, to a computer, which I now can’t live without. Having learned to drive quite nicely the old stick-shift way, my conversion to automatics nearly caused some major accidents. Only a left knee injury that makes the clutch pedal a torture device took the stick shift out of my life for good.

So it will be an inconvenience to some. But the time is here. There’s so much our kids need to be learning in this day of mushrooming knowledge, let’s not continue to saddle them with an archaic system of measures. We can go on thinking in pounds and miles, we can still say "I won’t give an inch," but before we know it, metric will be natural and easy for all of us, even us old geezers. Most important, it’s one more way in which we can catch up with the rest of the world, for our own good.

What's bad about our postal service is mostly in our heads. The truth is, it's a model of efficiency. It makes BIG news when a postal carrier ditches mail somewhere instead of delivering it, because it's so rare. Of course it's tragic when someone gets a letter that could have changed his or her life for the better thirty years late, and each of those cases always makes national news, also because it's so rare. "Going postal" has become a synonym for "going ballistic," but on a per-employee basis, acts of violence in the workplace are below average in the postal service.

There is one thing that's a major pain, in my opinion.

It's not the honesty of the employees. In some places, it's commonplace for postal employees to help themselves to valuables sent by mail, but in spite of how curiously commonplace crime is in our advanced nation, it almost never happens here. When it does, the thief can get up to five years in prison for the first offense.

The rates are very favorable. As I've said elsewhere, try to get UPS or Fed-Ex to deliver a letter across the nation for you in two days for forty-three cents, or whatever the rate is today.

And that leads to what I'd like to change. I hate not knowing what it will cost me to mail a letter next week or next month. In other advanced nations, the cost of a first-class stamp doesn't change every few weeks. Our representatives made the same mistake here they made by "protecting" Canadian geese, that now need protection about as much as mosquitoes: They saw a need, they acted on it, and when the solution backfired, they were paralyzed.

In this case, it's not the USPS' fault. It's congress'. Postal rates are indexed to the actual cost of providing the service. Terrific idea. I'm in favor of indexing. Part of my retirement income is Social Security. A small part, in fact, but it helps, and there are periodic increases as the purchasing power of my SS checks goes down. But what I get this month is the same as last month, whether my local supermarket is selling buns and hot dogs and beer for the same prices or not.

Yeah, there are now "forever" stamps, and they're a convenience, just not a good investment. Theoretically, I could buy thousands of dollars worth of forever stamps, and in that way, my cost to mail the first ounce of a first-class letter would not go up until I'd used up my supply. But I'd be depriving myself of the use of that money for other purposes.

Here's a simple idea, although I'm sure congress can make it complicated: Make the next increase to an even number, like fifty cents. LEAVE it there, and leave all other fees at steady rates also. Initially, that will provide a surplus. As costs increase, the USPS can operate on the money it continues to take in, plus the surplus. Before the surplus is depleted, raise the fees again, this time to sixty cents for the first ounce, with corresponding increases for everything else, and thus begin the cycle again.

I'm sure some people won't like this for the obvious reason that it will cost extra at first. Over the long haul, it would average out, however, and would remove a major nuisance from our private and business lives.

And then we could think about that other problem with our postal service: Junk mail!

Recently a friend of mine forwarded to me a slide show comparing the slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust to the treatment of Gazans by Israel. Photos of SS troops were paired with photos of Israeli soldiers, concentration camp fences were paired with military checkpoints, and so on. Continue...

Or I could have headlined this "At last! A sport that’s worth following!"

The Roller Derby I knew about eons ago was a spectacle with a little bit of sport attached, about on the same level intellectually as television wrestling. It disappeared in the ‘70s, so far as I know.

Now you may think there’s something wrong with my hormones, but I rarely get caught up in the national sports obsession. One reason is the proliferation of "ISP," incessant sports prattle, on radio and television, in meeting rooms and pool rooms and living rooms. Baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, golf, bowling . . . Most of them, to me, are as exciting as folding socks. For one admittedly thrilling moment at a game, there are hours of talking heads dissecting that moment, then hashing over the players’ salaries (abominably high in a nation where kids go to bed hungry), lengths of contracts, and relative "TMAs," or thrilling moment averages.

But by accident I caught an A & E documentary about Roller Derby, which I’d heard nothing about for decades. My wife and I learned about the intricacies of the game, as well as the interesting women who have revived it. Googling Roller Derby led us to the Windy City Rollers in my beautiful adopted home town of Chicago. Going once got me hopelessly hooked.

Contrary to what I had always assumed, Roller Derby isn’t just a race on skates with some mayhem thrown in. It’s a relatively complex game with skaters called pivots, blockers, and the only kind who can score points, jammers. Plus lots of referees and rules rules rules! The women of today’s Roller Derby use track names and whimsical biographies that make themselves sound like something in between hookers and serial killers, but in real life they’re typically businesswomen or professionals: Teachers, lawyers, physicians, sales reps, store owners, etc.

Here are just a few of the reasons that I’ve gone nuts for this sport while blissfully ignoring most of the others:

Some of the "derby fans" I know are serious enthusiasts for other sports, while for some this is their only sport. I’ve enticed a few uninitiated to watch the Windy City Rollers with me. Some have caught the bug like I did, and some have found it fun but not overwhelming. So far no one has told me it was boring.

The Windy City Rollers are now the #2 WFTDA league in the nation, right behind the Gotham Girls, aka New York. Skaters from the big two compete vigorously on the track, but it’s the friendliest rivalry I’ve ever seen.

Unless you live in Antarctica, chances are there’s a Roller Derby league near you. I heartily recommend checking it out. It’s fine for kids, I’ve never heard any objectionable language in the stands, and it’s refreshing to see living proof that tough resilience, assertiveness, kindness, and femininity can fit together very well. It’s also refreshing to see men take pride in their mothers, sisters, girlfriends, and daughters for smashing the hell out of those gender stereotypes.

(In fairness, there are also some male Roller Derby leagues and banked-track leagues, and a few professional teams.)

(by Dr. Paul K. Fauteck) 2008 ended with me at home, under the weather, denying myself even a glass of champagne! Rotten way to start a new year, I say! But I'm also hopeful. Personally, I'm not expecting any great miracles in 2009. I'll be pleased if I can finish a volunteer project that's important to me.

For my nation and my world, I hope for more civilized discourse and less polarization, less bloodshed and poverty, more openness to education and less stereotyping. You may think this naive, but I have faith in humanity. I firmly believe that we are capable of doing much better in many ways. May that become abundantly obvious in 2009!

Gasoline prices are high, and they’re also silly. Why do we have to put up with that fraction of a cent?

When I was a kid, some people worked for 25 cents an hour. Gasoline was selling for around 14 cents a gallon. Those tenths of a cent made some difference. Putting ten gallons in your tank at 14 cents a gallon as opposed to 13.5 cents a gallon could mean that you worked 12 minutes longer, typically at some miserable job, to fill the tank. When gasoline prices were around 20 cents a gallon, the tenths of a cent still made some difference, and back then it was not invariably 9/10 of a cent. Gasoline tanks were larger, the wartime national speed limit of 35 mph was gone, and people drove more. If a station had premium gasoline at 21 cents, and the one across the street had premium at 20 and six tenths of a cent, it was worth your while to choose the latter.

As gas prices went up, that fraction of a cent became fixed at 9/10. For all practical purposes it was meaningless. True, retailers typically price things just under a significant digit amount: $199 instead of $200, even though some research has shown that all else being equal, buyers will perceive $203 as more of a bargain than $199 because it gives the impression that the seller is charging as little as possible while still making a reasonable profit. Traditions are hard to change, though, and at worst the $1.95 cup of coffee or the $799 sofa is a harmless custom.

But with gasoline, we’re talking about fractions of a penny!

So that gas stations can post a price like $3.59-9/10, and you can tell yourself "Well, it hasn’t reached $360 a gallon yet!"

Where’s the harm? First, it’s deceitful, in my opinion. Second, it’s wasteful. Take that extra space needed for every fuel cost in front of every service station in America, and the extra power needed to light those 20 or 30 or more square inches of sign face, and it totals – OK, I’m not even going to try to calculate this. It’s more money than I’d want to write a check for.

It serves no purpose. For myself, I personally will go out of my way to patronize the first service station chain that starts posting its prices in whole cents only.

Admittedly this is a trivial issue in view of the monumental problems we face as a nation right now. I watch, listen to, and read the news several times a day. Frequently it either disgusts me, makes me angry, or just gives me a headache. And just for today, I thought it would be more fun to tilt at windmills. Or gasoline signs.

Paul Karsten Fauteck, Psy.D.

PASSOVER, EASTER, AND SPRING

ARE FOR EVERYONE

Actually, I’m not white at all. I’m a kind of washed out beige color, and I don’t think I’ve ever known a black person. I’ve known many people who were various shades of brown who were labeled "black," and I’ve known some "black" people who were lighter than I am. That’s my point: They’re labels, not descriptions although the average person of my race has a lighter complexion than the average person of the race called black.

A common reason for labels to change is what I’ll call euphemization, although I’ve never found it in a dictionary. Changing our name for something to a word that "sounds nicer" is usually an indication that we are somehow embarrassed by the nature of something, not just by its name. A couple of examples should demonstrate this.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th Century doctors had to certify that some "sanitarium" patients were "lunatics." Today, most of us reserve that word for other drivers and politicians we don’t agree with. But in the late 1800s, lunatic had become a more polite way to say "mad" or "berserk." Sadly, mental illness hasn’t changed dramatically in the last 150 years, although a number of labels have come into and gone out of favor, in addition to mad, crazy, or lunatic. "Insane" was a nice way of saying it for a while: Not sane, when sane just meant "free from hurt or disease." But that eventually became offensive, and no one relished having to tell a parent that a child was "insane." The label "mentally ill" seems to be headed down the same path.

Also in my lifetime, the words "moron," "idiot," and "imbecile" fell out of acceptable usage. The same limitations are now described as mildly, moderately, or severely mentally retarded. And surprise! We’re not happy hanging the "retarded" label on people, so in the schools we use "slow learner" and elsewhere terms like "developmentally limited" or even "exceptional."

The accepted name for that small room in your home with the plumbing fixtures and the ventilator fan has changed just as much. Even if it had no tub or shower, it used to be called a bathroom. We’re embarrassed about the fact that we still have to do number one and number two just like all other mammals, so the words that said what it was really for became obscenities. Then, since we knew what everyone really went to the bathroom to do, we started calling it a "restroom," although there’s seldom a bed or recliner there. And then, ooops! "Restroom" comes to sound primitive and smelly, so we call it a "washroom."

I’ve been "white" as long as I can remember. There are some terms intended to be insulting to my race, and while I get the message, none of them bother me much because I’ve never seen those words accompanied by lynch ropes or cattle prods. I understand that others cannot say the same thing about derogatory terms applied to their race, and, frankly, I share in their repugnance at those words.

When I was a boy, some six decades ago, I knew people who were referred to as "colored." The word "Negro," though it’s only Latin for black or dark, I don’t remember hearing or reading much except in studying geography and the social sciences. A colored person would sometimes become angry at any reference to Africa or African, almost as though that were equivalent to the unforgivable "n" word.

Even though the word "colored" was still in common usage, a prominent woman of that race in the city where I lived took offense at hearing it in my vocabulary. "Don’t call me ‘colored,’" she said. "That sounds like there’s something wrong with who I am. I’d rather be called (n-word) than colored. Just say black."

Soon after that the "black is beautiful" slogan became popular. All of the "black" people I knew were happy about it, as was I. To me, it seemed to have eliminated one of the invisible walls between us, walls I never liked. Although those were troubled times – governors standing on bridges, dogs sicced on peaceful demonstrators, the murder of Rev. Martin Luther King – I believe that it was the beginning of true liberation from the legacy of slavery.

As a psychologist I’m sure that words influence our perception. Can you deny that you expect a boy called "Percival" to be different from one called "Spike"? Wouldn’t it make a difference whether I described you as "youthful" as opposed to "immature"? Even though it’s rarely descriptive in a literal sense, "black" connotes a sense of wholeness, of equality, of pride. White people don’t need to call themselves "uncolored" or "pinkish," and certainly not "European-American."

I feel awkward about calling a black person an "African American." There are several reasons for that. One is that I’ve known people who hailed from Africa who were as Caucasian as any of my ancestors, so technically, it doesn’t define the person’s race. Another is that the individual’s forebears may not have lived in Africa for many generations. If his or her great-great-great grandparents grew up in, say, France, wouldn’t a name such as "black French-American" be more truthful? If, indeed, we need any kind of label at all.

But the biggest problem is that it seems as though I’m apologizing for the person being who he or she is. It’s as though I’d rather not tell you that the chairman of the philosophy department, or my cousin’s boyfriend, or my next door neighbor, is a member of the Negroid race. I’m trying to find a gentler way of saying it. As though it’s something undesirable, like retardation or psychosis, or what we go to the "washroom" to discharge. After a generation of "black" being the accepted name, every time someone says "African-American" it plants the suggestion that "black" is not so good, neither as a word nor as a race.

I’m genuinely sorry that people of that darker race have been treated poorly, but changing their label won’t change that, and it certainly won’t change how they are perceived, at least not for the better. If you are a member of that race, and you insist I call you African American, you won’t be hurting me in any way, but I believe you will be doing yourself a disservice. It’s as OK to be black as it is to be white or oriental. In my opinion, there’s no need to periodically change what you call yourself, because there’s nothing wrong with what you are.

Paul Karsten Fauteck, Psy.D.

PS: Several people have called my attention to the fact that "Oriental" can be taken as an insult. That's not my intention. Please see "comments" to this post. PKF

Welcome to ThusSayethMe.com. As signs at construction sites often say, please excuse our mess. This site is, in fact, under construction, so right now it lacks eye appeal and any semblance of pzazz. It’s coming.

But there are no walls to be put up here. Our purpose here is rather to take down some of the walls that separate Americans from each other and, to a disturbing and increasing degree, from the rest of the world. Walls that fence us in as a society. Walls we hide behind instead of facing painful realities. The artificial wall between science and religion. The walls of slogans and platitudes that we often erect because that’s more convenient than honest, productive debate.

Sometime very soon some posts we consider worthwhile and relevant will be appearing here. We’ll have a log-in set up for those who want to reply.

You know all the disclaimers: Any post or reply here represents the opinions of its author only, we reserve the right to delete or edit as we deem appropriate, we intend the content to be factual and honest but cannot guarantee its accuracy.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: ThusSayethMe.com is dedicated to promoting dialogue and reducing polarization. Posts and replies that resort to name-calling and labeling are discouraged, and are likely to be deleted. Was it Abraham Lincoln who said mud thrown is ground lost? There may be an exception to that truth when a society deteriorates into one giant mud wrestling match, in which, ultimately, everyone eats mud and no one gets to stand on firm ground. America has come too close to that already.

Paul Karsten Fauteck, Psy.D.