Hella-cool

Sometimes as a wee tad, when my teacher's voice began to drone on interminably, I'd turn listlessly to the inside cover of my arithmetic book. What peculiar information I'd find there! How many pecks in a bushel! How many feet in a rod! Dry ounces and fluid ounces. Furlongs, fathoms and nautical miles.

The conversions were all so arbitrary -- fascinating to my immature brain -- and the units so wonderfully named. But the system was impossible to grasp in any manner other than by sheer memorization. Who, for example, ever decided that there should be 437.5 grains to an ounce?

On the other hand, set out beside these weird measurements was a different system. The metric system, of course, but at that age no one had ever explained the metric system to us. I knew about feet and miles and quarts and pounds, just from daily life. I didn't know about meters and liters. The conversions from English measurements to metric, and vice versa, were even weirder than those within the English system. But the metric system, viewed within itself, was beautiful -- everything in multiples of ten.

And even more fascinating to me -- novice connaisseur of words that I already was -- were the prefixes affixed to units of distance, weight, and everything else. Deci-, centi- and milli-, as things got smaller. Deka-, hecto-, and kilo-, as they got larger.

That was the extent of the metric system inside the cover of my fourth grade math text. Later, I learned even more beautiful terms. Micro, nano and pico -- for a millionth, a billionth, and a trillionth. Mega and giga for a million times larger and a billion times larger. Today, of course, even cheap computers have gigabytes of memory.

And despite education in physics, that's really where my knowledge of metric nomenclature remained. Until today. This week's edition of the Economist points out the usefulness of two additional terms. While "gigameter," for example, would be 10⁹ meters, a "yottameter" would be a much greater distance -- 10²⁴ meters, or 10¹⁵ gigameters. Similarly, at the other end of the scale, a "yoctometer" is 10^-24 meters -- a fairly short distance, by anyone's reckoning.

Why would anyone be interested in a "yocto-anything"? The actual subject of the article was experimentation that has permitted scientists to measure a tiny force of only 174 yoctonewtons. A "newton" is defined as the amount of force needed to accelerate a mass of one kilogram at the rate of one meter per second per second (although the Economist -- a British rag addicted to typically English definitions of measurement -- whimsically describes the newton as the approximate force exerted by the earth's gravity at the earth's surface on one of Sir Isaac Newton's apples).

"Yocto" also is useful in measuring mass. A proton has a mass of about 1.26 yoctograms.

So far, yocto and yotta mark the upper and lower limits of the metric system. No one has any need for a unit representing 1/1000 of a yocto-anything, or 1,000 yotta-anythings.¹ Linguistically, however, as the Economist observes, we're ready if science creates the need. Terms for 10²⁷ and 10^-27 logically should be based on the Greek root "ennea" (meaning "nine" times three zeros).

But an undergrad from California (where else?) has reportedly started a campaign to scrap the Greek nomenclature when we reach that next level, and adopt the prefix "hella" for 10 to the plus or minus 27th. Cuz, dude, that would be either hella big or hella little.

Hella good idea, I'd say.

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¹Fans of humongous numbers will recall, of course, the proposed "googol" as representing 10¹⁰⁰, or 1 followed by 100 zeros. And the later refinement, the "googolplex," defined as 1 followed by a googol zeroes. (Mega-behemoth Google derives its name therefrom.)

Since there are only about 5 x 10⁸⁷ elementary particles in the known, observable universe, the googol -- let alone the googolplex -- seems of limited utility. (Estimated particle numbers, courtesy of Wikipedia.)

My desire to fully describe large-number nomenclature requires that I also acknowledge the Facebook page, "Shitload" is a Standardized Unit of Measurement," to which 847,456 fans now subscribe.

On the trail

Of all recreational activities, one of the coolest and most rewarding has to be also the simplest -- walking. Just putting one foot before the other. Watching the scenery go by.

Walking, in its purest form, requires no equipment other than a pair of shoes. You can walk through your residential neighborhood, observing your neighbors as they live their lives, enjoying the fresh air, admiring the trees and landscaping. At a slightly higher level, you can get out of town and hike the trails: lowland trails along rivers and lakes, or mountain trails through forests and alpine scenery. With a bit more planning, and a little more equipment, you can backpack -- bearing your world on your back and sleeping in the wilderness for a night -- or for a week or for ten nights.

Mountain trekking (and climbing) such as I did last fall in Nepal combines the simplicity of a day's walk on a trail with the advantages of a longer escape from civilization. Freedom from a backpack's encumbrance comes at some cost to your self-respect, however, as you shift a burden that is rightfully yours onto the backs of native porters.

Reliance on porters -- or pack animals, for that matter --is convenient, but requires complicated logistics. It also arouses feelings of guilt from asking poor people to do the dirty work of hiking while you enjoy its pleasures. Your sensation of guilt varies inversely with your degree of exhaustion. It's also somewhat irrational -- you are, after all, providing employment to men who are grateful for it, and whose jobs are considered desirable, even prestigious, within their own society. But the feeling, to some degree, remains. And beyond this "sahib-guilt," there's the added suspicion that you're not quite pulling your own weight, that you've taken one step away from the pure simplicity of the act of walking and one step closer to powering a trail bike up the path.

Next summer, I'm planning to do an eight-day trans-England walk, from sea to sea, following Hadrian's Wall from hamlet to hamlet across the "waist" of Great Britain. This hike, again, isn't quite the pure, self-sufficient walking experience that I've been trying to extol -- I'll be carrying only a day pack each day, while a concessionaire's truck carries my baggage from one hostelry to the next. I'll sleep in beds and eat at inns.

As rewarding as the trek in Nepal certainly was, and as I anticipate the hike along the Roman wall will be, something in my soul urges me to simplify further, to get away from supply trucks, porters, mule trains, and other forms of "assistance" that only complicate the walking experience. Therefore, I'm also hoping to spend some time this summer -- even if only a long weekend or two -- returning to the kind of hiking that I did in the years just after my days as an undergraduate. Backpacking. There's a peculiar satisfaction to be derived from camping in the mountains, out of sight and earshot of other campers, knowing that your own legs provide your only means of transportation, and the pack on your back provides your only source of food and shelter.

Whether alone or with a friend or two, for a few days I want to feel myself once more a part of nature, seeing the world about me as it was seen by pioneer explorers over a century ago.

So, I look forward to a little backpacking -- walking the mountain trails of the Sierras and the Cascades.

Perspective

From outside the United States, many of our nation's political fears and conflicts seem weird and difficult to understand. While I was in Thailand, dependent on sketchy news in the foreign press and occasional reports on the international programs of CNN and the BBC, Congress finally pulled itself together and passed some version of Obama's health care reform bill. It was an exciting moment for me, but obviously not for the non-American world.

To overseas news services, Republican laments that America had gone socialist seemed quaint, just one more peculiar feature of American politics. They felt the same about Democratic exuberance over passage of the bill. Outside our own borders, universal health care, in one form or another, is taken for granted by virtually all developed nations. The foreign press was interested in the story only as representing a political triumph by Obama over the Republicans. They had virtually no interest in the actual provisions of the bill itself.

Travel is broadening in many respects. One quickly realizes that human happiness flourishes under many forms of political system. (So does political conflict, as the "Red shirt" demonstrations in Bangkok illustrated while I was there.) Excellent medical care and good government can co-exist -- do widely co-exist -- with health care programs far more "socialistic" than anything Congress has legislated, or even considered legislating.

And from a foreign perspective, calling Obama a "radical" or a "socialist" appears laughable. But I return home to a world where right wing fanatics clearly aren't laughing.