May! Memorial Day Weekend! Summer (at least in the commercial or social sense) is upon us; air conditioners, summer driving, cookouts abound. I suppose that I should be talking about all the fun and games and summer delights but there is something I need to get off of my chest, once and for all, in print.

The name of the system of units that most of the world uses and that the US uses for scientific analysis is known as the SI units (Système international or International System of Units in English). It is not the metric system.

The major selling point when the ‘metric system’ began to penetrate the US was that the units were based on decimal divisions. Each increment in units is based on a power of ten. 10 millimeters makes a centimeter, 10 centimeters makes a decameter, and 10 decameters make a meter. And that is a great advantage. Far better than 12 inches making a foot, 3 feet making a yard, and 1760 yards to a mile.

But that doesn’t mean that the SI units themselves are particularly useful for everyday living or that the old English units must be banished never to see the light of day. Let me make some points to support this assertion.

First, the SI units of length and temperature leave something to be desired. The meter is approximately one yard, which is too big for recording ordinary lengths (sports and fabric measurements not withstanding). Typically, the centimeter and millimeter do all the heavy lifting for common objects. Human height is measured in terms of meters and centimeters. No one even speaks of the decameter. Far worse is measuring temperature in units of degrees Celsius. The base SI unit is Kelvin, not Celsius, and one converts between the two by adding or subtracting 273 as appropriate. Considering that the human body can sense about 1 degree Fahrenheit differences in temperature, a SI thermostat should optimally work in half degrees.

Second, there are machine shops all over the US where metric inches are used quite nicely to produce precision parts. One can go to a shop and order a part with a dimension of 3.456 inches. So, the inch is perfectly reasonable as long as one avoids feet.

Finally, with the advent of digital signal processing, twos-based units are more convenient than 10s-based. A great many data sets or simulations are truncated or padded to get powers of 2.

So, please, do yourself a favor, do your country a favor, and do the world a favor and call ‘the metric’ system by it real name and recognize it for what it is, a system of units, some good, some bad, and some ugly.

Speaking of good, we have our usual quartet of good columns this month.

Comics and philosophy are rarely spoken of in the same sentence but good stories can come from deep roots. Join About Comics as it continues its exploration of the origins of the Infinity Stones, focusing on the ontology developed by Steve Engelhart and the philosophy of Jim Starlin.

What do pigeons, bugs, and bits all have in common? Each plays a serious role in Aristotle To Digital light-hearted look at the mathematics of file compression and computer programs.

Do equal-pay-for-equal-work laws really aid those people most in need of economic justice? Contrary to popular wisdom often found circulating in the trendy set, Common Cents argues, using strong economic principles, that these laws in fact harm the ones they intend to help.

One of the core theoretical tools in continuum mechanics is the Reynolds transport theorem that describes how a physical quantity, such as volume or density, changes as the material flows. Under The Hood builds up the mathematics needed to understand this important identity and how it relates to the material derivative.

Enjoy!