History's Dumpster

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Take 10 Minutes To Learn The Metric Way!

Ahhh......the metric system. To this day the US, Burma (Myanmar) and Liberia are the only nations in the world who have not formally adopted the metric system.

While the US has authorized the use of the metric system since 1866, outside of science and a few other places, it was largely ignored. In 1975, Congress authorized a ten year plan for national conversion. Which seemed like a good idea. Canada and Mexico already adopted it

And PSAs like this began appearing. (I remember watching this - my elementary school teachers were (quite reluctantly) trying to teach it and I tried to explain it to my mom and how nearly every country in the world uses it and now the US was changing over. She rolled her eyes and said with deadpan sarcasm "Wow. And all this time, I thought we won the war.....")

Today you find some uses of the metric system. Namely this:

And along the borders for our Canadian and Mexican friends

Speed limit sign in Blaine, WA.....just a few meters over the border.......

And virtually all retail food/drink and household products in America have both standard (or imperial) and metric measurements listed on their containers. Wine and spirit bottles are also metrically portioned. And it's ubiquitous in the illegal drug trade. Foreign imported bikes also use metric nuts and bolts (I found this out with my old Peugeot 10 speed.)

So what happened?

Simple, for the most part, we Americans resisted. In fact, the government gave up around 1982 and closed the metric conversion office when then President Reagan made the first sweeping wave of government cutbacks, ending all funding for a national conversion.

However there are still a few hopeful holdouts. But it's doubtful Americans will ever convert.

Monday, September 16, 2013

The Oobi

It seemed like a cute idea....

Message on top "I'm Oobi. I contain a message to another human being. Please further my journey an inch, a foot, or a mile. Add a note, if you wish. Then help me to the next nice person like yourself!"

A strange little toy came on the market in 1971.

A little plastic thing that looked like a giant M&M with eyes. It was for kids to transport written messages to each other using the kindness of strangers. The kids would write the address of their receiving friend on the bottom of an Oobi and leave it out anyplace someone would find it. And, assuming that person had nothing else to do, would presumably take it directly to the kid who was to receive it.

That was the idea at least behind the Oobi.

They were sold in packs of three, so they were probably weren't reuseable.

"oobi is a message center for conveying your written thoughts to other human beings. oobi has no home, no owner, but is forever going somewhere, on his way, in transit, never dying. oobi counts on the kindness of strangers to journey him towards his destination, but only the person to whom oobi is addressed may open him. When he is finally broken open, it is only to free oobi's spirit.

You may buy oobi, but you never "own" oobi. You buy oobi to make him free.

oobi is love"

Parents however weren't as nice to Oobi. And this weirdo hippie 'love' babble only made them extremely nervous (or seriously pissed them off.) And you can't really blame them. They had every reason in the world not to like them. Even in that more innocent age, the very last thing you want is some pervert or creep knowing you and your child's address. The slits that held the notes were also big enough and useful for making your kids unsuspecting drug mules as well. So cops were naturally suspicious of these things as well.

It was the biggest toy failure in Parker Brother's history. And they were off the shelves within months.....

More on the Oobi here:

http://www.deuceofclubs.com/oobi/index.html

Thursday, September 12, 2013

One Weird Trick

Have you ever spotted these web ads and asked yourself "Who do these people think they're fooling?"

"One Weird Trick"....or some variant in ads for everything from mortgage reduction to testosterone building. Nothing screams SCAM louder.

They began appearing around 2008. And became ubiquitous by 2010.

In copy writing, one major no-no is overused superlatives. The reason is simple - They get old. And cliche.

And apparently, I'm not the only one who notices it.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-09/just-1-weird-trick-to-get-you-to-read-this-article.html