There’s a new Batman movie, creatively called The Batman. It’s yet another new take on, you guessed it, the Batman. I’ve little interest in seeing it, I’m not into reboots (or re-imaginings or whatever) in general, and I’m 100% sure my SO will watch it with me.
Let me explain that last bit: she will watch it, I will be cozied up with her, and the odds are good that I will fall asleep. Somewhat famously in my circles, I can sleep through almost any superhero movie no matter the venue and volume.
Once I slept through Christopher Nolan’s first Batman movie in an iMax. My extended family piled into one tiny living room to watch that Marvel Endgame movie. I was asleep and snoring in 30 minutes. I’ve tried watching both again with the same result.
Anyway, the Batman movies remind me of the Spider-Man movies in that they are seeming always rebooting/retelling the same story. Batman’s nemeses also see constant rebooting with meh results.
Let me be clear: many people I love and respect love these films. You may also love these films. I am happy for all y’all.
Excuse me as I don this old timey sleeping cap and cozy flannels.
Why hasn’t the United States adopted the metric system for widespread use? I’ve generally thought there were two reasons. One is that with the enormous US internal market, there was less incentive to follow international measurement standards. The other was that the US has long had a brash and rebellious streak, a “you’re not the boss of me” vibe, which means that there will inevitably be pushback againstsome external measurement system invented by a French guy and run an international committee based in a Paris suburb.
However, Stephen Mihm makes a persuasive case that my internal monologue about the metric system is wrong, or at least seriously incomplete, in “Inching toward Modernity: Industrial Standards and the Fate of the Metric System in the United States” (Business History Review, Spring 2022, pp. 47-76, needs a library subscription to access). Mihm focuses on the early battles over US adoption of the metric system, waged in the 19th and early 20th century. He makes the case that the metric system was in fact blocked by university-trained engineers and management, with the support of big manufacturing firms.
This is not a battle for today. At some point the US and the other outliers will embrace the metric system. I drive friend, family, and SO crazy with my adherence to matrix measurements (and 24-hour clocks) where I can.
YMMV
We can’t have nice things anymore, especially in architecture.
How did the Beatles do it? How did those four English chaps have the right interpersonal chemistry to revolutionize the music industry with mellifluous harmonies, transcendent experiments, and catchy pop melodies all at the same time? And how did they do it all in such a short period of time?
Maybe … they didn’t.
Maybe their songs were actually created through institutionalizedESP experimentationin the late 1950s, and the field recordings were only recently recovered by acclaimed UK music journalist Solomon Davies, and made available now for the very first time.
What took you all soooooooooooooooo long to “discover” Kate Bush?
Were her duets with Peter Gabriel too obscure? (They’re not). Was her impact on other artists in many genres too hard to puzzle out? (No! The artists were very explicit.)
Did not enough people hear me play Kate Bush on my high school radio station show in the late 80’s and early 90’s, a show I co-hosted with my best friend Ray whose now-wife then-girlfriend was almost a bigger Kate Bush fan than me?
Probably. I mean, it was a low wattage FM station in northern central Connecticut.
