How Bigz Ur Booty?
by Staff of Magellan's Log

Modification of Existing Scales
of Measurement

Who "owns" these scales? Nobody. But mere lack of ownership has never stopped a determined capitalist number-cruncher.

What an opportunity!

Suppose I’m Joe Bigbucks, an unknown merger king who has quietly accumulated a few billion. I sleep well in any of my four houses on three continents knowing that as I accumulated my fortune I have raised the standard of living in at least five developing countries. I feel I am due a little public recognition.

Knowing that American public relations can SPIN anything (Clarence Thomas? On the Supreme Court???) and American advertising can SELL anything (people actually BUY Cadillac Escalades???), I hire an agency which will announce to the world that what used to be known as "the Fahrenheit scale" will henceforth be known as "the Bigbucks Scale."

How do you get people to use the new terminology? Why, you pay them of course. If a weather forecaster says, "The temperature yesterday in Ulan Bator was 43," she gets nothing, but everytime she says, "…43 on the Bigbucks Scale," she gets, say, 10 cents added into her PayPal account. In the advertising world, this is known as "priming the pump." You only have to do it for a while, and before long EVERYBODY is referring to every mention of temperature with the added words, "…on the Bigbucks Scale."

You get the idea. For a modest investment, anyone can immortalize their name because of our compulsion to count everything:

"But officer I was only driving 65 on the Trump Scale."
"Drinking Tasty Emetic Lime Freeze three times a day I quickly lost 14 pounds on the Oprah Scale."
"With Viagra my johnson is now a solid 7.4 inches on the Schwarzenegger Scale."

That’s all well and good, your basic innovative capitalist entrepreneurship. The second scalar possibility, however, opens undreamt of new vistas of cultural expansion.

Go to "Development of Much-needed New Scales
of Measurement" >>