The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many families and friends to keep their distance — even at times when a hug is really needed. That was the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.
Distance
Texas Standard: May 25, 2020
With the unofficial start of summer in Texas, a re-evaluation of what we’ve endured and what’s ahead. We’ll take a look at the state of the fight against COVID-19. Texas based vaccine expert Dr.Peter Hotez gets us up to speed on the impact of the relaxation of stay at home guidelines in Texas. Also, why many daycares, now authorized to reopen, may not make it despite economic recovery efforts. And an update on the Coronavirus story unfolding just south of the border, and a rediscovered history of women and the high court. Those stories and so much more today on the Texas Standard:
The Distance In Smoots
By W. F. Strong
Shakespeare told us that “some have greatness thrust upon them.” Such was the case for Oliver Smoot. He was born in Bexar County, Texas, and there was nothing in his formative years to predict the events that would push him into international prominence.
Oliver was a fine student and his academic strengths got him into MIT in Boston. It was there that he was pledging a fraternity and his pledge class was given the ridiculous task of measuring Harvard Bridge, which connects Boston to Cambridge, in some new way. The bridge was half a mile long.
His group of pledges decided fairly quickly that since Oliver was the shortest among them, five-foot-seven, they would use him as their “ruler.” Late one night, they laid him down on the sidewalk of the bridge and moved him slowly, one body length at a time, making a mark on the sidewalk at his head every time they moved him. Took five hours because the police dispersed them and they had to sneak back later.
Once completed, they totaled all the times they had moved him and it came to 364.4 times – plus an ear. They decided to immortalize this new unit of measure as a smoot, after Oliver’s last name. Thus the bridge was 364.4 smoots (and an ear) long. You can even see the smoot measurements on the bridge today, no doubt pleasing MIT that Harvard Bridge is eternally branded by the university and pleasing to me that a Texan was used to do it.
Even when the Continental Construction Company reconcreted the sidewalk in 1987, they made the slabs in smoot lengths to commemorate local lore. It’s wonderful to see Work that into a conversation that everyone can work in harmony for a common cause when they want to.
In the category of truth is stranger than fiction, Oliver Smoot eventually became the Chairman of the American National Standards Institute and President of the International Organization for Standardization. He was in charge of weights and measures. How’s that for a perfect fit?
The crowning compliment to the glory of the smoot as a measurement was when the fun-loving geeks at Google, no doubt many from MIT, decided to include the unit of measure in Google conversions. It’s true – try it. In the Google search window you can get any distance converted to smoots.
Distance from Cut n’ Shoot to Dime Box: 112,913 smoots
It’s 5,640,000,000 smoots from Texas to the Moon.
You can even determine how far you boot scooted to George Strait at the dance hall last night. Convert your steps into smoots.
I think it is also fitting to have this relatively new unit of measure – now legitimized in many dictionaries, including the American Heritage Dictionary and the Urban Dictionary – brought to us by a native Texan. After all, Texas itself, as I’ve noted before, has long been a unit of measure. For instance, you could fit 25 Massachusetts into Texas. And, in case you were wondering, Texas has a total area of over 240 trillion square smoots. today.
How Does Psychological Distance Effect Us?
The idea of distance conjures up many images in our minds. We might be thinking of how wonderful it will be when we are retired and have time to spend with our loved ones, do some traveling, or play 18 holes of golf on a weekday. Or perhaps when we think of distance, we think of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how far away the conflicts are from us.
For Art Markman and Robert Duke, how we process distance is particularly important, because it clues researchers in to how we think and make decisions as a result of distance.