So, like probably many of you, I had no idea that the fate of world of weight measurement hung so delicately in the balance due to a little piece of metal named Le Grand K, that was guarded closely in a vault just outside of Paris, France. Apparently, scientists have been worried about this and have spent decades of work to fix this little matter, or kilo, as is the case here, so that the safety of weight measurement can be secured into the future. Um, what?

We had this little metal cylinder locked up since 1889, so it had to survive plenty of the world’s troubles including two world wars. Whatever would have happened to the state of our future should we have lost the little Le Grand K? Well, we did apparently have six official spare copies, but they were locked up with the original. Hmm, same place. Sounds a little risky.

Now, the standard of weight measurement, along with other units of measure, will be defined using a series of numeric values that can be stored on a wallet size card. This new measure, known as “the electric kilo” cannot decay or pick up dust over time. Sounds like a great idea. Anyone off the street would have come up with that idea within oh, say a minute, but it took genius scientists decades!

They are very happy though, which makes me very happy for them. At the recent meeting in Versailles, where all this brilliance went down, the scientific community were reportedly acting like the early crowds at a Beatles concert. They cheered, they cried, they hugged, some even got tattoos to celebrate such a monumental moment in scientific history. I am not sure, but probably a few fainted.

It all sounds kind of like a good old down-home Baptist come to Jesus revival meeting. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a weight measurement denier. In fact, I firmly believe that things have weight, and that items of all kinds can and should be weighted. And, if we can have a new and safe standard that doesn’t have to be constantly protected in a vault, and it makes scientists excited enough to get tattoos, I am all for that too.

Yes, I am taking the time to poke some fun at scientists for being so self-congratulatory for coming up with something so logical and basic, and taking so long to do it, I might add. I do believe in, and greatly respect science but am a person of faith as well, and do not see the contradictions that so many do on both the science and the religion sides.

I just think we need fewer sanctimonious scientists and religious zealots who fail to see the magic in the world or fail to have faith in something larger than our own ever-limiting human knowledge and frailties. Maybe it’s because faith is something that, no matter the level of scientific analysis, cannot be measured.