Celebrate Quickly

Just so we’re all on the same page, there will be no Leap Second adjustment today

It's my favorite one-second-long holiday of the year!  I'm sad now.  

Time is confusing.  First of all, They Are A-Changin', and secondly, there are too many of them.  By the time you factor in all of the different time zones and various Daylight Savings Times and figure out exactly how all of that meshes with Mean Solar Time, you're ready for the nuthouse.  Then you throw a further monkey wrench into the works by introducing Coordinated Universal Time, which is based on more precise atomic clocks.  If that weren't bad enough, Coordinated Universal Time is abbreviated UTC, as you might not expect.  You see that and you think it must be based on the title in a foreign language...and you'd be 100% wrong.  The French title for UTC is Temps Universel Coordonné.  I'm not making this up when I say that calling it UTC is simply a compromise between CUT and TUC.  I told you this stuff is confusing, right?

Well anyway, every now and again, to accommodate imperceptible changes in the Earth's rotational speed, UTC has to be adjusted, by a single second at a time.  These changes are announced only 6 months in advance due to irregularities in Solar position and the rotation speed.  It's a very precise science, and there are official emails send out.  They're Awesome. 

Leap Seconds are always added one second before midnight on June 30th and/or December 31st.  That would be today, if it were going to happen, which would throw off your alarm clocks by a second if you weren't aware and made the appropriate adjustment yourself.  Fortunately for us all, there is no need today, since it has been decided that there will be no Leap Second today.  We'll look for it again in December. 

I Took Down Tiger, As Well

Forget “Par.”  Golf for value!  I shot 22 cents per stroke  

As long as you're happy and getting your money's worth, I think that's just great.  

Exactly!  It's all about making sure you get your money's worth for your hard-earned entertainment dollar.  You end up paying the same amount of money for a round of golf if you're a scratch golfer, or if you're an incompetent duffer.  So, if you look at it from a financial point of view, if you're a "good" golfer, you spend less time out on the course, you take fewer strokes, and you hate yourself more when you make a mistake.  It's like the old saying goes, golf is the only sport where the better you are, the worse you get.  Or something like that.  

Which is why I like to measure my golf in value.  

Simply changing your perspective on the game makes all the difference.  If you miss a shot, you don't have to think, "oh man, I suck."  You get to think, "Yay!  I get another shot!  Value!"  It makes things so much more enjoyable when you're on the lip of a bunker and instead of chipping over it, you hit the club into the ground directly in front of the ball and end up slowly rolling your ball directly into the sand.  I can neither confirm nor deny that this actually happened.  You've probably already made up your minds anyway, so it's a pretty moot point.  

So, there are a couple different things that go into my recent round of golf.  First of all, it's a 9-hole course.  So, if you're playing 9 holes, they charge $10 (weekday rates and whatnot), and if you play 18, you pay $19 and just go through the course twice.  If you're like me and only plan on playing 9, then decide to make the turn and go for 18, they only charge you the extra $9 the second time around.  They're good like that...and that really saved my value bacon, since I had many fewer strokes the second time.  

So, on the front 9, I shot a reasonably lousy (by traditional golfing metrics) 46.  The back 9 saw a marked improvement (at least partially by not rolling my ball into the sand trap on 3....I mean....hypothetically, of course) of 6 strokes for a tidy 40.  For a guy like Phil Mickelson, an 86 on this course would be grounds for retirement and public shaming.  But that's because he uses the wrong standards.  Par for 18 holes here would be 68, so given Phil's career average of 2 shots below par, let's say he would score a 66 (almost assuredly NOT a valid assumption, but we'll go with it).  He would be paying almost 29 cents per stroke to play this course.  For the exact same experience, I just payed 7 cents less per stroke.  Now that's value!  

On a somewhat related note...did you see that?  I actually shot an 86!  New personal best!  If only I hadn't blown up the 3rd hole with that sand shot...I mean...hypothetically, of course. 

Pretty Sure It's "Thepump"

Woke up this morning trying to remember Optimus Prime’s last name

Uhm....I believe it's "Prime." 

Well, if you go with the assumption that Cybertronian transforming robots follow the same naming conventions that many Terran families do, it's a fairly safe bet that the Autobots and/or Decepticons do actually have surnames.  Otherwise, it's a bit of a stretch to think that buried somewhere in the Transformers lore, the characters have last names that have simply been ignored by all of the canon.  

This is Afternoon Jeremy's explanation for whatever was going through my head earlier today.  

It's been well established that I Am A Genius, but it has probably also been brought up that I don't function properly in the morning.  My genius is like a diesel engine, in that it's pretty lousy until I get warmed up, and then I'm ready to roll for a good long time.  So, first thing in the morning (and I mean FIRST thing...as in, I woke up with this question in my head, and hadn't even sat up in bed yet), I was totally preoccupied with the fact that I couldn't remember what Optimus Prime's last name was.  And I don't mean "Prime," either...that part I was totally clear on.  I thought there was something else going on afterwards that wasn't very often used.  For some reason, I was bouncing around with the word "Freeze" or something that makes no sense.  It was pretty moronic.  

Granted, there are various portions of the Transformers canon that refer to Orion Pax as an alternative name for Optimus Prime, but I'm not overly concerned about that. 

Also The First Youtube Video

People are working on a method to transmit smells over the internet, and more shockingly, think it’s a good idea

Contrary to what you may be thinking, it's called Digital Olfacation, and it is absolutely a real thing.  There's even a conference on it this coming December in Japan.  The keynote speaker will be Doctor Nakamoto, who is the world's foremost expert on the topic. 

There already exists a prototype device to reproduce many smells, using a combination of 13 odor components sealed in tubes.  Combinations of these elements can apparently reproduce just about any olfactory sense possible to humans.  People are actually working on ways to make these things accessible over the internet so people can reproduce smells from around the world.  Because that's a good thing, for some reason.  

Here's the problem.  We're talking about the internet here.  Home of trolls, and Rickrolling, and Rule 34, and Youtube commenters.  I don't see any way that within hours, nay minutes, of this technology being made available to the public, that somebody doesn't spam their friends with farts.  

This is exactly what happened with the advent of the telephone.  Everyone knows that the first message ever sent via telephone was the iconic "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you," as spoken by A.G. Bell.  Fewer people know that moments later, the second audio message was sent along the same telephone line, and it was Watson passing gas into the microphone to Dr. Bell's amusement.  It's the natural progression of technology. 

Still A Genius!

Many of the best and worst discoveries are accidents…like my new coffee-flavored tea beverage!  

In 1894, John and Keith Kellogg accidentally left boiled wheat sitting out, and it turned stale.  An attempt to roll it out into sheets of dough resulted in flakes.  Experimenting with different grains produced flakes made of corn meal, and Corn Flakes were born. 

In 1945, Percy Spencer was experimenting on a magnetron for the Raytheon Corporation when a chocolate bar in his pocket melted.  This was the first microwave oven. 

Chef George Crum was working at Moon's Lakehouse in upstate New York back in 1853.  A customer had ordered fried potatoes, and continually sent them back to the kitchen for being too soggy.  Out of spite, Chef Crum sliced the potatoes into wafers as thin as possible, fried them in hot grease, and poured salt over them.  The first potato chips were a massive hit, later dubbed Saratoga Chips.  

In 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming was researching a wonder drug that could cure multiple diseases.  Upon failing, and throwing away his used petri dishes, Sir Fleming noticed that one dish contained mold that was dissolving all of the bacteria around it.  The mold gave rise to Penicillin.  

In 1965, chemist James M. Schlatter was trying to invent a new anti-ulcer medication.  His discovery did nothing to combat ulcers, but it did taste very sweet, and was thereby called Aspartame, later dubbed "Nutrasweet."  

In 2014, Engineer Jeremy forgot to clean the coffee grounds out of his coffee maker.  He was trying to make hot water for tea.  Placing a tea bag under the spout, hot water poured over the used grounds and into his cup, creating the first hybrid coffee/vanilla caramel tea blend.  It smelled pretty awful and tasted worse.  The bulk of the beverage ended up going straight down the bathroom sink, never to be heard from again. 

 

Smart Money's On "Over"

I wonder how many more times I’m going to fall for the fake geese on the side of the road

Three more times!  

I appreciate the optimism, as unfounded as it may be.   

So, we all have that moment of shock when we see an animal on the side of the road, particularly if it's a larger-sized animal.  Whether it be that you don't want to run over a helpless child of nature, or you just don't want to clean the mess off of your car, or it's a skunk, you become instantly alert to the animal and its movements.  It's a variation on the "fight or flight" response that has more to do with fear of hitting something with your car than with any danger to your actual person.  Of course, if it's a deer on the side of the road, both concerns can be entirely legitimate.  

Bottom line, people generally don't want to run over animals with their car...and this is a good thing. 

Somewhere along my commute to work, some people have decided that the regular nature-supplied wildlife in the Greater Jeremy Area is completely insufficient, so they put some geese in their front yard.  I don't know why they did this.  These are actually pretty solid replicas, too.  They're fully goose-sized and painted very intricately to look just like geese.  The kind of geese I don't want to run over on my morning commute to work.  So, every day, on my way to work, I see these stupid things and immediately go into battle mode, wanting to avoid instant Goose Pâté on the grill of my car.  Strangely enough, they've never run out into the road in front of me.  Equally strangely, I've never caught on to the fact that there are going to be fake geese in their yard every morning.  One of these days, I'll learn. 

Why Couldn't They Drink Water?

Silly me, I forgot to bring my umbrella to the soccer game.  Indoors.  

Just as well, I guess.  It would have been bad luck to open it inside anyway.  

I guess that's a point, but there's also something to be said for leaving the place not smelling like crappy beer.  

So, soccer fans are an interesting bunch.  They try their best to be consistently loud and rowdy for 90 minutes of game time (plus stoppage time and all that nonsense), but the simple fact is that there is a LOT of down time in a soccer game which doesn't necessarily deserve boisterous cheering.  As such, chants and songs are invented to keep the fans occupied until your team stops kicking the ball back to their goalie and actually makes a concerted effort to score a goal.  Unlike other sports where cheers of "step on his throat!" and "kick his *insert body part here*!" are plentiful, the cheer of choice for people following the American soccer team appears to be "I believe that we will win."  I was not aware of this until recently.  It's shockingly polite.  It is in no way an insult to the other team, or even an indictment of their soccer-playing abilities.  It's simply a statement opining the optimism of the American fans.  It's not even "We will win," it's "I believe."  It's subtle.  

You'd think the constant chanting and singing would lessen the dynamic contrast when a goal is actually scored, but you'd be wrong.  The decibel level does go up tremendously when something happens on the pitch...such as a goal in the opening minute of the game.  (Maybe you watched the game, but if not, this actually happened.)  The place got pretty loud right about then.  

Of course, when something even more exciting happens, such as the American team re-taking the lead with 4 minutes left to play (plus the whole stoppage time deal), the rowdiness needs to step up yet one more level.  This apparently involves throwing beers all over the place.  It was news to me.  Of course, you can't throw good beer...that would be expensive.  So, you do what you can, and throw crappy beer around the bar and continue with your celebration.  Which is all well and good unless you're in the path of said beer, and now it's time to do the laundry.  All because I forgot my umbrella. 

If Nothing Else, He Could Carry More Guns

Would that movie have been as good or better if Clint Eastwood drove an El Camino?

Everything is better with an El Camino.  Except, of course, your car.  Car/truck hybrid...whatever.  You get the point.

So today's Sametime Status deals with the 2008 film "Gran Torino" directed by, and starring, Clint Eastwood.  In the film, Clint plays an old cranky guy (go figure) who seeks to reform a neighborhood punk who tries to steal his car, a 1972 Gran Torino.  Plot complications soon follow, as you might expect.  

The Ford Torino, made from 1968-1976 was basically a souped-up Ford Fairlane, and the Gran Torino was a variation made available in 1972.  The car was available with a smog-inducing 7-liter V8 engine, which put out a respectable 375 horsepower.  

It shares nothing with the ridiculous car/truck mutation, El Camino, manufactured by General Motors.  Everyone knows what an El Camino looks like, thinks it's silly, and wonders why To This Day, GM talks about bringing it back.  Sure, it has a cult following, but so does Tommy Wiseau's "The Room", but that doesn't make it a good thing.  

About all the two cars have in common is the name...which isn't even that close.  Gran Torino, El Camino...it's a tenuous connection at best, but one I'm willing to make.  So, I wonder how well the movie would have done had Clint Eastwood's prize possession been the wackier of the two cars. 

You're Lucky I'm Around To Write This Stuff For You

Is it bad luck to wish somebody good luck on Friday the 13th?

I'll just sit here under my horseshoe, if it's all the same to you. 

So, it's fairly common in theatre to not wish somebody "good luck."  The convention is to use the phrase "break a leg" in an ironic fashion, in which the performer will be able to acknowledge your wish, but maintain their superstition.  I'm okay with this.  Nobody really knows where this tradition came from.  Some attribute it to a 20th century journalist, others to Elizabethan times where applause was performed by the audience pounding their chairs against the ground.  (If you are enthusiastic with your applause, you would cause the leg of the chair to break.)  

Either way, it's now considered bad luck to wish a performer good luck, and I'm left to wonder whether this applies outside of the theatre as well.  I say it does, because it serves to further my narrative here.  So here we are, on Friday the 13th, the unluckiest of all days.  A day in which everything lucky becomes unlucky.  So, does it work in reverse?  Are things that are normally bad luck now good luck?  Is it still unlucky to wish somebody luck, or should I just go around telling people to break their legs all day.  I'm confused, people! 

Can We Compromise With "Shoeball"?

That Cup is way too small for the whole World to drink out of it

Ladies, Gentlemen, and people from Elmira, it's World Cup time again!  

So, before you get all nutty, I know that the World Cup trophy isn't even a cup.  It's just one of the many many things about soccer that make no sense, that we just sort of push under the rug every 4 years.   

First of all, the sport has two different names, depending on whether or not you're American.  The rest of the world calls it "Football" because you kick the ball around the field with your foot.  However, we here in America already have a game called Football in which you use your hands to throw a thing that's not really a ball, then you catch it and tuck it into your arm.  Out of 50-some players on an American football team's roster, two of them ever use their feet to do something with the ball.  This takes precedence, apparently over Soccer.  They even call the field a "pitch" for some reason.  As for calling the trophy the "World Cup"...

Next, there's the World Cup trophy, which is not a cup.  It's a small globe held up by two human figures, and the entire thing is cased in gold.  The trophy is never actually won, though, the winning team receives a replica, and their country name is inscribed on the bottom.  The trophy will run out of room for new winners in 2030.  Nobody knows what will happen at that point.  Speaking of things nobody knows...

Nobody also knows how offsides works in soccer.  The refs and players claim to, but I'm convinced that they just make things up as they go along and hold up a flag when they think they're supposed to.  It's not like soccer players have any integrity.  Which brings us to...

Diving is an art form in soccer, as observed in This Video Set To "Yakkety Sax."  Any time you can set your sport to Yakkety Sax, nothing good is happening on the field.  I don't know how often this works, but it should be subject to video review.  It's not.  Near as I can tell, a critical strategy in soccer is to wait until somebody is close to you on the pitch, then fall down like you were shot and grab whatever appendage was closest to your opponent.  Then, act like you're in extreme pain until either the ref comes over and provides some form of discipline to your opponent, or your team's trainer comes out to heal you.  Which leads us directly to...

The Magic Spray!  Any time a player is "seriously" injured while playing soccer, the miracle cure for whatever ails them is a bottle of aerosol spray perhaps developed by NASA or aliens.  It immediately remedies the source of the player's issue and allows them to return to action within seconds.  It must truly be wonderful stuff, but nobody knows what it is.  Its effectiveness is shown in This Video.  

So now you know all you need to know about soccer for the next month or so, or however long the World Cup lasts until you forget about it for the next two years.  Here's to One-Nil games! 

Somebody Buy Her A Hamburger, Quick!

Pretty sure Hillary Clinton’s idea of “dead broke” is entirely different from mine

Beware, everybody!  It's another timely political rant by Jeremy.  I can see some of you reaching for the remote, but this is a website, so you're stuck with it.  Hopefully, it'll be entertaining.  

It's a well known fact that I'm a genius.  That said, I'm not rich.  Based on a study I just made up, I make less money than the average genius, but based on the the Wikipedia article on household income, I make more than the median American.  I'll call that something of a victory.  But, returning to the main premise...I'm not rich.  

Politicians are rich.   

In order to even get yourself elected to congress, you have to be able to raise and manage a substantial amount of money, and a majority of the time, that comes from a lifetime of being wealthy.  In fact, the average net worth of congressmen in 2011 was $7.8 million dollars.  

My net worth...less than that.  

Let's also talk pensions.  Congress has a pension fund for members with at least 5 years of service.  That's less than one term for Senators, and 3 for Representatives.  The amount they receive is based on a complicated formula that takes into account time of service and many other factors, but it ends up somewhere between $50,000 and $80,000 per year.  For doing nothing.  The median American doesn't make that much for working for a living ($29,000).  The pension for a President of the United States is currently a little over $191,000 per year, or 6.5x the median household income for everyone else. 

Let's be clear: these facts by themselves don't bother me.  

Our elected officials should be among the best people our society has to offer.  They need to be able to manage vast sums of money and enormous groups of people.  They need to be able to see a bigger picture than most of us can even conceive, and do it while constantly being berated by the other political side for having slightly conflicting views on the grand political spectrum.  It's a tough and largely thankless job, and they should be compensated for it.  And they are...handsomely.  In addition to countless other money-making opportunities they have at their disposal outside of their public service positions.  

So, when Hilary Clinton, whose husband's net worth was approximately 38 Million Dollars when he left office describes herself as being "dead broke," I have an issue.  Here is a person with a law degree from an Ivy-League college, whose family will be provided a 6-figure pension income for life, with a daughter in an Ivy-League college, commanding multi-thousand dollar appearance fees just for showing up someplace and reading a prepared speech...and she's describing herself as "dead broke?"  I don't think so.  

There is an awful lot of talk circling around politics about how the representatives are out of touch with the constituents.  This is a prime example of it.  We should all be so fortunate to be as dead broke as she was. 

It Takes Time, So...4-D!

The person with the license plate “2DMALLS” must really like online shopping

You're right.  Most other malls usually exist in three dimensions.  

So this person must live and/or work fairly close to me, because I've seen their license plate on a number of occasions.  It has made me think two things.  

First, 2 dimensional malls, better known as "Online Shopping" is a major industry which really doesn't need this person advertising for them.  In fact, I just bought a new bike tire tube online.  Not as exciting as you might think, except for the fact that I didn't even need the stupid thing.  I only bought it so I could go over the required minimum purchase price for free shipping.  If you've never bought a bike tire tube online, might I recommend against it.  Not only do you have to locate the right size tube for your bike, but then you have to decide what kind of valve you want.  There are two different ones, and if you're not prepared for one or the other, it will be a rude awakening when you go to pump up.  After that, you need to figure out what valve length you need, which is entirely dependent on the rim depth on your wheels, so you're off to look up the specs on your wheelset.  After that, it's all about threaded versus smooth valve shaft and I have no earthly clue why that matters, but it clearly does.  Finally, you pick a manufacturer which has good reviews, which is all subjective because plenty of people give all of them bad reviews because they screwed up their installation or they don't like the country they're made in, or they think the black color isn't black enough, or they don't like the smell of the rubber (not making that one up).  I may have digressed a little here....

Anyway, the other possible meaning that this license plate could have is a battle cry, wherein the driver of the car is imploring us all to go "2 THE MALLS!" meaning that this person is addicted to shopping.  If that's the case, I don't like this person.  Somebody who spends all of their time shopping at malls clearly needs something better to do with their time, since malls sell ALL THE SAME THINGS EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME.  Also, you're limited to what they have at that particular moment.  You're better off going with the 2-Dimensional ones. 

Haven't Seen Kyle Yet, Either

You know, App…it’s not MY fault you can’t download your updates properly

Awfully angry about an app, aren't you?  

I was okay with it, but the app got all indignant with me.  I had to let it know what's what.

You tell it, Jeremy.  Go, you. 

So, I have some apps on my various computing devices.  One of them, for strictly Blag purposes, let's call a "Connection Point X."  I have some useful apps on there, and some that are a Little Less Useful, and I have a handful of games that I play on occasion.  

One of them deals with the cartoon movie "Despicable Me," which earned a sufficient number of stars as a rating in Jeremy Is In The Theatre, so if you haven't seen it, you should rest assured that it's acceptable.  Anyway, the game is a variation on Temple Run where one of the little yellow Minions runs around collecting bananas and beating up bad guys.  It's a silly sort of time wasting nonsensical fun.  Well, they came out with an update to it fairly recently, and it had me all excited.  See, one of the new features was the release of a new level to run around in.  That level is based on Super Silly Funland, so I was all set to run around and ride roller coasters and collect fluffy unicorns.  

That is until the app wouldn't download the update.  

Like a jerk, the app started updating, and got about 60% of the way through downloading and just stopped.  The download was frozen for about 5 minutes when I decided to cancel it and try again.  The app got all offended and threw up an angry confirmation message along the lines of "Are you SURE you want to cancel the download and quit the app, you idiot?"  It was something like that.

My reaction was anger...because YES, I wanted to cancel, but not because of anything I did wrong.  The app (more specifically the app's update server which was probably under high load due to lots and lots of people wanting to run through Super Silly Funland), just quit downloading and there was little I could do about it.  So, no...I guess I didn't really want to exit, but I didn't have much choice either...and it was all your fault, app, so quit making me out to be the bad guy.  Jerk. 

Captain Kirk Was Responsible, Apparently

It’s Password Day!  My email password is no longer “99R3dBall00ns”

He's right.  It's now "99LuftBall0ns".  It's a little harder for Jeremy to type, therefore, harder to hack.  

So, everyone knows that the song "99 Lufballons" is a protest song against nuclear war written in 1983.  The English translation adds the Red to the title, since Lutballons really has no indication of the color of the aforementioned balloons.  It's a rather depressing sing, in which 99 balloons (red or otherwise) are released into the air, mistaken by a global defense system for incoming missiles, and cause widespread death and destruction through nuclear war.  The key messages here being, nuclear war is a bad thing, and balloons cause it.  Or something.  

Either way, I had to change my email password today, since that sort of thing expires every now and again, so I thought I'd share it with you here. 

And by that, of course, Jeremy means that neither this, nor any of the "Password Day" email passwords have ever been used as Jeremy's email password.  It's true...so you really don't need to go trying to hack into his email.  There's nothing in there but work crap anyway. 

Sacrificing Myself For Your Edutainment

If we switch over to the Metric System, NASCAR will have to rename all of its races

That really is about the only reason left.  And it's not very good.  

Let me start off today's blag with two very important notes.  First of all, I ended up needing to do a greater amount of research into NASCAR than I ever wanted, but I made sure to do it in a Private browser window so there would be no history and no judging.  Secondly, here is a map of the countries in the world who use the Imperial measurement system versus those using Metric:

I'm not sure what those other two countries are, and I couldn't be bothered to look it up.  It seems largely irrelevant.  The World uses Metric, and for most items, it makes tremendously more sense.  We should bite the bullet and switch over.

One of the last holdouts would seem to be NASCAR.  This is based on an exhaustive study I did in which I thought this bit would be funny.  Also, it turned out to be a crap argument anyway, but more on that in a second.  See, NASCAR names many of their events after a Shameless Corporate Sponsor, followed by the length of the race, as measured in miles (an Imperial unit).  Thus, giving rise to events like "Daytona 500" and "Gobowling.com 400."  I'm not making that up.  I had assumed that NASCAR made these races with nice, round numbers and thus would want to forestall the switch to metric rather than renaming these to the "Daytona 804" and "Gobowling.com 643."  As it turns out, it's not as if these race lengths have any integrity anyway.  Sure, most of them are even numbers, but there are also ridiculous races like "Aaron's 499" and "Cheez-It 355 at The Glen."  Nope...not making those up, either.  So sure, now it's the "Aaron's 803" and "Cheez-It 571 at The Glen," but those really aren't any worse.  

So let's forget this argument.  

You could easily make the case to simply adjust the length of the races to once again be a nice, round number for the sake of marketing.  There are already 600-mile races.  Adding a mere 21 miles gives you an even 1000km...and "Shameless Corporate Sponsor 1000" sounds pretty cool, as race names go.  800 km is just shy of 500 miles, so it's close enough.  You could even keep the "500" races, which are now only 310 miles, 10 miles longer than the shortest NASCAR race I could find on Wikipedia, the "Osram Sylvania 300."  Nope...still not making these up.  So I tried to come up with a reason that this argument could be invalidated...and it didn't take me long to think..."track length!"  I figured that all of these races are set up specifically with the individual race tracks to be a very specific length due to a very specific length of the race track.  Well, as it turns out, this argument is for naught as well.  A majority of the 3 race tracks I looked up were set up to be 2.5 miles long...which coincidentally turns out to be almost exactly 4km.  So, you could still have a perfectly distanced race with the existing tracks.  Well, on top of that...track length is nonsense anyway.  The track at the Talladega Superspeedway is not an even 2.5miles (4.02km)...it's 2.66miles (4.28km).  So we can safely throw out any argument I've made in the last few minutes here.  Math and Science have proven that NASCAR is not a valid reason to keep using the Imperial measurement system.  Let's switch over to Metric now, shall we?  Except for temperature...I like Fahrenheit.