Stuff That Interests Me

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival starts this week. It’s the world’s biggest arts festival, an event that sells more tickets than any other event in the world, with the exception of the Olympic Games.I shall be making my way up to Scotland’s capital to make my own little contribution, a new show that I haven’t finished writing yet (!), “a lecture with funny bits”, about the eternal subject that is weights and measures. Why do I say eternal?Because people have been arguing about them, and trying to impose them since forever.How French revolutionaries tried to decimalise timeThe very first legal documents we have from Ancient Mesopotamia depict rulers with the rod and ring – a yardstick and a measuring string – usually being handed to them by God, as they try and standardise measures in law. Ancient Egyptian documents, illustrations and hieroglyphs abound with similar references. Scales are prominent too.The opening words of the Bible establish our basic measures