A serious matter

I have not checked the small print recently, but my understanding is that all public posts in the dominion or in one of the provinces of Canada are only available on the basis of bi-lingualism, that is to say the Canadian variation of English and the Québécois variation of French. I am no expert, but I believe this last to be an interesting cocktail of old French brought over with the original colonists and of new English imported for reasons of convenience. So blonde is the Québécois word for a girl friend, or at least that is what I deduced from a Fred Vargas story set partly in Québec.

So I was rather shocked to find in a recent Economist an advertisement for a replacement for the Governor of the Bank of Canada, recently poached for service in this country, almost entirely in English, although it does indeed make it clear that candidates must be bilingual. They must also be Canadian, so no foreigners parachuted in for them. Perhaps someone ought to alert the péquistes. Maybe they will be able to get the Economist to print an apology in some future issue.

A couple of pages earlier there was a half page filler about the trials and tribulations of the people in charge of the standard kilogram, which caught my eye as the New York Times had run a similar piece back in May 2003. And the New York Times did at least make it clear that while the standard kilogram might be a French idea which lives outside Paris, it was cast by an Englishman. Plus it includes interesting snippets like that fact that some of the 80 copies were issued to countries which no longer exist, in that they have been gobbled up by neighbouring countries, countries such as Bavaria (which upon closer inspection sports a separatist movement, just like Québec).

Even more interesting was the tale of the team which want to make a perfectly spherical ball of silicon which weighs approximately the same as the current standard kilogram - with suitably pure silicon being made by repurposing the centrifuges which once made the Soviet nuclear deterrent. Or perhaps the Iranians could be persuaded to help the world out by repurposing some of theirs? One then counts the number of atoms in the perfect sphere and that becomes the new standard, a standard which reduces the standard kilogram to a matter of counting, a reasonably robust and repeatable activity. The team has made a test ball which is the most spherical object which has ever been made, a lot smoother, for example, than our earth. But counting what must be a very large number sounds like very hard work to me.

So much so indeed that both the New York Times and the Economist look to be backing the team working on something called a Watt Balance to carry off the laurels.

While I don't like the sound of the fact that the Watt Balance requires exact knowledge of the force of gravity at the time and place of measurement, something which, it seems varies with the phases of the moon. All very dodgy, if not circular. Very hard to please.