metric-magic.org

#+Title: Metric Magic
#+Date: 2016-08-15

* Outline
** Pre-metrication
Stuff was pretty okay, I guess.
Things were measured in inches and stuff.
Then the world changed.
The non-magical world started to use "metric".
It was cool stuff.
Even though the magic economy is good
they have had to interface with the non-magical world (somehow)
and there's no way they can convince the world to stick to imperial
# (side-eyes the US with regards to aeroplane altitudes)
So they, the magical community in <unspecified country> had to change.

** The law
Interdiction of Metric, 1894

- Raised 1 June, 1894 by a bunch of mages.
- Voted in a secret council, won five votes to four.
  - (Previous similar votes?)
- Dictates that the transformation will begin 1 January 1910,
  and complete by 31 December 1911.
- "Hard" metrication when possible, "soft" metrication only if necessary

** The changeover, by field
*** Wands
Amazing! The wands have to change.

Questions that the court must answer:

- Does changing a wand from 12 in. to 30 cm change anything about the wand?
  (No, not practically, see [[*Consistency%20and%20standardisation][section below]].)
- Can you make meta-wands that work only on magic objects?
  - Are meta-wands just normal wands?
- Is a wand "the same" if you change its length magically?
  No, actually; lots of magicians report their wands are unusable after mods,
  but not all, for some reason.
  this means that a mass recall and resupply has to be made.
- What do you do with the old wands?
  There's some freedom: you can keep the old wand if you want.
  You can even do some magic with it if you want.
  But magic performed "officially" (by governments and contractors)
  will have to be made using metric wands,
  and no scientist will take you seriously with a nonstandard wand.

*** Science
Unlike in the non-magical world,
magic scientists (properly, "spell-finders", because that's what they do)
at first didn't appreciate the beauty of metric,
but they were inquisitive and adopted them.
They already have the spirit of standardisation upon them;
it's much easier to find a spell using a single length of wand
(though they have many different sizes to see if any of them catches a spell
that can only be done with a wonky size).

Nevertheless, they came around to it eventually.
A couple of "letters" (comments, pro to-papers) was made to judge its effectiveness.

*** Other
Wands and scientists are high-visibility things,
but there are plenty of mundane and infrastructural requirements too.

- Buildings
  New houses are required to be metric.
  So are all other buildings.
  Non-metric housing is allowed to continue to exist
  but there's quite a subsidy to modify the house magically
  to conform to metric.
  All buildings however are now specified in metric
  regardless of whether or not they are modded or not.
- Roads
  not worth bothering
- Prices of other things, like food and ~water~ exotic drinks
  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
  It's mostly marketing.

** The day and push-back
"Icky non-magical nonsense!" says the detractor.
"But it is expensive to change over!" say the concerned businessmen.
"Most of the guy in the Anglosphere aren't changing over!"
says the pragmatist.
None of these were heard,
and the process went by without too much of an issue.

- Some seven thousand houses resized
- Massive lines for wand replacements or resizing
  (also some mail orders)
- Letters (or other messages) sent out to everyone for education
- Schools formally start measuring things in metric

And during the next ten years:

- Police to check on metric usage
- Books republished to use metric
- Houses continue to be resized
- Old measures and measuring tools are slowly replaced when needed

Eventually by the end of five years and much effort by the court,
most things in the magic kingdom is metric.

** Post-mortem
Metric is largely dominant in the magical metrological world of 1920.
Though the benefits are largely invisible,
they are tangible if one looks for them.
An unexpected benefit happened as well -
increasingly further isolated pockets of magic also uses metric,
and those interoperate very well with each other and also the non-magical world.

* Why change?
** Consistency and standardisation
This is a bid with standardising several things.
Magic wands are made imprecisely in the past and often a "10 inch" wand
can have lengths between 22 to 28 cm.
This has some quantitative differences in spell-casting,
such as spell range and effectiveness.

** Mundane interaction
Increasingly the magical community is finding the joys of the modern world
appealing and useful, like electricity and stuff,
but with them moving away from imperial
it's more and more likely that things break from things not measuring up.
It's impossible to get the non-magical communities to revert back to imperial
(though this is not for lack of trying),
so to continue the deal with them in a literal sense,
they must change to metric.

* Where even is here?
** <unspecified country>
- Probably speaks English
- Probably in ~England~ Jersey?, or maybe Malta, who knows
- May not even be on the map
- 2000 km²
- Like a million magical inhabitants
- and three times more mundane inhabitants
- It's permanently overcast there for some reason.

** How do you grow up?
- Schools: lots of them, everywhere
  Probably small-scale, private affairs
- Money: somehow, already decimal
- Food: trade with outsiders, mainly.
- Outside interaction:
  Tons; apart from some very secluded places
  magic is pretty well-hidden.

** How magic works, briefly:
- Manipulates probability
- e.g. "levitation" simply means that energy is gathered from, say,
  ambient sound and heat and put into the object to be levitated
- Uses wands to direct such transfer of energy
- Wands have different strengths depending on wand cores and length