As Goes Google, So Goes the Nation...

Hello everybody-

Well, the time has come for me to retract part of my last (May 6) post. Fortunately, I've never been happier to retract a post than I am today.

Ladies and gentlemen, the "hella" prefix has been officially integrated into the Google calculator! To see it for yourself, simply go to google, and type in a conversion, e.g. 4,249,234 kilograms to hellagrams, or 931 lightyears to hellameters.

I'm extremely grateful to my friend Greg and the engineers at Google, who are responsible for the latest addition to the Google calculator. Greg, a fellow UCD physics student, used his connections from previous employment at Google to reach a number of engineers, and then proposed the idea of integrating the hella prefix into the Google calculator. The team, consisting of my new best friend Eric "Iceman" and his coworkers, worked hard to see it through. A big thanks to all those who worked to see this happen... you're hella awesome!

It's been said that "as goes Google, so goes the nation." Hopefully, the google-ization of the hella prefix will give the prefix the sense of familiarity and legitimacy that it needs to become nationally (and internationally) accepted.

So, next time you're required to give some sort of measurement, our friends at Google can easily convert that to hella-units for you. And if your professor/boss tells you you've used made-up units, just remind him that if it's on Google, it's official.

Austin

Movement Update, May 6

Hey everyone,

My apologies for the long delay since the last update. Here's what's new:

The next meeting of the Consultative Committee for Units (CCU) is in September. It is at this meeting that Dr. I. M. Mills, Chairman, has promised to propose the "hella-" prefix to the committee. The CCU is the first stop on the long road to approval for the prefix, so it's critical to the movement that the CCU approve the idea. If they give "hella-" the nod, it will move on to another committee for debate. It's time to start building the momentum we need to push "hella-" through the CCU now!

Though I have not discussed the idea with Professor Mills yet, I'm looking forward to speaking with him about the possibility of speaking at this meeting and personally addressing the committee with my best arguments. I'll keep you in the loop for when I speak to the professor and get his reaction on this idea.

In other news, IDG News reporter Joab Jackson just put together this great article on the prefix for computerworld.com. It's the first bit of new press in awhile, so that's always good.

And now for some bad news: I recently spoke with an engineer from Google, who said his colleagues were so entertained by the "hella" proposal that they decided to integrate it into the Google unit conversion calculator. After writing the code to do this, they ran it by management, only to have the idea shut down. Unfortunately, this means that hella units won't be appearing on the Google calculator any time soon - unless you join me in writing to Google and telling them to include the prefix (they're based in the Bay Area; they, of all people, should appreciate it!). You can contact Google here.

On a more personal note, one of my former physics professors has taken to simply calling me "Hella" for short. An unorthodox nickname to be sure, but I'm just happy he knows who I am.

-Austin "Hella" Sendek

The Hella Movement Hits TIME, CNN, NY Times

Hey all,

Great work everyone- the hella movement has made it to a series of mainstream online media outlets and blogs.

FOX News covered the story here, CNN did so here, and the New York Times discussed the movement here.

I've also realized that the movement has been endorsed by a number of professors and scientists, but I do not have any names. I'm interested in putting together a list of "notable endorsements," so if you're a professor, scientist, grad student, etc., and have signed the petition (by joining the facebook group or sending in your signature at the MakeHellaOfficial store webpage), please send me an email at adsendek@ucdavis.edu and let me know. I'd really appreciate it.

That's all for now- I'm in the middle of finals so I've been very busy lately. Once spring break hits, I'll be more active in promoting the cause. I'm mentally putting my best arguments together for when I speak to Prof. Ian Mills, chairman of the Consultative Committee for Units. He's the first one to win over, and I think we've got a good chance at doing so!

Keep on keeping on,

Austin

The Hella Movement Goes International

Hey all,

Following the publication of Carlos Alcala's article in the Sacramento Bee, news of the movement has gone international. And no, I'm not exaggerating.

Articles on the movement have appeared in England's The Telegraph, the Chinese WorldJournal, the Finnish (I think?) Forte, Germany's News AdHoc, and Jakarta's Inilah, just to name a few. It's pretty entertaining to see a "hella" amidst a sea of foreign letters.

This morning, I did two interviews with radio talk shows - one with ABC Melbourne, and one on Hamilton, Canada's "The Matt Holmes Show." Both went well, though it was a little hard to understand the Aussies when they talked fast. I felt like a total amateur talking to a guy in English, but still saying, "wait, what?"

Austin

"Hella-" on TV: FOX40, CBS13, News10

Following the publication of Carlos Alcala's article in the Sacramento Bee about the "hella" petition (which can be read here), three local news programs picked up on the story.

CBS13 beat the others to the punch (actually, they even beat the Sac Bee), by running a piece on the night of Monday, March 1, which you can view on their website here. Unfortunately, they don't have a way for me to embed the video on this blog, so you'll have to go to their website to check it out.

Following the CBS13 story, FOX40 this bit:

An hour after the FOX40 story ran, News10 ran this piece:

All the news outlets did a great job in promoting the cause, and it was hella fun working with all of them.

Austin

In the Sacramento Bee

Tuesday, March 2, Carlos Alcala broke the story on the "hella" movement by publishing the following piece:

UC Davis student pushes new math unit: 'Hella'

Austin Sendek, a UC Davis physics student, has started a petition to establish a new, scientifically accepted prefix, "hella," to be used in front of units of weight, distance or computer storage, much as "milli," "kilo," "mega" and "giga" are now used.

His petition already has hella signatures.

"Hella" is a Northern California term that is a slangy synonym for "really" or "a lot of."

Under Sendek's proposal, the International System of Units would adopt "hella" to follow "zetta," which indicates 10²¹, and "yotta," 10²⁴.

"Hella" would indicate 10²⁷, or 1 followed by 27 zeros.

His petition has nearly 19,000 fans on Facebook, and seems to be growing by about 1,000 per day.

The idea was generated in class when he and his fellow students were discussing electricity.

"I started joking about hellavolts," said Sendek, who remembers using "hella" as a kid in Yreka.

Then, still as a joke, he started his petition on Facebook and was surprised to see how it took off.

The idea gets plenty of praise from Northern Californians and some criticism from Southern Californians, who often disdain the expression.

"It is a diagnostic for regional dialect," said linguist Rachelle Waksler, explaining how the word's use implies the speaker is from Northern California.

Waksler is a professor at San Francisco State University who has studied "hella" and written a paper on it, as used in slang.

To get grammatically technical: " 'Hella' is an intensifier, which is a kind of adverb that is used to place targets on a continuum for some salient property," Waksler said.

But does "hella" have a snowball's chance of being applied to science?

Scientific prefixes like "deca," "kilo" and "nano" are established by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, based in France and known by the French acronym BPIM.

A variety of factors are used in considering a new prefix, said Ben Stein, spokesman for theNational Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland.

Among them: Is the standard needed? Is it widely applicable? Does it follow previously established patterns?

For the first question, it would require that "hella" be useful for scientific descriptions.

Sendek has already worked out some examples to suggest it would.

"The power of the sun," he said, "is .3 hellawatts."

The distance across the observable universe, he added, is 1.4 hellameters.

It may not follow existing patterns, though.

The last prefixes approved, zetta and yotta, are based on words for "seven" and "eight." They apply to 10 to the 21st power (21=7x3) and 10 to the 24th power (24=8x3).

By that logic, the next prefix would relate to a word for "nine," not to California slang.

After Sendek made his suggestion, UC Davis linguistics professor Patrick Farrell put the question on a list of possible topics for his students to analyze in term papers.

"It's something that's most common in the speech of Northern California," Farrell said.

Stein of the NIST admitted having a "warm feeling" for the petition, having once been a physics undergraduate.

A bit of whimsy, he said, is common in physics.

This can be seen in the naming of elementary particles and their properties, such as quarks, which come in "flavors" that include "up," "down" and "strange."

Stein also said Sendek may have stumbled on a field of increasing importance in science – that of establishing definitions for scientific concepts.

Some scientists are working on new and more precise definitions of things – like the kilogram – that may seem obvious to the lay person.

Stein forwarded Sendek's idea to I.M. Mills, a professor in Reading, England, who is working on the kilogram issue.

Mills also heads the Consultative Committee for Units, CCU, the international BPIM committee that would be the first stop for the proposal if it were to be adopted for the International System of Units.

Mills responded – in an e-mail to Sendek and The Bee – that the CCU has talked about extending the range of prefixes in the past, but felt "it would not be sensible to recommend extensions to the prefixes that would be rarely used."

Mills was not entirely negative, though.

"I like the humorous touch of your suggestion of the prefix "hella" for 10^27!" Mills wrote. "I will mention this exchange at our next CCU meeting, and I'm sure it will be received with smiles – but I doubt that it will go further!"

Hella too bad.

Store is online!

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that the MakeHellaOfficial store is now online and running! The store can be accessed here. The web address, in case you're curious, is www.wix.com/mhostore/makehellaofficialstore. So far I only have tees for sale, but I should be getting some stickers in soon! Go check it out!

Till next time,
Austin