What is the weight of a priority mail envelope?

Ten 12.5x9.5 USPS Priority Mail envelopes weigh 14.9 ounces.  An ounce is 28.3495 grams.  How much does one envelope weigh?  This question also applies to USPS Priority Mail Express envelopes of the same size.

14.9 ounces times 28.3495 grams per ounce divided by 10 envelopes:

14.9 * 28.3495 / 10 = 42.24 grams per envelope.

Have you heard of "units analysis"?  It's a decent way to check your math when you do this kind of calculation.  You can ignore the numbers, but you have to remember that anything over itself (as in a fraction) is 1 and multiplying by 1 has no effect. So, applying that to the above, we have:

ounces times grams per ounce (g/o) divided by envelopes (e), or

o * g/o / e.  This puts ounces and grams in the numerator and envelopes and ounces in the denominator, and that allows us to "cancel out" the ounces (because they are in the numerator and the denominator), leaving us with grams per envelope.

When I get a receipt from Mailwerkz, my favorite place to send and receive packages, it shows the weight of the package I mailed.  This is very handy because I can convert it from pounds to grams and subtract the weight of the envelope to find out how much what I mailed actually weighed.

Take Responsibility

I found a great discussion in my email box a few days ago.  A "Ralph Lopez" had started the discussion by sending an unsolicited email to several people (including me) with the subject "Can false flag survivors and families form a united front?" Groups formed for and against Ralph's perception that authorities are largely responsible for a lot of the problems we face.  The divisiveness got to me and so I wrote a reply.  Before I put it here, let me give you a little background from the discussion. One of the emails in the discussion contained this:

Laurie Van Auken illuminated this distinction in her response to the government's declaration that "everyone is responsible for 9/11, therefore no one is [personally] for 9/11," to which she commented, "everyone is responsible for 9/11, therefore everyone is responsible for 9/11."

Now I want to share my input with my readers:

These are two very important and seemingly contradictory perspectives.  "Seemingly" I say because perspectives are always and everywhere just what seems to be, to someone.  I think in analogs and allegories.  So I imagine myself saying, after doing something evil: I take full responsibility, but I also blame all of you, in this email thread, in my life, in the world - everyone is to blame for my bad behavior.

However, someone, or some group (me, maybe some conspirators, friends, followers, whatever) created an "evil" intention and then executed on it.  Certainly, the intention was created out of the world and its condition, something to which every single one of us contributes.  What are we?  We are pieces of the physical universe capable of creating and executing on intentions.  With that capability comes responsibility.  Every individual has the responsibility to mind the intentions they create and on which they act, regardless of everyone and everything else.

In view of all of us having (and accepting) responsibility, let's confront the issue of mass murder.  Lord Acton wrote to a Bishop in 1887 that "Power tends to corrupt..." and corruption is a violation of the trust we put in others.  Putting trust in others can be overdone, and I think that's what's going on.  How do we measure the right amount of trust to put in our leaders, should we choose to have leaders?  With light, that's how.  Exposure and knowledge and work to establish an understanding of what's so is how we can know how much to trust.

What Ralph shared with us had this at its core: " full transparency, disclosure. Govt accountability. Public Right to Know. "  What Brian shared has this at its core: " we're all completely fucked by our own greed, avarice and stupidity, ".  I can do something - several things, actually - about both of these things, and it turns out it's the same set of things:

• Speak up
• Respect people
• Recognize my own fallibility
• See from the perspectives of others
• Keep others informed about what I have to offer
• Be honest and trade honestly and in good faith
• Maintain my ability for self-defense
• Protect what is valuable
• Pay attention