{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-weight-waste/", "The Weight of Waste", "2016-08-16", "2016", "2016-08", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", "paul", "https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul released the latest edition of \u2018The Waste Report,\u2019 an ongoing project cataloguing egregious examples of waste within the U.S. government.\n\nIn today\u2019s report, Dr. Paul takes a look at taxpayers funding a documentary on the International Prototype Kilogram. This $500,000 grant opportunity from the Department of Commerce will focus on efforts to replace \u201cBig K\u201d with a natural constant.\n\n\u2018The Waste Report\u2019 can be found HERE or below.\n\n***\n\nYou may recall a Waste Report from last year called \u201cMeasuring Waste\u201d, highlighting a $188,000 NSF grant to produce a book on the history of measurement and finally answering the age-old question of why Americans do not like the metric system.\n\nIf you have not made the trip to Barnes and Noble to pick up a copy, do not worry. Netflix will soon be able to satisfy your metric system cravings, thanks to the Department of Commerce spending $500,000 to make a documentary on the Kilogram.[1] This is not just any kilogram, but THE granddaddy of all kilos: Big K, the International Prototype Kilogram.\n\nYou know, Big K, the metal cylinder stored in a vault in Paris that serves as \u201cthe standard for measuring mass in almost every country on Earth.\u201d[2] That is right!! Taxpayers are funding a movie about a metal cylinder. Well, sort of. The movie is actually about the quest to replace Big K with a natural constant.\n\nWhat is a natural constant? Well, take a meter, for example, which used to be defined by the distance between two marks on an iron bar kept with Big K in Paris. In 1984, a meter was redefined \u201cas the distance light travels, in a vacuum,\u201d in 1/299,792,458 of a second, a natural constant.[3] Certainly, Waste Report readers remember when that change happened, right?\n\nTurns out Big K is the last standard of measurement in the vault. Cracking the nut of how to redefine mass by a standard constant has proven challenging for the international community of measurement scientists, which is why the movie will be titled The Last Artifact. However, after decades of research and debate, it appears an international committee will likely reveal a measure of mass based on something called the \u201cwatt balance\u201d in late 2018.[4]\n\nIf this Waste Report seems to be getting heavy (pun intended), not to worry. We are sure replacing Big K is of great value to science, but is a documentary about it of great value to taxpayers? Probably not. According to the grant opportunity, \u201cThe overriding objective of the documentary is to convey the subject in a compelling and original way to an audience of science-interested viewers.\u201d[5]\n\nBut if viewers interested in this kind of science are a broad audience, ticket sales or sponsors should cover the cost of production, making government aid unneeded. If they are a narrow market, then 69 average Americans worked all year to pay for a film about a metal cylinder that only a few people will even care to watch.\n\nHow about a Government Waste Documentary?\n\n###\n\n[2] Ibid", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T21:00:38Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-weight-waste/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 3.552346955984831, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}