{"id":426,"date":"2012-11-12T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/archives\/426"},"modified":"2012-11-12T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T21:00:00","slug":"a-mercurial-attitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/archives\/426","title":{"rendered":"A Mercurial Attitude"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/q2.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"q2\" src=\"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/q2.gif\" alt=\"QuestionImage\" width=\"25\" height=\"30\" \/><\/a><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><em>&nbsp;&nbsp;Why is barometric pressure given in inches of mercury? <\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;- from Hugh Grant of Ardmore, PA<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: right;\">\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\" style=\"text-align: right;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"a2\" src=\"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/a2.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"25\" height=\"30\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;Back in the 1840&#8217;s, when barometric pressure was first discovered, it was considered vulgar to make a direct statement about the laws of nature. The phases of the moon were called &#8220;Lunar Melancholic Waning&#8221; and even rainfall was referred to as &#8220;The Lamentations of the Firmament.&#8221;  Everyone was a long-winded poet, including Gilbert Shelton, the English amateur meteorologist, who coined the metaphor &#8220;Mercuric Altitude&#8221; to describe his mental condition just before a storm.  Today, even when half the nation is on anti-depressants, we continue this proud tradition. <\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/q2.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"q2\" src=\"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/q2.gif\" alt=\"QuestionImage\" width=\"25\" height=\"30\" \/><\/a><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><em>Why is barometric pressure given in inches of mercury? <span class=\"pgee-read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/archives\/426\"><br><br>---\u00a0Here&#39;s the answer from Dr. Science<\/a><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-question-questions-submitted-by-dr-science-readers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}