[Bill S]

I have been watching a SF TV series called "The Expanse",

An enjoyable series.  find the character development more interesting than the technology.
Isn't your ruler's length still observer dependent, though?

[yor_on]

You're perfectly correct Bill. In a way it's a question of what came before, the hen or the egg. In another it's a question of what you think this universe 'need'. I call that 'time', or as locally defined, a 'clock'.

[yor_on]

Sure it is Bill. If you take a 'global approach' to it.
Locally defined it's not though.

Then it becomes a invariant always fitting your clock.

" Today, the meter is defined to be the distance light travels in 1 / 299,792,458 seconds."
And if you define your clock as equivalent to 'c' then this will hold everywhere, locally.

[Rodin1880]

their (often pedantic) audience...

That's a little insulting... MOST Trekies and Trekers, live in the real world and simply dream of how great it would be if we DID live in a world like Star Trek, where personal improvement is all we have to do and all the natural human prejudices have been out-grown... the fact that SOOO MUCH of what we've seen on Star trek has come to life is simply exciting, when you consider that while we were watching it it seemed so cool and yet so unbelievable... My observation too, is that most NON-Treks don't care at all about personal improvement, and are simply satisfied with being what they currently are...

[Colin2B]

My observation too, is that most NON-Treks don't care at all about personal improvement, and are simply satisfied with being what they currently are...

That’s a pretty sweeping statement and I’m not convinced there is a correlation let alone a causal relationship. I’ve been a fan since the original series, but my experience is that there are a large proportion of non-fans who are interested in personal improvement.