Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
- Theodore Roosevelt
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In my part of the world, and most of the US and Europe as well, there was a general agreement that all clocks would be set an hour off back in April. This may have made sense in a world in which most people worked on a single shift, and most factories were lit via skylights for that single shift,…
I don't mean to make this into an anti-Ignatieff blog, but there are two more great posts about his idiocy: one by ScienceBlogling and "embarrased" Canadian James Hrynyshyn, the other by David Rees.
ScienceBlogling James writes:
There real reason why so many academics, from the hard sciences and…
Some good news out of the West African country of Gambia: a stunning reduction in malaria in the last five years as a result of some fairly simple techniques:
Incidence of malaria in Gambia has plunged thanks to an array of low-cost strategies, offering the tempting vision of eliminating this…
Sexist Beatdown: The Happy Hooker, Or Why Doesn't Steven Levitt Suck Dick For a Living? - The Sexist - Washington City Paper
"[E]ven though our two Steves are really brilliant economists, they just can't figure out why most of us women don't want to have sex for tons and tons of money. Why aren't…
I have some questions about time measurement that have been festering for years. So, since you are the "clock" person, I thought I'd try them on you.
Where did the "hour" (or minute or second) come from? Why was Earth partitioned into 24 zones of 15 degrees,rather than, say, 36 of 10 degrees? And a related question that is maybe astronomical: what does 24 hours represent? I know that it supposedly means 1 rotation, but how do we measure 1 rotation, compared to what reference point? Since Earth is revolving around Sun while it is rotating, does it mean that the same point on Earth is pointing at Sun, and won't that require more than 360 degrees of rotation? If that is so, then 1 hour must require more than 15 degrees of rotation. etc. Do you know of a reference that explains all of this?
The time measurement with a base of 60 was invented by Sumerians circa 2000 BCE - so a completely social construct.
There is a nice history of time zones and DST here and you can always search 'time' on Wikipedia (it is a decent entry there).