A brief history of time

Stanley - Thursday

I have always been fascinated by time, from its measurement, to our perception of it, to its impact on our lives.

Most of the world today uses the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes, even though the motivation behind the establishment of the calendar was religious. It was made the official calendar of the Catholic Church in 1582, and named after Pope Gregory XIII. It took hundreds of years for its widespread adoption, partly because Protestants thought it was a nasty Catholic plot to bring them back into the fold. Greece, for instance, only adopted it in 1923, while Turkey waited another three years.

 The measurement of a day has obvious origins. It is the time it takes the earth to rotate once about its axis. 

A year is the time for the earth to orbit the sun. And that year is divided into 365 days. Of course, we know now that it actually takes the earth 365.25 days to go around the sun, which has caused some problems historically, which were solved by adding a day to February every four years, giving us the leap year. 

Well, actually the orbit time is actuallynot 365.25 days but 365.2421891 days, which caused more problems because it is a little less than 365.25 days. That makes the four-yearly adjustment not work over the long haul. The smart men who developed the Gregorian calendar (for the most part two Italians,  Aloysius Lilius (known as Lilio) and Christopher Clavius) realised this and added another wrinkle to take care of it. In years ending with 00 (such as 1900, 2000), there would be no leap year unless the year was divisible by 400 (eg. 1600, 2000). So there are plenty of people alive today who will have to remember NOT to add a day to February 2100.

Lilio

.Have you ever wondered why September, October, November, and December are so named? The names are odd since the roots of these months are seven, eight, nine, and ten -- certainly not the position of the months in the calendar.

Well, the Gregorian calendar is based on the Julian calendar, which was introduced by Julius Caesar in 48 BC. It had months of 30 or 31 days, except for February, which had 29 days and an extra day every four years.

The Julian calendar was based on an earlier Roman calendar established in 452 BC, which in turn was based on a calendar established by Nuna in about 700 BC.  That's a long time ago. His calendar was based on one established in 738 BC, which had only ten months, named Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December.Notice the fifth through the tenth months were based on the numbers five through ten. The problem with this original calendar is that it left out about 60 days of the year. Nuna's scientists realised this and added two months to rectify the situation - adding January at the beginning of the year and February at the end of the year. So, the months became Januarius, Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, December, and Februarius.

For reasons I don't know, the 452 BC calendar moved Februarius to be after Januarius, which left the number-based months out of sequence. To muddle things a little more, modest Julius changed what had been the fifth month, Quintilis, to be named after himself - Julius. 

Julius Caesar

Of course, Emperor Augustus wasn't to be outdone, so he renamed Sixtilis after himself. He also moved the 29th day in February to Augustus, so as to have the same number of days as Julius.

Augustus Caesar

You can't make this up.

So, years and days are based on naturally occurring phenomena. But what about months? It is easy to see why people used the moon as the basis for a month. After all, it rotates around the earth in a regular orbit of 29.53059days. In fact, some calendars still use this as their basis. The obvious problem with using a lunar month is that its duration doesn't fit neatly into a year, so early astronomers decided to use varying numbers of days as the basis for months rather than lunar cycles.

What about hours and seconds? Why 24 hours in a day? Why 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute?

Well, again we have to go back a long way in time.

Today, we use the decimal (or base 10) number system. It's convenient because we have ten fingers. However, the duodecimal (base 12) system was widely used for thousands of years in different parts of the world. It is also convenient - our four fingers have three joints each, allowing the thumb to count to twelve. Twelve is also divisible by more numbers than ten - 2, 3, 4, 6 versus 2 and 5.

About three and a half thousand years ago, the Egyptians used a sundial and divided the time between sunrise and sunset into twelve parts because they used the duodecimal system. One obvious problem with this is that the twelve divisions were of different lengths at different times of the year. Think twelve parts between sunrise and sunset in Iceland in summer versus winter.

Keeping track of times at night was obviously very difficult. The Egyptians figured out how to use twelve stars moving across the sky to accomplish this. They also developed a water clock that compensated for decreasing water pressure. It too was divided into twelve parts.  So, with daylight divided into twelve parts and night the same, there was the basis for the twenty-four hour day.

Greek water clock, 500 BC

It took over a thousand years before making all the hours the same length was proposed. It was Greek astronomers, like Hipparcus in about 150 BC, who started doing their astronomical calculations with twenty-four theoretically equal hours. The length of these hours was one-twelfth of daylight on the equinox.

So where do minutes and seconds come from. Again, we go back to Greeks like Hipparcus, who based their ideas on a sexagesimal (base 60) number system developed around 2000 BC by the Sumerians, and adopted for general use by the Babalonians. Base-60 arithmetic has the advantage that 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 30, and 30.

Hipparcus developed the idea of there being 360 equally spaced lines of latitude and 360 lines of longtitude (multiples of 60), equally spaced at any latitude. In his treatise Almagest (about A.D. 150), Claudius Ptolemy expanded on Hipparchus' work by subdividing each of the 360 degrees of latitude and longitude into smaller segments. Each degree was divided into 60 parts, each of which was again subdivided into 60 smaller parts. The first division, partes minutae primae, or first minute, became known simply as the "minute." The second segmentation, partes minutae secundae, or "second minute," became known as the second.

However, you will immediately notice that there are 360 degrees of latitude, or 360x60 = 21600 minutes. In our time system, there are 24 x 60 = 1440 minutes. So, there is no equivalence. It was only in the 13th Century that the notion of dividing the hour into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds came about - again using the sexagesimal system. The same words used for measuring latitude and longitude were used. 

It was only when mechanical clocks became available several centuries later that ordinary people started paying attention to hours and minutes. To this day, most clocks don't show seconds.

Of course, today a second is not defined as 1/86400th of a mean solar day, but rather in an even more accurate way. In 1997, the following definition was internationally agreed to:

The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. 

Gasp.

Needless to say, minutes and second also don't fit exactly into a day, so there are also leap seconds. Eight times a decade there are minutes with 61 seconds.

The way we keep track of time has always seemed a bit crazy to me at various levels.

First, the idea of ante meridiem (a.m.) or before midday, and post meridiem (p.m.) or after midday is very inefficient. When writing or talking about time, one often has to qualify the time by a.m. or p.m., unless the context makes it clear. 

It can also be confusing, as I recently found out. I booked an airline ticket from Minneapolis to Las Vegas, leaving at 2:30 pm and returning at 12:45 pm. Or so I thought. Yesterday, in checking my ticket, I noticed that I had inadvertently booked the return for 12:45 am. If we used the much more sensible 24-hour clock, I would have noticed this immediately because the departure times would have been 1430 and 0045.

Even some people who use the 24-hour clock put a colon between hours and minutes, such as 14:45. Since there can be no ambiguity about 1445, the colon is redundant.

One of the outcomes of the French Revolution was the introduction of the metric system, which brought sanity to the world of weights and measures, even though in some places its adoption was slow. In the cases of Myanmar and the United States, as well as Liberia, adoption has never taken place. The proponents of the metric system also proposed changing the measurement of time. The thought it made sense for the day to have 10 hours, each divided into 100 minutes, divided into 100 seconds. As you know, that didn't go anywhere.

There is one other aspect of time that is controversial, namely Daylight Savings - the practice of shifting the clock forwards or backwards by an hour to accommodate the seasons' different length days. Right now, there are proposals to scrap the idea completely.

Another proposal, which I like a lot, but won't go anywhere, is the idea that everywhere on the planet should be at the same time. So, 7pm or 1900 in Minneapolis would be 7pm or 1900 in Glasgow, and 7pm or 1900 in Johannesburg, and 7pm or 1900 in Auckland. Why do I like this idea? Because it rids us of the need to deal with time zones when talking about time. 

The other thing that fascinates me about time is our perception of it. Why is it that sometimes time flies and sometimes it drags? I remember in August 1963, I was sitting in a history class, bored out of my mind as we revised for our end-of-year matriculation three months away. Every few minutes I would look at my watch. Time dragged, and time dragged. And time dragged. So, I took off my watch hoping to speed up the passage of time. It worked, and I never wore a watch again, except when I was being a pilot.

I can remember impatience when young waiting for Saturday to arrive to go out on a date. I remember, too, time flying as an exam loomed for which I was ill prepared. 

As I get older, time seems to pass faster and faster - which is sad as there are so many things I still I want to do. 

There one other aspect of time that seems important. One of the things that has an impact on visitors to the United States is how so many people believe that the more hours they work, the more productive they are. They often feel that their worth is tied to how long they're at their desks. And how little vacation they take. This adds a psychological pressure that has to be unhealthy. This is probably tied to the often-stated regret expressed by people approaching death that they hadn't spent more time with their families or friends.

Finally, I'd be interested in hearing from readers what their perceptions are of time, its passage, and impact. Please do that if you have the time.

The Monday Women Marched in Black

Sujata Massey

Wear all black,” the woman said over the phone.

Come at eight-thirty, and don't carry too much. 

Be prepared to go from the Supreme Court of the United States to the offices of senators.

Last Sunday, I learned the Women’s March organizers were a series of actions this week in Washington D.C. I wanted in. Over the last two years, I have been increasingly agitated by the attempts by male lawmakers to erase established civil rights, especially those of women and minorities. It feels like the final straw that the President’s nominee for an open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court is Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative judge alleged to have sexually assaulted a young woman during his high school days. Despite the fact that more claims have come about the judge’s sexually aggressive behavior, the President and most Republican senators don’t want an F.B.I. investigation or to postpone voting for Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

President Trump and his supporters insist Chrstine's report must be false, or else it would have been told to the police years ago.But I know that many women who do report rapes have their stories ignored or suffer repercussions for telling. 

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is a psychologist now living in California. She says that when she was fifteen, a teenaged Kavanaugh and his friend, Mark Judge, forced her into a bedroom at a party. She claims Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth so nobody could hear her cry out for help. The men fell off her, and Christine did escape being raped, but she suffered post traumatic stress disorder. Christine moved 3000 miles away to get away from her painful memories, which she had discussed with others over the years, but that became increasingly hard to ignore when Kavanaugh came onto the national stage. Some months ago, Christine wrote a letter about her experiences to her Senator, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein. Christine asked Feinstein to keep her identity confidential but to share Kavanagh's past actions with the F.B.I. However, information was made public, and now Christine has received death threats and left her home.

I am grateful to live close enough to Washington DC to reach it in an hour's train ride. I wanted to make a physical declaration that I believe women don't make up stories about rape. I followed the instructions the woman had given me to assemble in front of the US Supreme Court on a gray Monday morning. Rape survivors among the marchers spoke about who hurt them and how the trauma still affects them. Some of their voices were very low, because the emotion was strong, and it was the first they had told these painful histories. After each story, our voices swelled in answer. "We believe you."

The rally started out with a few hundred people, but as we marched to the Hart Senate Office Building, the numbers swelled. Long lines of cars had to stop to let us cross the intersection, and by the time we reached Hart, it seemed like close to one thousand were marching. There were so many marchers, we had to divide up to make it into the building through two different sides. Because we had no bullhorns, messages passed through the crowd by repetition. When people in the line began holding up a hand, it meant it was time to fall silent and listen for directions.

In the Hart and Dirkson Senate Office Buildings, the police were already waiting and had stiff plastic wrist bands, the modern version of handcuffs. While it is legal for people to enter a building to visit a senator, the police told us that it is against the law to protest inside government buildings. 

In the atrium, some people prayed and many others got to know each other. I met many students from Yale Law School, the alma mater of Kavanaugh, and women and men from all over America. The organizers divided us into smaller groups that lined the halls outside the offices of Republican Senators Susan Collins and Jeff Flake, as well as some others who might be swayed to vote against Kavanaugh. 

I was unable to get inside any of the senators' offices, but the people who did spoke to the senator’s staff about how the experience of rape impacted them. I did not know that during the same time, other rallies were being held around the country, that many women were wearing black as a sign of protest, and at 1 p.m.that Monday, many women would walk out of work for an hour to show they believed Christine.

At the Senate Buildings, 128 people were arrested in Dirkson and the Rotunda. The rest of us made it out.

As I walked through Capitol Hill, I caught sight of a protest sign about the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh on a food truck, making me realize that people are creatively speaking their voices.

It was still raining when I reached Union Station, and my thoughts went back to my own social history. Christine and I came of age at the same time, and there are several uncomfortable experiences with men I've pushed very far back into my memory. Three decades ago, I believed that if I got away from someone without being hurt, I should consider myself lucky. Why should there be a consequence for the perpetrator? 

In my Perveen Mistry series, I write about a woman solicitor battling for social justice for females constrained by the legal system in British colonial India. A century later, it is shocking that so much is still the same. 

it's not far from a nightmare...Marguerite Duras on the future

Marguerite Duras,  the influential post-war French novelist and filmmaker and former Resistant spoke in 1985 of what the world would be like in the 2000's.

Her interview, with a link below, is scarily correct and on target. Some writers we know write about the future: William Gibson, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin. We expect them to find insights about how humans might live. But what about someone like Marguerite Duras who grew up in colonial French Indochina? She had important things to say about the 20th century

Photonics researcher Antoine Wojdyla stumbled across an interview with Duras from September 1985 in the French magazine Les Inrocks. Struck by Duras' perspective on technology and deception, he translated the article.

It's strange and remarkable, an uncanny interpretation of our present. You can hear some of it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8-B9Ezr4VI

Her statement can be seen as a kind of pre-answer to Google and wearables and the quantified self. When former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal in 2010, "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." That's what Duras means when she says, "In the 2000s, there will only be answers."

In any case, here's Duras as translated by Wojdyla:

In the 2000s, there will be only answers. The demand will be such that there will only be answers. All texts will be answers, in fact. I believe that man will be literally drowned in information, in constant information. About his body, his corporeal future, his health, his family life, his salary, his leisure.

It's not far from a nightmare. There will be nobody reading anymore.

They will see television. We will have screens everywhere, in the kitchen, in the restrooms, in the office, in the streets.

Where will we be? When we watch television, where are we? We're not alone.

We will no longer travel, it will no longer be necessary to travel. When you can travel around the world in eight days or a fortnight, why would you?

In traveling, there is the time of the travel. Traveling is not seeing things in a rapid succession, it's seeing and living in the same instant. Living from the travel, that will no longer be possible.

Everything will be clogged, everything will have been already invested.

The seas will remain, nevertheless, and the oceans.

And reading. People will rediscover that. A man, one day, will read. And everything will start again.

We'll encounter a time where everything will be free. Meaning that answers, at that time, will be granted less consideration. It will start like this, with indiscipline, a risk taken by a human against himself. The day where he will be left alone again with his misfortunes, and his happiness, only that those will depend on himself.

Maybe those who will get over this misstep will be the heroes of the future.

It's very likely, let's hope there will be some left.

Wow...it's amazing that in 1985 that she could see our present world so clearly.
Cara - Tuesday

African Women, Armed and Dangerous

Annamaria on Monday

A few days ago, the world celebrated International Rhino Day, to call attention to the threats against that disappearing species.  Regular readers of MIE have often read here about the dangers and about the efforts to stop the slaughter.  Here's a twist on that story.

I can't tell you how happy it makes me to tell you about this squad of environmental warriors in Zimbabwe.

A neighbor of mine in New York, a South African by birth, and I were discussing my efforts to help protect pastoralist girls from lives of pain and oppression.  She told me about a charity that she supports and an all-female squad of anti-poaching rangers.  The group in question was trained and their work is supported by The International Anti-Poaching Foundation, an organization formed to make anti-poaching efforts more effective.

Rangers with feet on the ground are the planet's defense force against the killers of protected species.  Unfortunately, many such defenders of the world's natural heritage have been woefully under prepared to win the battle - lacking proper training and equipment to win against the wealthy poachers.

IAPF specializes in using technology, intensive commando training, and reliable weapons to swing the odds in anti-poaching's direction.  They sponsor efforts in several countries in East and Southern Africa.

Today I am focusing on their effort in Zimbabwe, called Akashinga, which means "the brave ones" in the Shona language.  Here they are - all women, many of them single mothers and refugees from brutal marriages.  Victims no more, they are now a successful team whose efforts have lead to convictions of poachers they have captured.  You can read a Guardian article about them here.

The side effects of their work are, to me, every bit as, if not more important than the animals they protect.  Because through their training, camaraderie, and burnished self-image, they are saving themselves.  And their children.  The money they earn for their work allows them to live safe, independent lives.  It pays for their children's school uniforms and school fees.  It has led them from a  life of suffering to a wholesome family existence.  To the pursuit of happiness.

And, perhaps best of all, they stand - to all around them - as strong and brave examples of how strong, how effective, how important, how happy women can be.

Huzzah for that!!

You can learn more about IAPF here.

Post Brexit Chaos, 1970s’ Style

Zoë Sharp

Keeping up with the UK news every day, it’s been hard to avoid the latest creaking and groaning of the Brexit debate. Deals crafted at Chequers and destroyed in Salzburg, dire warnings of businesses leaving the country for mainland Europe, and a falling pound.

I feared when the ‘Yes’ vote came in after the referendum that it might prove an impossible mess to disentangle the UK from Europe after 40+ years of union. But any time of upheaval is a rich seam for a writer to mine.

It’s hard not to have your imagination prodded by the possibilities. After all, when you’re constructing a story idea you tend to take a basic concept and give it the ‘what if…’ treatment. Things will certainly change after Brexit, but what if they changed far more than anybody expected?

What if, for example, the UK should collapse into economic chaos and bankruptcy after Brexit. What if the United States, always seen as our ally, decided that this group of islands parked conveniently off the coast of mainland Europe would be better under more direct control. (And, let’s face it, with the present administration in power, almost anything is possible.)

And what if, having come to such a conclusion, the US decided to enforce it by means of military occupation?

Daphne du Maurier

Farfetched? Probably, but don’t look at me. This is the storyline of a book called RULE BRITANNIA. It was the last novel written by Daphne du Maurier, and published by Victor Gollancz in 1972, more as a satire of the increasing dominance of America in British affairs than a treatise against the UK becoming too involved in Europe.

the original 1972 Victor Gollancz edition

RULE BRITANNIA follows Emma, who lives with her grandmother, Mad, and Mad’s adopted children in Cornwall, when radio and TV communication are lost and an American warship suddenly appears off the coast.

All the more remarkable, when you consider it, as back in 1972, Britain had yet to join the Common Market, let alone join and then decide to leave again…

I only made the discovery about du Maurier’s final novel a few days ago, but I’m intrigued enough to start reading it.

the latest Virago modern classics edition, with introduction by Ella Westland

This week’s Word of the Week is euphony, meaning a literary device of words formed or combined so they are sweet sounding or pleasing to the ear. From the Greek meaning ‘sweet-voiced’.

München und Mykonos

Jeff--Saturday

I ran this blog about six years ago, after a trip to Munich, and it's remained one of my most popular. As for why, I don't know, but this evening as I walked though the streets of Mykonos hearing almost as much German as Italian--and certainly more than Greek--I took it as a sign to repost it.  The fact that I've been up to my eyeballs in rewriting Kaldis #10 had absolutely nothing to do with this cop-out. NOT.

I’m on a plane out of Munich bringing me back to Greece.  

Flag of Bavaria

I’ve just spent a week touring Bavaria with one of the nicest, most gracious, and hospitable couples I know.  Let’s call them Chris and Nolan.  We’re all about the same age and share a deep love for Greece.  In fact, we met on Mykonos.  Chris was born in Germany but is well acquainted with living in the United States and Nolan was born in the U.S. but lived most of his life in Europe.  They are an insightful pair of internationalists with countless mesmerizing stories to match, and a willingness to share their knowledge on so many things Bavarian.

Bavaria in dark green

I’ve never been to Bavaria before.  It’s in southeast Germany bordering the Czech Republic, Austria, and Switzerland (across Lake Constance).  It is a unique place, idiosyncratic some might say vis a vis the rest of Germany, for it still regards itself as independent, the “Free State of Bavaria” to be precise.   It is Germany’s wealthiest and second most populous state and at the risk of incurring the ire of the other fifteen states, from what I’ve seen it just might be the most beautiful. 

There’s no escaping the magic of its landscape: verdant farmland neatly peppered with houses of the sort you expect to see under a Christmas tree, fawn-color dairy cows with doe-like eyes grazing amid waves of green, locals in lederhosen and dirndl, all set against the sharp, white-topped, gray-green Bavarian Alps. 

Ludwig II und Neuschwanstein

Even Bavaria’s most heavily trafficked tourist attractions maintain the integrity of what makes them so popular.  For example the castles of King Ludwig II (1845-1886) still take your breath away (and not just because of long walks up a hill from the parking lot).  My favorite was not the one Disney ripped off (Schloss Neuschwanstein), but the smallest of his palaces, Linderhof, inspired by the French Sun-King Louis XIV’s Versailles.  It comes complete with his own private underground grotto—think Phantom of the Opera, but grander. 

Linderhof Palace

Grotto at Linderhof

And Munich, Bavaria’s capital, is as cosmopolitan and vibrant a city as any in the world, filled with world-class shopping and a thriving economy driven by such industries as BMW (yes, I slipped that one in), film production, and publishing. 

Bavarians have rebuilt their capital in a first class way; one that integrates what remains of its past with what it has become.  Heavily bombed by the Allies in World War II, Munich does not attempt to hide from its part in those horrific times.  Nor does it forget the eleven Israeli athletes who perished at the Olympic Games it hosted in 1972.  It has accepted responsibility and grown wiser from it.  More so than many places in the world. 

Munich Memorial to Israeli Olympic Athletes

I also visited Dachau just outside of Munich.  It was the first Nazi concentration camp created after Adolph Hitler’s appointment as German chancellor in I933.  I’m not showing any pictures of that.  Nor am I showing any I took from the top of The Eagles Nest, a retreat built for Hitler on the border with Austria.  Both are places not to be missed on any trip to Bavaria for they represent something never to be forgotten by Germans, Jews, Greeks or anyone on this planet. 

But I prefer not to use photographs to make that point.  Instead, let me quote from something I read at the Dachau museum. It describes how Adolph Hitler managed to take a radical, marginal political party he helped form when he was thirty-one—the National Socialist German Workers’ Party  (“NSDAP”)—and within a dozen years emerge as Germany’s all-powerful Fuhrer.

[T]he NSDAP remained a peripheral political force during the stable years of the Weimar Republic.  This changed dramatically with the onset of the world economic crisis.  In the [Parliamentary] elections of September 1930, the NSDAP succeeded in increasing its share of the vote from 2.6 per cent to 18.3 per cent; in the [Parliamentary] elections of July 1932, the NSDAP emerged as the strongest party with 37.3 per cent of the vote. 

The party made use of both brutal violence against its opponents as well as modern propaganda methods and tactics.  The party succeeded in evoking the impression that it alone was capable of meeting the divergent interests of a number of social groups.  By mobilizing resentment and exploiting images of threatening enemies, the National Socialists were able to conceal the internal contradictions riddling their political demands.—The Dachau Concentration Camp, 1933-1945

[Ed. Note: The Nazis were the prime instigators of the very violence they decried and used it to gain support among a demoralized middle-class by making them believe they alone could restore law and order.  Among Hitler’s promises were vows to revive the economy by unstated methods, restore German greatness, and overturn the Treaty of Versailles.  The two 1932 elections had confirmed that NSDAP was Germany’s strongest political party, and as the country had been unable to form a majority in Parliament since 1930, political pressure ultimately led to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany] 

The Germans understand “Never Again.”  Let us hope the rest of the world doesn’t forget.

Mayor Christian Ude

To end on as happy a note as every moment I spent with my friends in wonderful Bavaria, I must add that Munich’s mayor, Christian Ude, is a lover of Mykonos.  It is my honor to return the compliment to his glorious city.

Jeff—Saturday