Category: Science/Technology

Posted on

C is for Calendar

Was it a calendar? photo by Kajmeister.

(May) maybe if I ask your dad and mom
(June) they’ll let me take you to the Junior Prom
(July) like a firecracker all aglow
(August) when you’re on the beach you steal the show
Yeah, yeah, my heart’s in a whirl
I love, I love, I love my little calendar girl

Neil Sedaka, “I Love My Calendar Girl”

We take the division of time for granted. How many minutes left on the test? What time do I get off? Is the next holiday on Monday, so I can have a three-day weekend? Some people even wear wrist devices which describe those divisions, linked to their health data, like their heart rate and whether they sleep. However did we manage before a wristwatch could describe our sleep?

The ancient people had to invent all those divisions from scratch. They did it repeatedly, across multiple cultures, using varying tracking systems. Their lives depended on observations–the rise of the river waters, the start of the dry season, the first bite of frost. I was well into middle age before I noticed how far north the sun set in the west in the summer vs. the winter. I think it was because I’d finally lived in one place for more than a decade. I bet even the Neanderthals figured that out before I did, since their lives depended on such things.

Today’s topic is the Calendar. How could they mark time, before writing was even invented? How did different societies integrate math with time? Were there different versions of calendars? Where did they stand on ending Daylight Savings Time?

Continue reading “C is for Calendar”
Posted on

The Mother(hood) of Invention

Female human evolution, depicted by Stadtpflaenzchen.

To send Women’s History Month out in style and to unabashedly advertise the upcoming A-Z blogging challenge of April, this post will honor the role played in women in early invention–very early, in fact. I want to focus on a major invention that contributed to the evolution of our entire species: the baby sling.

Continue reading “The Mother(hood) of Invention”
Posted on

We Are Not Equidistant

I asked Google Gemini to draw me an original picture of the warring hemispheres, but the one it “created” seems to have a credit. Let’s thank Novesiom! for this one.

I was going to write a one-sentence, spring-themed message, wishing everyone a happy equinox and pointing out that Melbourne is probably experiencing roughly what we’re feeling in Northern California. Then, it turned out much of what I knew about the equinoxes was wrong.

The earth is not round.
It doesn’t move in a circle around the sun.
Day and Night are not equal to each other.
The North is not treated the same as the South.

Since I was This Old when I learned The Truth, I will share it with you, appropriately, on the northern vernal equinox, i.e. today, March 20th, 2025. There will be science, although I will not discuss the ecliptic because I have hard time visualizing it. I promise there will be no arithmetic. There will be geometry.  And you might find yourself wobbling a little, which will be in keeping with the situation.

Classic view drawn by ar.inspired.com.
Continue reading “We Are Not Equidistant”