The Gap Town clock and relativity.

Today I got to drive by the Gap town clock. This cool clock tower is in a town not far from Lancaster, Pennsylvania that I have passed many times in my travels. I wish I knew its story, but that will need to wait for a later installment. Regardless it looks very interesting and has shingles on the side in different patterns that add to its appeal and completely fit with the kitchy country designs prevalent in Lancaster.

The clock is at a height above the ground and will always run faster than a clock at ground level due to the theory of relativity. The difference would be unmeasureable but mentioning it allows me to point out that today is the 100th year anniversary of Einstein publishing his seminal paper on relativity. A paper that changed the world.

Go find the paper and read it or find someone's exposition of the theory. In short - time and space are relative, it is the speed of light that is constant for all observers in all reference frames. That insight makes the theory.

Wednesday's child is full of woe.

I happen to be a Wednesday's child, though not very full of woe. Happy exactly 1901st birthday to me (counting by weeks).

The other day I was discussing how sometimes it seems like you need more days of the week to get everything done. The person I was talking to said he could use an eight day week. After a rousing chorus of 8 Days a Week I grew concerned about the 7 day week. How long has it been around? Has it continued uninterrupted? What if it someone forgot to count during all of those ups and downs of civilizations? Have we lost our place?

My Monday malaise could be misplaced because the counting got thrown off thousands of years ago. What if all those Sundays at church were a off by a day, and I could have been out doing something different, and what about what about all the church I missed because I didn't know it was really Sunday? TGIF could really be TGIS (or TGIS or TGIT or TGIT).

The net of a thousand lies and plagiarisms had the answer for me. As I researched I noticed websites copying verbatim from each other without reference (scandalous) so I will make my best attempt to reference the correct one. Wikipedia references this article - Falk, Michael (1999). "Astronomical Names for the Days of the Week", Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 93, p.122. 1999.- which seems to be the one that the other websites have used though not all have attributed correctly (or at all).

This website claims the chain is unbroken from Moses time (1400 BC) while the Falk paper says there is no record of when the seven day cycle became continuous but he proposes that the arrival of the Jews in Babylon around 600 BC was an important contributing event. The Babylonians already had a seven day week with extra festival days every so often but the arrival of the Jews and their emphasis on the Sabbath cemented the cycle. The days of the week are either astronomically or numerically named in the different languages of the world. The Jews would have kept the weekly cycle continuous through their troubles until they pass it on to the Romans around 1AD.

There are others as concerned as I am about maintaining the chain. When the English finally switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian in 1752, Sept 14 followed Sept 2 but Thursday followed Wednesday to preserve the sequence. This is really not surprising because the rest of the (Catholic) world had switched to the Gregorian calendar already and the next day was going to be Thursday Sept 14th no matter what the English did.

This wasn't important when Julius Caesar reformed the calendar (hence the Julian calendar) since the Romans hadn't adopted the seven day week from their neighbors yet. By the time Christianity comes around, the continuous chain of seven day weeks is in place, and eventually, around 300AD, it is so familiar that Constantine declares Sunday a day of rest for the whole empire. The Christian monks would not let the count slip through the dark ages after the fall of Rome, lest we lose track of Sunday and feast days. The torch is passed during the Renaissance and we then reach modern times when almost the whole world has adopted the seven day week even cultures which did not initially use it.

Every modern attempt to reform the week has met with failure.

So all things considered the chain is unbroken and I think we can safely say that today has been today (Wednesday or humpday) for about 2600 years and maybe even for 3400 years.

Ribbon Sticker Rescue

I assume this person runs some sort of ribbon sticker rescue foundation or supports one. Goodness knows, most of these poor stickers need rescuing.

Tiki gods can be so accomodating

My nephew's birthday was yesterday. Happy Birthday nephew! The cool part of the party was the impromptu tiki and polynesian theme inspired by these tiki god lights.


I decided his name was Molok and he seemed to be an angry tiki god. We had a great barbeque and we ate brithday cake on plates with Molok's face on them and wiped our faces with napkins with Molok's angry face on them.

I am concerned that we have angered the great Molok and that this will require throwing someone into his holy volcano as a sacrifice and appeasement.

More constructively you could get this really cool tiki usb drive. Remember that Brady Bunch episode where they went to Hawaii and found the tiki idol and had all the bad luck? Yeah, me neither.

Support Our Pants

I told you guys I would get one. It's a magnet so it won't damage the finish, don't worry.

I think we can all rally around supporting our pants. I can't wait for the public reaction.

Time in the garden

Lettuce should not be this tall. We had some very hot weather in the spring. It was above 90 for a week or two. That weather made all of my lettuce bolt, when it sprouts tall and sets seed. Then the lettuce isn't good to eat anymore and lettuce season is done until fall.

My tomatoes should be this tall and even get taller. I have roma plum, grape, and a yellow pear varieties growing this year. There is some fruit but they are not ready yet. Soon. I can't wait.

I also have some herbs, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines (OK you can call them eggplants), and best of all, brussels sprouts. I am going to try growing cantelope as well. We shall see how that goes.

What do you readers have growing in your gardens this year that you are looking forward to?

War or peaceful coexistence of printed books and e-books?

I have quite a lot of print books at home. This is only a small fraction. I love my books, and converted a whole bedroom to be the library, it has so many bookshelves that I have a row jutting out into the room just like in a real community or college library. The space they take up is one negative of actual printed books. The positives completely outweigh the negatives.

Currently I am reading Accelerando by Charles Stross, in electronic format on my Treo. Very cool. Another e-book waiting on the Treo is Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow. Both use a reader called Plucker. I got my copy through a link on the Accelerando site. Both sites have a variety of formats

Another place to get free e-books to whet your appetite for science fiction and fantasy is the Baen books free library. I recently downloaded and read 1632 and 1633 by Eric Flint using the Mobipocket reader though Baen also have their books in a variety of formats.

Reading e-books usually prompts me to purchase and reread the hard copy, so my proclamation is for peaceful coexistence. The only issue I have is the proliferation of reader programs on my Treo. I need to figure out how to interconvert the texts to reduce the clutter.

It's been one week...

I started "The Honest Hypocrite" one week ago today. Though I didn't start with a mobile blog from my Treo, the mobile posts followed soon after.

In the first week I have collected a few readers and at least two commenters, one from out in the wilds of the internet. Welcome and thanks for reading.

The next few posts were sent in reverse order so I could tell the story of horseback riding lessons today in the correct order. Enjoy!

In which the author learns equitation

About three years ago my girlfriend and now fiance gave me horseback riding lesson for my birthday. Lynn and I have been taking lessons since to keep in practice.

I started so that we could go on riding vacations and I found the lessons were a lot of fun. You get to see so much more and you go to different places than the usual ones if you go on horseback. I highly recommend it.

This picture has me looking much more comfortable today than I did the first time I rode a horse.

Roving Richard

This set of lessons we are learning proper jumping technique. I think I have come a long way. That's me jumping with somewhat correct form. Multiple jumps in a row are great fun.