The ancient art of sacrificing a sheep or fowl for the purpose of removing its liver so it may be inspected and analyzed and read like some sort of blood and guts style set of tarot cards. Nifty Eh?
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Haruspex.
The ancient art of sacrificing a sheep or fowl for the purpose of removing its liver so it may be inspected and analyzed and read like some sort of blood and guts style set of tarot cards. Nifty Eh?
Friday, July 18, 2008
Wacky French Calendar and Clock Variation..."The Décade"
This does make one consider why or how we arrive at our arbitrary measure of a week being seven days. I had never thought about it or questioned it until recently. I had always just assumed that there was a logical reason for the 7 day week. I suppose you could say there is logic in it, although you could just as easily say there isn't any as well....
Years appear in writing as Roman numerals (usually), with epoch 22 September 1792 the beginning of the 'Republican Era' (the day the French First Republic was proclaimed, one day after the Convention abolished the monarchy). As a result, Roman Numeral I indicates the first year of the republic, that is, the year before the calendar actually came into use. The first day of each year was that of the There were twelve months, each divided into three ten-day weeks called décades. The tenth day, décadi, replaced Sunday as the day of rest and festivity. The five or six extra days needed to approximate the solar or tropical year were placed after the months at the end of each year. Each day was divided into ten hours, each hour into 100 decimal minutes and each decimal minute had 100 decimal seconds. Thus an hour was more than twice as long as a conventional hour; a minute was slightly longer than a conventional minute; and a second was slightly shorter than a conventional second. Clocks were manufactured to display this decimal time, but it did not catch on and mandatory use was officially suspended April 7 1795, although some cities continued to use decimal time as late as 1801.
Years appear in writing as Roman numerals (usually), with epoch 22 September 1792 the beginning of the 'Republican Era' (the day the French First Republic was proclaimed, one day after the Convention abolished the monarchy). As a result, Roman Numeral I indicates the first year of the republic, that is, the year before the calendar actually came into use. The first day of each year was that of the There were twelve months, each divided into three ten-day weeks called décades. The tenth day, décadi, replaced Sunday as the day of rest and festivity. The five or six extra days needed to approximate the solar or tropical year were placed after the months at the end of each year. Each day was divided into ten hours, each hour into 100 decimal minutes and each decimal minute had 100 decimal seconds. Thus an hour was more than twice as long as a conventional hour; a minute was slightly longer than a conventional minute; and a second was slightly shorter than a conventional second. Clocks were manufactured to display this decimal time, but it did not catch on and mandatory use was officially suspended April 7 1795, although some cities continued to use decimal time as late as 1801.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Oh Jeebus!
I t'was reading on the subject of the evolution of the measure of western calendar; from Babylonian lunar calendars, the Egyptian calendar (which is the mother of our contemporary calendar), the Roman "Julian" calendar and it's successor, the "Gregorian" calendar, and the various ways that Protestants tried to formulate a feasible calendar that wasn't Gregorian, ie; Catholic. Interesting stuff of course. Even to this day there is no uniform, universally agreed upon calendar, a wide range of religions, societies, and spiritualities have their on views on measuring the passing of the days. Of course, the most logical position is the most practical, the measure of the passage of time and days as our earth revolves around the sun.
I found this passage of particular interest,
" The world never entirely accepted the Gregorian reform. The Eastern Orthodox Church, wary of subjecting itself to any Roman rule, has kept the Julian calendar for its own calculation of Easter, *(1),. And so the Christian world, supposedly held together by a Prophet of Peace, has not been able to agree even on the date to celebrate the resurrection of their Savior."
*(1) - much ado was made about how to arrive at the proper day to celebrate Easter. It is a convoluted, overly complex, somewhat arbitrary matter of deduction if you ask me,.....and no one did!
I found this passage of particular interest,
" The world never entirely accepted the Gregorian reform. The Eastern Orthodox Church, wary of subjecting itself to any Roman rule, has kept the Julian calendar for its own calculation of Easter, *(1),. And so the Christian world, supposedly held together by a Prophet of Peace, has not been able to agree even on the date to celebrate the resurrection of their Savior."
*(1) - much ado was made about how to arrive at the proper day to celebrate Easter. It is a convoluted, overly complex, somewhat arbitrary matter of deduction if you ask me,.....and no one did!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
I really had NO idea!!!
History
In 1939, William Randolph Hearst advocated, through his chain of daily newspapers, the creation of a holiday to celebrate citizenship. In 1940, Congress designated the third Sunday in May as I am an American Day.
WOW!!!! Ol' Billy Randy sure was one HECK of a guy!!!!
Seriously though, national "I am an American Day"!?!?
Brilliant.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
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