Landscape of Round Holes

Beat the clock or Clock the beat

As theatened, here is my proposal for a revamped calander.

Their are 365.242199 days in a year, which works out to the familiar 365 days with an aditional 'leap day' every fourth year (with a give-or-take 'leap second' as needed). Now 360 is a great number, if only because it is equally divisable by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, and 12 (unconfimed note: i believe this was the reason for choosing to divide circles into 360 degrees rather than a decimal 100). There are four seasons, so the best choice for number of months would be 4, 8, or 12. 4 is to few, so 8 or 12. I think sticking with 12 months would be best, although i do have an alternate plan for 8 month to a year.

12 months means 30 days a month, and 120 days a season (don't worry, i haven't forgotten about those five extra days). The 30 days could be divided into weeks a number of ways, but i would suggest a 9 day week. For working purposes i would subsequently suggest 6 on/3 off  schedule (which would mean a 4.76%  loss of  time worked, however this is not very apparent and might be offset by increased productivity due to the idea of a standard three day weekend - which is apparent). Besides, it seems to have a certain symmetry (me likey symmetry), we sleep for one third of the day, so why not 'rest' from work one third of the week?

The five remaining days would not belong to any month or week (they wouldn't be a Monday, Tuesday, etc., but they would each have there own name). I would position them one each at the spring and autumnal equinoxes (sp?), one before and after the winter solsitice (last and first days of the year), and one on the summer solsitice with the 'leap' day be added to the summer solsitice to make it before and after as well. These days would be considered holidays for work purposes.

I would rename the months as well, the mathematician in me says name them on latin or greek number roots, but the less-mathimatical side wants to name them after the constellations that would be in the night sky at the appropriate time, of course that would only be true for one hemisphere or the other, so i suppose the number based system would be more universal (hah, how ironic :) ). Further i would probably name the days of the weeks on number roots as well, perhaps latin if the months used greek or vice versa.

The obvious choice for starting the year would be either of the solsitices, winter being traditional,so, no need to change that. Now the arbitrary part, when to begin the calander years - when would year zero be.  With that in mind the choices should also be on a winter solstice, which means an astrological event. Doing some quick web research i found that 0n the 2001 winter solstice the Earth's, Sun's, and Moon's axis were in alignment with the galactic plane, a truely rare occasion - once every 26,000 years! (i know, i'm pissed that i missed it too) This would be ideal except that it just happened, and calling 2001 the zero year is waaaay to close, and starting year zero 26,000 years ago is waaay to long ago. Without doing more research at this time perhaps a simple alignment of the Earth, Sun, and Moon (also known as an eclipse) on the winter solstice would suffice. Anyway like I said this would be rather arbitrary and there are probably several choices that need only fit a few criteria to be acceptable. Suggestion welcome here.

Now, per tom's suggestion, the days and their hours, minutes, and seconds. A day has 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds. First, a 'day' is divided into two 'parts' - a day and a night; next it is also divided into 'cycles' - a rest cycle, a work cycle, and a play (for lack of a better word) cycle; third it is also divided into 4 'stages' - morning, day, evening, and night.

I like the idea of decimal time from both the french revolution period and, more currently, the Swatch/Internet/Fractional time. My first instinct is to go with the 1000 'beats' per day, there are 86,400 sec. in a day, so that makes a beat 86.4 seconds - roughly equivelent to a minute. That would make 500 beats of both light and dark in a day, and 250 beats per stage, regretably it makes a cycle 333.33... beats. The beat would become the standard unit of time - replacing the second - it would have the standard prefixes: millibeat, dekabeat, gigabeat :), etc. and would be rigously defined. I could easily see a future were somebody says "Give me a cent." instead of "Give me a sec." cent. being short for centibeat ( see doesn't centibeat just skip right off the tongue :) ).

Another alternative would be to devided the day into 12 'periods' - making stages 3 periods long and cycles 4 - then divide each period into 100 'beats' (different beats than the previous). Each period would be equal to two hours, and that would make these beats equal to 72 seconds - again roughly equal to a minute. That would make a day 1200 beats long, a stage 300, and a cycle 400. Prefixes and definition would still need apply ( i guess that would make a day 1.2 kilobeats).

Further note, beat to me seams more like a second - like beats in music, plus it is very similar in sound to bits or bytes which might cause some confusion. So, another name may me neccisarry.

Well, what do y'all think. Suggestions, refinedments, additions, go to hell's? :)

What year is this?

If memory serves, there is no 0 A.D. or 0 B.C.. So Janurary 1, 1 A.D. was the first day of the first year after the birth of Jesus (that's Jesus, the Christ, son of God, our lord and saviour - not Jesus Gonzales, 2711 N. Holly St., Austin, TX). Therefor December 31, 1 B.C.  is the day before Jan. 1, 1 A.D.. Yet this is clearly after the designated birthday of Jesus; Dec. 25 and therefor cannot be accurately be call Before Christ.

So how do historians designate any important events that happened during this six day period. Not that there very many, with due deference, of course, to Mary's coming home from the hospital... err, manger... shower. For that matter how do they desginate the actual day of christ's birth, would that be D.D. - Dieo Domini for day of our lord, or would that be A.C. for At Christ.

And whats the deal with one acronym being latin and the other not. For those that are wondering, and they must number in the thousands, if not millions, i suppose the latin equivalent to B.C. would be P.D. for Preeo Domini - before our Lord.

How are you supposed to dispose of a voodoo doll?

Can't ban Yosimite Sam

Cursing. What a strange phenomenon. And what an even stranger meme behind it's censorship.

I have struggled, if that's not to strong a word, over the years with 'cursing'. I don't mean i struggled with cursing when i didn't want to, but rather whether or not to curse at all. Over those same years i have occupied many of the  intermediaries on the spectrum of cursing, from saintly to foul. I remember a time where a curse word, usually 'fuck' or one of it's derivitives, was in nearly every sentence i spoke. I also remember a point where i wouldn't even say 'gosh darn it' because it was essentially the same as 'God damn it' - same meaning, different words. Currently I am in between those extremes, probably just under the socially acceptable mode. Mostly because cursing too much lessens it's impact and for me that's what it's all about.

What brought this long running internal debate to the forefront and onto the blog page, was a trend i have been seeing - the use of alternative words for cursing. I first noticed it in Serenity, the movie for the Sci-fi TV series Firefly (both of which are utterly excellent, by the way, and i completely recomend them for viewing.) In both the movie and the series they used words like gorramn in phrases like, ' i don't give a good gorramn what he thinks!' and rut or hump for fuck or screw. Also, in Battlestar Galactica (a passable sci-fi series, with fairly interesting questions on the nature of 'human') they use frak heavily in place of fuck, including frakked (sp?) and frakking(sp?), though i don't think i've heard fraks yet.

This alone would not have been more than an  interesting quirk of science fiction being able to side step the FCC, but i have started to see these words in real usage, mostly in forums and boards where cursing is not allowed. So now we have these words side stepping social convention on what a curse word are! The exclamation is from excitement, not shock. :)  And it seems to be a full fledge meme, as more than just those words from the shows are appearing - people are starting to modify or come up with there own! HAHAHA! Take that you stuffy ol' bastards.

These words are slightly different that the traditional replacements, like the benign Flanderesqe (As in Ned Flanders - hey, i made a new word :) ) 'gosh darnit's and the like because they are used with the exact same pathos as the words they are replacing. They are still cursing just using different words. A curse word in Spanish is still a curse word, so too are these new supposedly meaningless words. What a farce, they have all the meaning of the originals.

I took long enough, but here is my point. It's an impossible task to censor 'bad words' and as such it's an erroneous philosphy to try, young children being the exception that defines the rule ( i think i'm using that right ).

Media is simple - allow them to say anything they want and then catagorize the product . Natural selection will take over, and products that don't want to scare off certain users will not have offensive language and products that aren't harmed by it will. (this should work with violence, sex, and any other censorship issue)

[total side note on catagorizing. the movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimerron is rated G with the additional warning of 'mild peril'. think about it.]

The public world is a bit trickier. Why would people be offended by saying "That's fucked up." and not offended by "That's frakked up."? My first guess is that it's a meme, one that has survived for so long due solely to lack of any competeing memes, that places the emphasis on WORD in 'bad word' and not BAD. There is no difference if i call somebody dumb, a dummy, a dumshit, or a dum'shyt; they are all offensive and should only be used for the express purpose of offending. Further when parents tell there children not to say those words, it's not the words they should focus on but rather the entent to hurt, a child should not be allowed to say bee-yotch just because it's not the word bitch. (I actually heard a child, a child!, say this standing right next to what i assume was his parent, and she did nothing. I am going to hope that this pair is not the norm.) In my opinion a parent shouldn't be anymore upset if their child calls the neighbors kid a retard or a fucktard, that's not to say they shouldn't be concerned and address the situation.

I'm going to go further out on a limb, and say that perhaps cursing should be taught, in a manner of speaker, something that, as they grow into adulthood, they have a better grasp of the concept itself as opposed to a strict prohibition of a list of arbitrary words.

Annoying Observation Man...

I have about one of these a day - little things i notice and my mind starts to wander from one idea to the next, and things just don't add up. Here is yesterday's example.

I got the old spider-man cartoon theme song stuck in my head, which particularly sucked because i don't remember all the words exactly. Anyway that got me thinking about the old spider-man comics, and specifically his "web-shooters".  Where the hell did these huge bulky things go when he put on his costume, because his arms were as sleek as, well spider legs i guess. And the little button on his palm that activates it, how the hell does he keep it from going off when he's doing that gymnastic-going-around-and-around-the-flag-pole-sticking-out-of-the-side-of-a-building thing. And how does he control the damn thing? Is it like a mouse - a single click for a stream, a double click for a web, a triple click for the cocoon... a twenty-three click for the parachute (try it, it's funny). No sense. Now i encounter plenty of things daily that don't make sense, but what makes this one special is that Stan Lee had it so that Peter Parker gets his strength, agility, his wall crawling, even his freakin' 'spider-sense' from an irradiated spider. Well why not the freakin' web shooting too! Oh, no. He makes Parker a freakin' genius chemist, in high school mind you,  that develops a web fluid that has a thousand applications. Which leads me to my next point, what the hell is PP doing scraping by as a freelance photographer when he's a freakin' genius chemist, in high school mind you. All he had to do was develop something even one percent as useful as the web fluid and he be set for life. Absolutely no sense.

Now, before anyone tells me that this is just a comic book, first let me say that, while this does chaffe something fierce intellectually, it is all in good fun, and i believe that anything can benefit from logical consistency. Ultimately i suppose this is a moot point since his origins have been changed with the modern movie, making his powers much more satisfying to my rigorous tastes, i guess i just like pointing these things out.

...able to leap to broad conclusion in a single bound. :)

Hack wanted.

OK, a little exersice in thinking outside the box, or boxes in this case. :)

Inside a large wharehouse is a self-contained Level 5 viral quarantine room of plexiglass, it has one entrance, likewise sealed and locked, the only codes were know by the two men inside the room, who are now dead from the virus that has been released from a broken vial also on the floor of the room. Along with the various equipment inside the room is a smaller plexiglass box, also with a level 5 seal and locked with the same codes as the room, with two uninfected mice and enough air for the mice to survive approximately 48 hours.

Your task: retrieve the mice safely without infecting anyone or the mice, AND without destroying the virus.

Note: the virus can survive in a vacuum.

Questions may be asked.

Ready, steady...hack.