HOW DID NEW YEARS FIND ITSELF 11-DAYS LATE?

Northern Hemisphere Winter Solstice + 11 Days = New Year’s Day

That is some strange math.  Why do we start the New Year eleven days after the winter solstice? Frankly, I do not know, but it seems more fitting that the day after the solstice should be January 1^st.  However, delaying time by eleven has a history in our calendar.  In 1752 A.D., Britain skipped eleven days to fix an eleven-minute reoccurring disagreement the accepted calendar had with Earth’s yearly cycle.  Compound this eleven-minute disparity over 1440 years; one gets an eleven-day problem.

Solve for y: (11m/(24*60))*y=11    y=1440

Thus, what year did we begin to drift:

1752 AD - 1440 = 321 AD

Which begs the question, what happened in the year 312?  It wasn’t known as the year 312 on that January 1st, when it began it was the year 1066 A.U.. I have heard some Christian apologists state that because our calendar's epoch is based on Jesus' birth year; the Jesus stories therefore, represent historical figures and events - rather than the more logical explanation that the Gospels were Jewish Midrash developed by Jews after the destruction of the Temple in 824 A.U.. The story of the Passion was written to provide a permanent replacement for Jewish temple sacrifices.  Which is somewhat of a different topic, but we will come back to it later in a follow-on post.  Circular logic is the main problem with arguing Jesus was historical, not mythical, based on the epoch of our calendar.  As the idea of resetting the timeline was not thought of until 10+ generations later than the stories it is based on.  The people who reset the calendar would have no more direct knowledge of the times they were targeting then we have today!

In 1066 A.U. Christians reset the epoch of the calendar 754 years forward, but they were a still the new religion at the time.  And because they were not the ruling party, they didn’t have the power to make the change universal.  Not yet.  Remember Rome accepted Christianity as one of many faiths in 313.  They were new to the Roman political scene, but Christians were on the move up.  For Rome to officially adopt this change, it took 213 years.  In 1279 A.U., Rome fully adopted the Christian modifications from 312 C.E. (as we recognize it today).  1279 A.U. was reset to 525 A.D..  What began in the 4th-Century was standardized in the 6th-Century, the new epoch of the empire, and a religion that now went by the name of Catholic.  From there, the new date took more than a millennium to reach the outside world, spreading by the power of trade and the pain of the sword.  The west began to drift off the Earth’s yearly calendar.  Fascinatingly the 11-day compounding mistake is linked to the complications of dating Easter – of course it was, right?  Luckily today we have Google, and smart-watches to remind us when to hide the eggs.

The main topic I wanted to address with this example is; Once an idea blossoms in a complex society, it takes a long time for it to take hold.  Then in future generations, when that idea is proven false, it can take a millennium, or two, for humans to correct their belief system. Why is this true? Why when new information is presented does society not change its viewpoint based on the new evidence in the same generation?

In the last two decades, many evolutionary biologists have presented evidence on how human preconceptions change gradually over many generations.  The paradox is: Both history and biology tell us fundamental acceptance of new information requires multiple generations to gain critical mass in the human conscience.  Therefore the populace on the eve of 2018 is not ready to absorb evidence gathered during our own contemporary.

The mind has evolved in such a way that many children who reject the nonsensical ideas (such as sacrificing a goat to crocodiles will cause the rains to fall) from their parents, also reject the sensible ideas (such as don't swim with the same crocodiles). Because of this, the 'rejectors' are many times eaten by crocodiles. The obedient survive and continue to pass both sensible and nonsensical ideas once again.

If an American travels to a tribal village where the practice of animal sacrifice is still practiced, we think "how do they still believe this on the eve of 2018?"  However, there is a 50% chance that same American believes the following:

"A celestial Jewish baby, born from a virgin mother, died for three days so that he could ascend to heaven on a cloud and then make you live forever.  Only if you symbolically eat his flesh, drink his blood and telepathically tell him you accept him as lord & master.  So he can remove an evil force from your spiritual being that is present in all humanity because a woman made from a man’s rib was hoodwinked by a talking reptile possessed by a malicious angel to secretly eat forbidden fruit from a magical tree."

If a college or high school graduate were exposed to this story for the first time, the adult nonpartisan mind would reject it as nonsensical.  However when one is exposed to these stories at a young age, the idea of "belief in belief" is embossed on the mind, it takes a toehold.  And then as adults, we dismiss as unconvincing any information that contradicts the nonsensical ideas we were exposed to as children.

The lifeblood of Religion is depended on the vulnerability of the child brain.  Religious leaders are aware of this, and the importance of getting the indoctrination in early is well documented.  Western society turns a blind eye to this tradition.  How many generations will we continue to allow this practice?  It took a long time to remove lead from paint and refined petroleum.  It took a long time after understanding cigarette smoking was harmful to humans for society to change.  We have known for many years that marijuana is better for the body and the mind then opioids, but are still at least a decade away for society to fully admit it.  But the dangers of childhood religious indoctrination has not reached the point where American society is ready to start a conversation about what might be the most detrimental practice to holding back expanding the human potential.

I hope future generations will decide to expand the human potential by encouraging and stimulating young minds on 'how to think' without succumbing to the manageable appeal of proselytizing to the next age 'what to think.'

And maybe, just maybe to skip eleven days in the calendar one more time, to enable humans to recognize New Year’s Eve on the Winter Solstice

What do Red Bottom Louis Vuitton Shoes have to do with an Aneurysm?

Earlier this week, while at work, my best friend experienced a brain aneurysm.  She was sent to the regional ER, who in return rushed her to the trauma center in downtown Atlanta.  I was alerted during the ambulance ride, via a text message while in a meeting on the other coast.  During a planned meeting break, the neurosurgeon from the trauma center called me, explained in layman terms what happened and what will happen over the next five hours.  I was 2,500  miles away at the time, as current commitments were completed in the foreground, the flight plans were modified in background, on a smartphone.  During the meeting no one in the room knew otherwise - other than my boss because he was notified on his device of my ticket change (>$).  The science of wireless technologies took care of the first task of returning to Atlanta, silently.  A task that a generation ago would have taken at a full day, including having an admin walk into the meeting, interrupt the agenda, and finally it would have required a public egress from the forum.

While I was on the overnight flight back to Atlanta, she started her recovery from four hours of brain surgery.  During the flight I could not sleep and instead kept myself busy by reading on a few subjects that are proving to be increasingly relevant in 2017/18; moving from link to link I stumbled on a  2005 Federal court case.  The plaintiff: Keeping science in our public schools, while detaining pseudoscience at bay.

By the time I arrived at the trauma center, it was nearly 07:00 the next morning.  I walked into her room, and what my wife said to me reminded me of a quote from the second to the last paragraph of the court recording I had read a few hours earlier.  The counsel for the plaintiff (for science) summed up the concept of Defendant - Intelligent Design’s ‘irreducible complexity’, which the defendant was attempting to push in public schools as “an alternative viewpoint.”  Dressing pseudoscience in science’s wardrobe. Here is the quote:

Thankfully, there are scientists who do search for answers to the questions of the origin of the immune system [and the brain].  It’s our defense against debilitating and fatal diseases.  The scientists who wrote those books and articles toil in obscurity, without books royalties or speaking engagements.  Their efforts help us combat and cure serious medical conditions.  By contrast, Professor Behe [pushing ID] and the entire intelligent design movement are doing nothing to advance scientific or medical knowledge and are telling future generations of scientists, don’t bother.

This paragraph is meant to force us to discuss the unsatisfying charter of the Intelligent Design (ID) hypothesis.  That is the gap though process that allows us to be okay NOT learning the details of the physical world we live in.  In other words, if the problem is too difficult to solve, file it in the realm of the supernatural and call it irreducibly complex.  “Do not invest any more time or tax dollars into discovering how the wing, eye, or human brain evolved; because they are irreducibly complex and God created them as they are now.”  On the eve of 2018; Trumpism has re-introduced the false equivalence between science and pseudosciences such as ID.

Back to herstory; The surgeon who performed the work has spent his career reducing  ‘irreducible complexity’ of the human brain into small parts using science.  . . .  After four hours of surgery and a good nights rest; by the time I traveled back to Atlanta and made it to the ICU, as I walked in the room my wife said to me: “Since we now must cancel our Christmas vacation, can you for long last buy me that pair of Louis Vuitton red bottom shoes?”  She obviously had a quick recovery, and I am hoping a humor recuperation as well.   Thank you science!

There shall be Woodpeckers where not a Tree Grows

During post-Labor Day travels in 2017 I picked up a copy of Charles Darwin’s _On the Origin of Species_ [London 1859].  This classic work on Earth and life sciences surpasses the impact of greats such as Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Planck, and Mendel in how we see ourselves in relationship to life on our planet.  Darwin’s manuscript is written for a general audience, and his words read as a contemporary documentary (I use the voice of the BBC’s David Attenborough in my head as I read the book traveling from one airport to the next).  Here are a few examples of the books present nature:

p70: The action of climate seems at first sight to be quite independent of the struggle for existence; but in so far as climate chiefly acts in reducing food, it brings on the most severe struggle between the individuals, whether of the same or of distinct species, which subsist on the same kind of food.

p75: I have very little doubt, that if the whole genus of humble-bees became extinct or very rare in England, the heartsease and the red clover would become very rare, or wholly disappear.  The number of humble-bees in any district depends in a great degree on the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests; and Mr. H. Newman, who has long attended to the habits of humble-bee, believes that ‘more than two-thirds of them are thus destroyed all over England’. Now the number of mice is largely dependent, as every one knows, on the number of cats; and Mr. Newman says, ‘Near villages and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice.’ Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then the bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district!

p94: With animals and plants a cross between different varieties, or between individuals of the same variety but of another strain, gives vigour and fertility to the offspring; and on the other hand, that close interbreeding diminishes vigour and fertility; that these facts alone incline me to believe that it is a general law of nature (utterly ignorant though we be of the meaning of the law) that no organic being self-fertilises itself for an eternity of generations; but that a cross with another individual is occasionally – perhaps at very long intervals – indispensable.

p108: The more diversified in habits and structure the descendants of our carnivorous animal became, the more places they would be enabled to occupy . . . The truth of the principle that the greatest amount of life can be supported by great diversification of structure . . .

p129 [discussing the 200 species of beetles in Madeira which  cannot fly]: the wingless condition of so many Madeira beetles is mainly due to the action of natural selection, but combined probably with disuse.  For during thousands of successive generations each individual beetle which flew least, either from its wings having been ever so little less perfectly developed or from indolent habit, will have had the best chance of surviving from not being blown out to sea; and, on the other hand, those beetles which most readily took to flight will often have been blown to sea and thus have been destroyed.

What I find amazing is that Darwin was able to grasp the concepts of biological evolution without knowing of DNA or genetics; also at his time most of the transitional fossils we have today were unknown.  Darwin devotes a full chapter to difficulties of his theory (showing honesty).  Today the difficulties he had in his theory have been answered, and biological evolution is known as a fact in the scientific community (even though almost 50% of Americans do not understand it 150 years later).

Just as modern cosmology and physics explain the birth, and expansion of the universe; biological evolution so eloquently answers the question of ‘how’ all plant and animal life of on Earth came to be. To which, as I was reading, I thought about my family members and friends who ask ‘why’ questions on life to the heavens-above.  I have read many posts asking “why did this tragedy happen.” or “we will know someday, in the next life.”  I say to them, if you remove God, and focus on nature, all questions are possible to answer in this life. The essence of the world becomes sensible when you do not introduce mystical gods.  Lions, bananas, and people, all share a common ancestor; and sometimes things go wrong with each.  Questions of disease, sickness, suffering, even yesterdays shooting in Las Vegas can be answered when we ask ‘how,' without invoking a ‘why’to the a supernatural being.  Every god in every culture evolved from the human mind, just as every human mind, like all life, evolved from a single cell form.

On the plane ride today I also read the transcripts of Trump’s speech to the nation on the Las Vegas tragedy; there were many references to God.  And I thought, how will we solve the most important issues facing us if we keep lying to ourselves and living in a make-believe world?  When will America be honest on the nature of life?  In the words of Carl Sagan “In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.“

Back to the topic; _On the Origin of Species_ is a remarkable read today, just as when it was first published in 1859.  Even if one doesn't appreciate evolution; if you enjoy nature shows, you will enjoy this classic science book.

Space Math and the Beginning & End of Race & Religion in 2120 milliseconds

Space Math:

Today, Friday 25 Aug 2017, the day will last 86,400.0004578 seconds. Based on averages, in 2117 this same day will be 2.4 ms (milliseconds) longer or 86,400.0028578 seconds. In 1907 it was 2.4 ms shorter: 86399.9980578 seconds.

According to NASA the math works out as:

 m = (y2 - y1 )/ (x2 - x1) = 6 hours / 900 million years or 0.0067 hours/million years. Since there are 3,600 seconds/ hour and 10,000 centuries in 1 million years (Myr), this unit conversion yields 0.0067 hr/Myr x (3600 sec/hr) x (1 Myr / 10,000 centuries) = 0.0024 seconds/century. This is normally cited as 2.4 milliseconds per century. 

In the Cryogenian period (900 million years ago) the days would have been six hours shorter – which also means there would have been 486 days in the year.  As the earth continues to slow in rotation, 900 million years in the future, the days will be 30 hours long, with only 292 days in the year.  i.e. the year will end in mid-October.

The Beginning of Race & Religion:

“There is only one race, the human race.”  While this statement means well, it is simply false.  Race is defined as distinctive physical traits and culture within interbreeding groups of a species.  Thus, a correct account is “There is only human species, with many races.”

If we consider the time between generations to be 25 years; then ~2800 generations ago** humans began to migrate out of Africa; then the days would have been closer to 2 seconds shorter than they are today. **the actual number of generations would be higher, as 25 years between generations is a modern number, as we go further back in time the generation time gap will drop to 20y, 15y, etc..

When the days were 23:58:00 long the statement “only one race” would have been true, however, this was a fleeting moment in human evolution.  As groups grew, separated and migrated around the globe, gene pools became isolated.  Language developed independently.  Animal worship (animism) evolved into sun and star worship, which in turn developed into thousands of deities.  Then in a relatively short period respectably, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, etc. progressed into form from the older gods.  The length of the day by the time Judaism was created was 24 hours less ~28 ms.

After, once the Earth's slowing spin added an additional 240 ms; Rome destroyed the Jewish temple, provoking a sect of Jews to promote Paul’s comic Jesus into a historical figure.  Hence forward for the most part, even with another 480 ms in the day, we, humans have kept interbreeding in isolated groups -  Guarding our cultures, religion, and separate races.  Providing unification within these groups thru the fictional character myths of individuals such as King Arthur, Buddha, Krishna, Odysseus, Thor, Jesus, and in American culture even Betty Crocker.

The End of Race & Religion:

Getting back to the modern, near 24 hour, day – Today I was in an all-day workshop; there were 17 of us, broken down as follows:

·         5 people from the Indian subcontinent

·         5 of Northern European background

·         3 Asian

·         1 of Southern European background (born in South America)

·         1 African

·         1 Polynesian

·         1 Mesoamerican

All of these people are now American, all living in the U.S..  To unify us today, we don’t need a god.  We are a team.  Working for the same company with a common goal; 'for our project to be successful.' 

As the generations move forward, and a child with parents from one side of the globe grows up next door to kids with links from another side of the world, nature will take hold.  Our breeding gene pool will change in a blink of an eye from a single region to the globe.  Essentially in x generations, we will f*ck our way back to one race, removing the need for religion along with it.  And we may only need to add 120 ms to the day to do it, or 2120 ms since the last time humans were one race.  

Reversing Direction

The U.S. and China are passing each other in opposite directions in a U-turn from traditional 20th century scientific/educational expenditure models.

Last week Beijing released an experimental venture and educational plan to be the world leader in A.I. by 2030.  Ref Southern China Morning Post.

While in Washington yet another scientific appointment will be free from anyone with a science background.  The President has proposed removing a scientist from the Department of Agriculture’s chief scientist position; to be replaced by a talk radio host (Sam Clovis) who has self-proclaimed anti-science viewpoints.

A quote from Modern Farmer Magazine considering the talk radio host for this position:  [Established back in 1994, the position, according to the language in the bill, “shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, from among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics.”]

When one reads the description of the position, one realizes when the media proclaims  “Trump’s war on Science,”  this is not hyperbole, it is the reality.   At the same time, we must accept that Trumpism is a belief system based on faith.  Thus, the religion of Trump cannot be counter-balanced by logic; meaning the description of the position posted by Modern Farmer will not be relevant to a person who has accepted Trumpism.

How can we reverse the anti-science and anti-educational U-turn Trumpism is taking us? Promoting good old competition within the STEM fields in the areas of the country where Trumpism has dug in the deepest is one place to start.

For me personally, following a few trips, over the past decade, to the cities of Shenzhen and Beijing; contemplating how fast China is adopting scientific practices (while at the same time how quickly Washington is accelerating away from science and education); I wonder if China 2050 will have the same technological dominance over the U.S., as the U.S. had over China in 1950.