Archive for the ‘Trivia’ Category

Once upon a time, a leap-second …..

December 31, 2016

Leap seconds were invented in 1972 (in which year we had 2 leap seconds, one in June and one in December). In 26 of the 44 years since 1972 we have had leap seconds. A year with a leap second happens more often than a year without. Today we add the 27th leap second since its introduction.

A leap second is a one-second adjustment that is occasionally applied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in order to keep its time of day close to the mean solar time, or UT1. Without such a correction, time reckoned by Earth’s rotation drifts away from atomic time because of irregularities in the Earth’s rate of rotation. Since this system of correction was implemented in 1972, 26 leap seconds have been inserted, the most recent on June 30, 2015 at 23:59:60 UTC, and the next leap second will be inserted on December 31, 2016, at 23:59:60 UTC.

Having a leap-second is the new normal.

Deviation of day length from SI based day – Wikipedia


 

Applied might is always right

December 29, 2016

might-is-right

Right and wrong are relative.

A “just”, but losing, cause is a contradiction in terms.

Having might alone is of little use, and all conflicts are decided by the might applied.

In Syria, the US had by far the most might but applied very little of it and are “now in the wrong”.

Russia applied sufficient might to defend Assad and break the back of the ISIS resistance and their intervention is now “in the right”.

In Aleppo, Assad and Russia and their Hezbollah/Iran supported groups applied sufficient might and they are now “in the right”.

In Mosul, the US/Iraq/Kurd/Shia militia coalition have as yet applied insufficient might and the outcome and the “rightness” are still to be decided.


 

On the eve of the birthday of the Sun, on to orbit 2017 (+c. 4.5 billion)

December 24, 2016

The number 2017 is an odd number and is a prime (the 306th such).

But, it is not:

  • a Fibonacci number,
  • a Bell number,
  • a Catalan number,
  • a regular number (Hamming number),
  • a factorial of any number, or
  • a perfect number.

In short the number 2017 is quite ordinary.

2016 has been anno horibilis for some but I think it has been just another year. Whether year 2017 is more than just ordinary remains to be seen. But I am more hopeful than fearful.

In the geopolitical sphere the most notable event has been that what looked like the unstoppable march of ISIS at the end of 2015, has in fact reversed and ISIS are now on a hiding to nothing. And it is the Russian intervention in Syria that the world has to thank for that. In the political world, Brexit and Trump’s win have been seismic events. A global trend against the liberal/socialist/elitist world-view of a self-declared “intelligentsia” telling the great unwashed what was good for them, which began before 2016 and will continue for many years yet, has strengthened.

I think this trend is part of an inevitable move to a distributed rather than a centralised system of societies managing themselves. The UN and its many bodies, the EU and the WHO are all examples where centralisation has gone too far. What has been forgotten is that we have to think globally but make decisions and act locally. Global decisions will always eventually be repudiated locally – unless they are imposed by coercion. The trend to distributed decision making is, I think, analagous to the growth of distributed rather than centralised power generation or distributed rather than centralised communication systems

But after some 4.5 billion + 2016 revolutions around the Sun, the Earth now starts on another orbit. The birthday of the Sun on 25th December comes long before the invention of Christianity. At 59°N our day is now just over 6 hours long. Hope rises as the days are again palpably getting longer. By the end of June we will be at close to 18 hours of daylight.

Here’s wishing that 2017 will see many fears unrealised and some hopes being met.

sol-invictus-2017


 

Czechs will have to shift from Becherovka and Slivovice to Rum

December 16, 2016

becherovka

There is hope for international debt resolution by good old-fashioned barter.

It would not be possible to wean the Czechs away from beer. And I rather like Slivovice. The only alternative left for Cuba is to run a marketing campaign in the Czech Republic to get people to shift from Becherovka to Rum.

That should not be impossible.

The problem for the Greeks to use a similar method would be that brainwashing would be needed for anyone to like ouzo.

slivovice

BBC: 

Cuba has come up with an unusual way to repay its multimillion dollar debt to the Czech Republic – bottles of its famous rum, officials in Prague say. The Czech finance ministry said Havana had raised this possibility during recent negotiations on the issue.

Cuba owes the Czech authorities $276m (£222m), and if the offer is accepted the Czechs would have enough Cuban rum for more than a century.

However, Prague said it preferred to get at least some of the money in cash.

Havana’s debt dates back from the Cold War era – when Cuba and what was at the time Czechoslovakia were part of the communist bloc. Cuba now does not have much money but it does have lots of rum – hence this unusual proposal, says the BBC’s Rob Cameron in Prague.

The Czech finance ministry said repayment was possible either with rum or pharmaceutical drugs.

cuban-rum

Many, many years ago I remember a deal where we accepted that power plant equipment would be paid for with cotton. But that deal went very sour. If of only we had accepted banana liquor instead of cotton.


 

Paradoxes for our times / 6

November 18, 2016

paradoxes-6


 

Eggs on faces

November 14, 2016

No comments needed.


 

When sanctimonious arrogance meets blind ignorance

November 13, 2016

It is a potent mixture when sanctimonious arrogance meets blind ignorance. And it is difficult to get more sanctimonious than, or be as blind as, the HuffPo.

I note that they are still in denial about the result and are instigating mayhem and revolt.

From Paul Joseph Watson

arrogance-ignorance


 

Paradoxes for our times / 5

November 5, 2016

paradoxes-5


 

The sum of all wisdom by the mathematics of philosophy

November 4, 2016

The sum of all wisdom is the summation across the population, of the integrals over time of the second values derivative of knowledge.

the-sum-of-all-wisdom

Not the philosophy of mathematics but the mathematics of philosophy!


 

The strange tale of King Bho, the witch and the buffoon

November 1, 2016

A fable for our times

In this time, in a land across the sea, the people of a Once Great Country are to decide on a new ruler. The incumbent king has no choice but to step down because rulers are not allowed to reign forever. They have to relinquish their power after 8 years of wearing the crown and King Bho’s eight years are up. The ruler does not have to be a King. The people can choose a Queen if they wish though they had never done so before. The ruler has to be either a King or a Queen. The rules of Monarchy did not allow for a half-King/ half-Queen to be enthroned. However the consort of the King or Queen, though expected to be of the opposite sex, may, in fact be either.

At this particular time, about 2 months before King Bho has to step aside, a Great Convention of all the people is to be held on one particular day (November 8th). All the people will have their say to choose between the two main claimants to the throne. Nobody is still quite sure how the two claimants have taken their places on the Final List. (During King Bho’s reign the Once Great Country has degraded slowly to become a somewhat indulgent, degenerate and depraved place. But that is another story.)

witch

The first contender, a woman, (Witch Hills of Little Rock) is known to be a powerful witch who desperately wishes to be Queen and to rule with her own Court. Even her own supporters acknowledge she is a witch but claim she is a “white witch”. Of course her detractors claim she is all evil and a “black witch”. There is little doubt that if she becomes Queen she will reign as a Red Queen and many “heads will off”. She has claimed that she is well-trained to be a Queen since she had been the consort of a previous King (the infamous King Bill of Lewinsky). Many suspect that King Bill had only become King, and remained King, because she had used her witchcraft and her weirding powers not only to eliminate all whistlers but also to procure buxom paramours to satisfy the depravities of the King. Nevertheless, Lady Hills has developed and enlarged her own band of bewitched sycophants and acolytes who are now leading the charge to have her enthroned as Queen. During the campaign to get her included on the final list, she has used her witchcraft to very good effect and has ensured that her sycophants and fellow witches have eliminated all opposition. The Witch Abedin and the Witch Brazile have been particularly adept at ensnaring gullible and perverted men to their cause and made sure that the aged but Honourable Bensanders, who tried to challenge for her place on the Final List, was discredited and humiliated. Many men were also bewitched and ensnared to the cause of Witch Hills. In any event Witch Hills of Little Rock won her place on the Final List to be considered by the people for monarch. King Bho – who was himself the first ever monarch of mixed blood – now supports, though somewhat reluctantly, the elevation of Witch Hills to become the first ever Queen of the Once Great Country.

buffoon

The second contender on the Final List is a professional buffoon but an, apparently, very rich buffoon. Clown de Trump has had a raucous and an eventful journey on his way onto the Final List. He was opposed by many dull and sober men (and even a dull and sober woman), of little talent, along the way. But they were all – unexpectedly – laughed away by a disillusioned audience. All the spectators who were expecting a sober play were blown away by the farce which developed. The slapstick nature of the competition meant that Clown de Trump dominated the proceedings and his sober opponents could not keep up. They all fell, one after another, by the wayside, extinguished by the roustabout and their own lack of talent. Finally, only Clown de Trump was left standing to take his place in the Final List. He promised the people that he would Make the Country Great Again, which was very uplifting but nobody – not even Clown de Trump – had any idea of how he would achieve that. He promised to bring Law and Order back to the Once Great Country and that struck a nerve.

With just a week to go before the Great Convention of November 8th, the war of words between Witch Hills of Little Rock and Clown de Trump is now reaching a crescendo. Most people are expecting Witch Hills to win and be crowned Queen. But the buffoon is still in the lists and is refusing to go quietly. A witch or a buffoon? The people shall decide what they themselves deserve.

The world watches, bemused and bewildered. Is this truly what this Once Great Country been reduced to? A witch or a buffoon?