Archive for 13th of September, 2005
Another Name Generator and other things seen
Sep 13th
I was listening to Seth Shostak’s “Are We Alone” and it seemed a little odd this week. The guy he was interviewing seemed a bit like a crank. But I hadn’t researched what he was talking about, so maybe that was part of the weirdness of the world. Then around 8mins in came the line. “What they’re doing for example is that… they’re working on err… they funded a telekinetic monkey. This is a monkey that can move objects long distance with their thoughts. I’m not making this up.”
Show me the monkey.
To his credit Seth tries to discuss the social issues of augmentation. (more…)
Is there any evidence that Delphinus was used to keep time?
Sep 13th
For all the speculation that Delphinus was used to time rituals, there is a still a major problem. Namely that they would appear to be a daft bunch of stars to choose. They glimmer at around magnitude 3.5 to 4, which is faint. There are hundreds of brighter stars, so can we be sure that these were observed to mark the year and if so why?
The easiest question to answer is “Was Delphinus used to mark time in the ancient world”, because the answer is yes. At least the answer is known to be yes at least as early as the fifth century BC. We know this because around this time two Greek astronomer working in Athens created a parapegma.
A parapegma is a stone pillar. It has holes carved into it to hold a wooden peg, and next to each hole a description of the day. As the days pass, so you would move the peg from hole to hole, making it a public calendar. By the sides of these holes would be other notes. These could be comments on the weather, like “Today the wind comes from the north”. There were also astronomical observations like “Today the Bird [Cygnus] More >
