Our time system of 60 seconds, 60 minutes and 24 hours is intimately
linked with the sciences of navigation and astronomy. While astronomy
seems to have been practiced by women in many early cultures as part of
the religion (and by males in others), navigation was a male science, as
seamanship has always been dominated by males, for either military or
trade purposes. Astronomers of early cultures were also astrologers, who
typically divided the heavens up into 12 houses of the zodiac (while the
names and formations of constellations tended to be unique to the
particular culture), and from which they evolved their timekeeping
systems to correspond to the rotation of the earth through the zodiac.
This correspondence of stellar formations and time systems was of utmost
importance in navigation, especially maritime navigation where landmarks
were frequently absent. Because of this correspondence, most all time
systems evolved from early cultures utilized a mathematical base derived
from the numbers of constellations in the zodiac of the local culture.
Thus, a base 12 system found in the standard western zodiac results in
uses of 24, 36, 48, and 60 unit groups, as well as groups resulting from
the factors of 12: 2,3,4, and 6. Because 12 as a base is so much more
versatile than, say, 10, it has been a far more convenient base system
for navigation, time keeping, and many other uses.
"Ross A. Finlayson" wrote:
>
> The story I heard about how man invented the keeping of time, it was a
> woman who invented the keeping of time. The story had the concept that
> some regular repetition, throwing stones, was counted, and that this was
> determined to be repeatable to record the same interval of time. Later,
> man used the shadow of sticks in the Sun to track time. Besides that
> micro- time, women probably had a better concept of macro- time as well.
>
> It doesn't matter if we know that we are all human, unless Yudkowsky has
> gone syntropic, the problem is that there are some people in power that
> are callous and self-serving, where the other ones are busy.
>
> Ross
>
> Brian D Williams wrote:
>
> > From: "Terry Donaghe" <Terry@Donaghe.com>
> >
> > >Most all of my black friends (or African Americans if you prefer)
> > >live with being pulled over quite often. I think it even gets to
> > >the point where they feel that it's just something you have to
> > >deal with and they expect it. One such friend was astonished when
> > >I told him I'd only ever been pulled over once. He get's pulled
> > >over quite a lot, as does his parents, friends, etc. And these are
> > >all middle to upper class people. They just happen to have the
> > >wrong skin color.
How about the wrong vehicle color? I've been pulled over more with my
red Cherokee (with gold trim) than I have with any other car besides an
old beater I had that looked like a pot-head-mobile.
Profiling by vehicle is an easy way to get around racial profiling,
because drug dealers, for example, tend to exhibit a specific sort of
taste in car decor (crack dealers like gold trim and tinted windows,
pot-heads like VW's with phish or GD stickers, etc).
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:36 MDT