What Would Jimmy Do?

Today is the first day of spring — specifically, it starts at 5:24 p.m. EDT. That is the exact time for the arrival of the Vernal Equinox (I have a brother-in-law that possibly/probably refers to it as the “First Point of Aries.”) Traditionally, we celebrate the first day of spring on March 21, but astronomers and calendar manufacturers now say that the spring season starts on March 20th, in all time zones in North America. So no matter what the weather may be doing outside, the vernal equinox marks the official start of the spring season.

Vernal translates to “new and “fresh,” and equinox is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night.) So what does that mean? The daylight hours have been getting longer since December — the vernal equinox marks the turning point when daylight begins to win out over darkness. I’ve always heard that on the first day of spring and autumn, the day and night are equal to exactly 12 hours all over the world. But — that’s not true. On the days of the spring and fall equinox, the daylight is actually longer than darkness by several minutes. 

As you probably know, there are a lot of myths and beliefs associated with the equinox….
Maybe the most famous myth is that you can stand a raw egg on end — supposedly due to the Sun’s position in the sky, and its gravitational pull on the Earth, you can stand an egg on end during the precise moment of the vernal equinox. But that’s something you can do any day — providing you have the patience. Equinoxes won’t make it any easier.

One of the more interesting beliefs is that you won’t have a noontime shadow on the day of the equinox. This is technically kind of true, but if you go outside at noon, you’ll see your shadow (assuming the sun is shining.) Since the Sun is always at an angle to you, you always cast a shadow. In order to not cast a shadow, the Sun must be directly overhead, and because the Sun is situated over the equator at the equinox, you’d have to be standing at the equator precisely at noon on the day of the equinox  to not have a shadow.

Some people believe the equinox is a day-long event. Again, not true — it doesn’t take all day, it’s only a moment in time. The true equinox is the exact moment in which the Sun passes over the equator. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss it.

Some people believe that, just like a full Moon, the spring equinox can alter your mood. Again, not really true — the Sun moving across the equator has no real effect on emotions — but — seasonal changes can, and do, often play a big part in moods. Around this time of year, you may experience a little bit of “spring fever.”

So welcome to spring — I don’t often get a chance to quote my friend Sitting Bull, but here’s something he said at an Indian council in 1875, that seems appropriate for today…. “Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the Earth has gladly received the embraces of the Sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love.”
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Listening to the news the past few days, I kept hearing that Coronavirus is now believed to — possibly — have come from raccoon dogs. Now even though I’m a pretty worldly guy, I had never hear of a “raccoon dog.”
So I did what I must in situations like this — I did some extensive research.

In simple terms, raccoon dogs are wild dogs whose face looks like a raccoon’s. They are a member of the canid, or dog family with fur markings and head shapes similar to those of raccoons. They’re more closely related to foxes than to domesticated dogs. Their diets consist of both plants and animals and they are native to  East Asia — including parts of China, Korea and Japan. Their population exploded due to breeding from the fur farming industry and they are now a widespread “invasive species” throughout northern and western Europe.

Growing up in Maysville, Oklahoma, a popular dog was the coon dog — everyone called them coonhounds. They were nice dogs with long floppy ears and kind of sad eyes. They were popular hunting dogs. Those dogs are in no way related to raccoon dogs — they’re a completely different species.

But to get back to the day’s subject — raccoon dogs were (and probably still are) sold for food in live animal markets in China. They are wild animals, not domesticated pets. They need lots of space and are difficult to manage in enclosures or small spaces. They also have a strong odor because they use scent to communicate, so they wouldn’t a desirable animal to have indoors. If a raccoon dog escapes or is released into parts of the world it isn’t native to, it can threaten native wildlife. 
So — even though they’re kind of cute, you wouldn’t want one for a pet.
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I was just thinking about all the early scientists that we learned about when we were in school. Were these guys really “scientists” or did they just make some incredibly lucky guesses?

Legend has it that young Issac Newton was sitting under an apple tree when he was bonked on the head by a falling apple, and he suddenly came up with his law of gravity. 
Newton, the son of a farmer, was born in 1642 near Grantham, England, and entered Cambridge University in 1661. The school temporarily closed in 1665 due to an outbreak of the bubonic plague and Newton moved back to his childhood home — Woolssthorpe Manor. He spent two years there before he returned to Cambridge in 1667. It was during that period (at Woolsthorpe) that he was in the orchard and witnessed an apple drop from a tree. There’s no evidence that the apple landed on his head, but Newton’s observation caused him to ponder why apples always fall straight to the ground (rather than sideways) and inspired him to eventually develop his law of universal gravitation. 

In 1687, Newton published his principle, which states that every body in the universe is attracted to every other body with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. 
Later, Newton shared the apple anecdote with William Stukeley, who included it in a biography, “Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life” that was published in 1752.

Well, I kind of got off the subject, but it appears that the apple story is “kind of” true…. probably embellished a bit over the years, but at least has its roots in reality.
But I still wonder about all the other early “discoveries” and how much their stories have been embellished over time.
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Every year I feel compelled to write something on St. Patrick’s Day, and every year I struggle to find something different to say about St. Patrick. If you read the previous entry, you’ll notice it kind of repeats the “regular stuff” that most of us already know about St. Patrick. So I figured that I owed it to both my readers, and myself, to come up with some new material. Here’s what some serious extensive research has uncovered.

Saint Patrick is well known both in Ireland and throughout the world, but few know that he is believed to have transformed the Welsh King Vereticus into a wolf.

According to legend, St. Patrick once punished the Welsh King Vereticus by transforming him into a wolf. While St. Patrick was in Ireland he became so disgusted with the wickedness of certain tribes that would howl like wolves when he tried to preach Christianity to them, he cursed them and condemned them to become werewolves. The spell fell on the poor tribesmen and caused them to turn into werewolves every seven years. They would stay in wolf form for seven years, then once the years passed they would turn back into humans, but only for another seven years, then it was back to wolf all over again. It was a horrible vicious cycle. Seven years as a wolf, seven as a human, seven as a wolf, seven as a human… until they died.

But during their seven years as a werewolf they weren’t denied the sacraments of the Church. In 1191 a man named Giraidus Cambrensis recorded the testimony of a priest that swore he once gave Holy Communion to a werewolf. Throughout the years, travelers to Ireland insisted that they had met entire families of werewolves and that they had even seen some people transform into wolves. Up until the end of the eighteenth century, Ireland was known as Wolfland.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
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This is one of those days I usually write about every year — and, there’s only so much you can say about a particular day/holiday… so I’ll probably repeat what I’ve written in past years, but the good thing about getting older is that I don’t remember what I wrote a year ago. Here we go — let’s talk about St. Patrick and his day….

I know it’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when all the pubs in Ireland were closed on Saint Patrick’s Day — by law. That unfortunate circumstance can be blamed on James O’Mara, the same politician that introduced the Bank Holiday Act in Ireland in 1903 — that made St. Patrick’s Day a national holiday in Ireland. The closings were originally meant as a mark of religious respect, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that revelers could (legally) raise a glass to Saint Patrick.
It turns out that Saint Patrick’s Day parades are about as Irish as Saint Patrick himself (not at all.)
The first Saint patrick’s Day parade allegedly took place in New Your City — not Ireland.
Saint Patrick’s Day is of course celebrated in countries across the world — but it’s also celebrated in low-Earth orbit, in the International Space Station.
The first St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the United States was held in Boston in 1737.
Shamrocks are the national flower/emblem of Ireland.
Legend says that each leaf of a four-leaf clover has a meaning — Hope, Faith, Love and Luck.
Chicago has a tradition of dying their river green for St. Patrick’s Day — that tradition started in 1962.
There are 34.7 million U.S. residents that at least claim Irish ancestry. That number is more than seven times the population of Ireland itself.
The odds of you finding a four-leaf clover is about 1 in 10,000.
The world’s shortest St. Patrick’s Day parade is held in an Irish village. The route is only 100 yards — between the village’s two pubs.
St. Patrick never got canonized by a pope, making his saintly status a bit questionable.
And of course I guess it’s my duty to clear up all the confusion about whether the day is referred to as “Patty’s Day” or “”Paddy’s Day.” As far as I can tell, a lot (most?) people in the U.S. call it Pattie’s Day. A word of advice — never do that in Ireland — it’s Paddy’s Day! The Irish have very strong opinions about this…..

They say everyone’s Irish, or wish they were today, and being Irish is lucky enough. But if you’re not taking any chances by carrying a four-leaf clover, don’t iron it — you don’t want to press your luck.
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day. 
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St. Nicholas, on whom the figure of Santa Claus was based, was born on the Ides of March in 270, making March 15 a day that will live in infamy….. no, that’s not right .

I’m sure other bad things have happened in March besides the murder of Julius Caesar, but they haven’t cursed the day like Julius’s murder. But nonetheless, “Beware the Ides of March” stuck and the words branded the phrase, and the date, March 15, with a dark and gloomy connotation. Most of the time the way the phrase is used today makes it seem like the day itself is cursed.

Way back when, the Roman year began in March and originally the Ides were the day of the first full moon each year.
The Romans didn’t number days of the month but counted back from the Nones (5th or 7th,) Ides (13th or 15th) and kalends (1st of the next month.) In March, July, October and May the Ides fall on the “15th day.”
So the Ides of March is the 74th day in the ancient Roman calendar, corresponding to March 15 — nothing more.

The popular story is a soothsayer told Caesar to “beware the Ides of March,” but historians think that Caesar was warned that his life was in danger by a haruspex called Spurinna. A haruspex was a religious official that based his predictions on the entrails of sacrificed animals. Because of Spurinna’s high status, he would’ve known about the anti-Caesar sentiment at the time since the ruler had transformed the society into a dictatorship. So the prediction was probably a calculated judgement rather than a prophecy. 

I’m sure you’ll probably be ok this Ides of March, but look both ways before you cross the street, just to be on the safe side….
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Pi is the most studied number in mathematics, and for good reason. The number Pi is integral to our understanding of geometry. It is used in physics, astronomy and, of course, mathematics as well as being used in architecture and construction. It’s been a vital part of everything from arches and bridges to the Pyramids of Giza.

So it’s only fitting that it should have its own day. Today, March 14th (3/14 – Get it?) is officially Pi Day. The exact correct time for the celebration of Pi Day is at 1:59 pm. At 3/14 1:59 pm the numbers are the first six digits of Pi.
In case you need even more evidence of the importance of Pi Day, it’s also Albert Einstein’s birthday.
The value of Pi was first calculated by Archimedes.
The Pi symbol was introduced by William Jones, a Welsh mathematician, in 1706.

There is an entire language made from the number Pi. How can than be? Well, some people loved Pi enough to invent a dialect based on it. In “Pi-ish” the number of letters in each word match the corresponding digit  of pi. The first word has three letters, the second has one letter, the third has four letters, and so on. The language is more popular than you might think. Software engineer Michael Keith wrote an entire book, called Not a Wake in that language.

The first 36 digits of Pi is called the Ludolphine Number. It’s named after the 16th century Dutch-German mathematician Ludolph van Ceulen who spent most of his life calculating the those first 36 digits. It’s said that the first 36 numbers were engraved on his tombstone.

Chinese people were far ahead of the West in finding the digits of pi — primarily due to two reasons. They had decimal notations and they had a symbol for the number zero. It wasn’t until the late middle ages that European mathematicians started using the number zero. At that time, European mathematicians partnered with Arab and Indian minds to bring the symbol of zero into their system.

Of course, like most things, not everyone is a devoted fan of Pi. Some math enthusiasts argue that “tau,” the number equivalent to twice Pi, also deserves the same notable place in mathematics as Pi. Tau’s approximate value is 6.28, and it refers to the relationship between a circle’s circumference and radius. So, many believe that the one that has a more inherent mathematical value between the two is tau. We’ll discuss this in more depth on June 28th.

But today we’re celebrating Pi….. there’s an old saying that men may come and men may go, but Pi goes on forever.
Or — as my mathematically inclined friends would say, “Have an irrational day.”
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During a recent “winter golf” get together, the conversation incorporated, like always, a few “war stories.” Most all of us “golfers” have had some interesting experiences through the years and sessions like winter golf gives us a chance to remember some of them — with an audience that appreciates them more, because of similar experiences. 

Recently, the discussion somehow turned to the encounters several of us had over the years with NSA (the National Security Agency.)
Several of the guys didn’t know when and how NSA came into being. It’s kind of an interesting story….
After the end of World War II, the United States pretty much dismantled its signals intelligence (SIGINT) and cryptanalysis capabilities. Really, “dismantle” is a kind of strong word — the initiative was just downsized and not a lot of effort was put into it. Soon afterwards, the Soviet Union activated a new communications grid and encryption methodology. They started transmitting signals by cable — that cut off most radio interceptions and what little that was transmitted over the air was indecipherable. This move seemed to shock the United States and in response, the Secretary of Defense ordered the creation of a Top Secret organization known as the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA,)

The new agency, as might be expected, suffered from institutional dysfunction and wasn’t particularly effective against the Soviets. But the Korean War came along and really gave the AFSN a boost. The agency was assigned to intercept high-level Korean broadcasts. It’s hard to believe, but North Korea was broadcasting the details of its most sensitive military operations in plaintext, with no encryption at all. When the North Koreans finally got wise to America’s interception capability, AFSA made short work of North Korea’s new ciphers. It was a “lesson learned” for the U.S. as to the importance of SIGINT and cryptanalysis. AFSA would eventually be reorganized as the National Security Agency (NSA.)
Now you know “the rest of the story.”
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It’s that time again — time to change the clocks. It’s just something we do, and just like about everything today, it’s controversial. All of the United States, with the exception of a couple of states, practices daylight saving time. Many people don’t like the concept of setting clocks back an hour in the fall and then setting them forward an hour in the spring. 

According to a recent poll, only 33% of Americans see the purpose of DST. In fact, over 83 million people have sent messages to Congress petitioning for the end of daylight time. Of course setting the clocks forward one hour in the spring doesn’t create more daylight — the Sun still rises and sets just the same, but it does change the time on our clocks, so in the spring we add an hour of natural daylight to our afternoon schedule.

I know, every year at this time I dwell on DST, so if you’re tired of hearing it, come back tomorrow — there’ll be a different subject….
One of the reasons Daylight Saving Time started was because of time zones. Time zones were introduced by major railroad companies in 1883 to avoid confusion that caused train crashes because of different local times. These time zones were enforced by the Interstate Commerce Commission and it also enforced daylight saving time years later in order to help the World War I effort.
(Germany had incorporated daylight saving time during World War I to conserve fuel and power. The idea was that if there were more hours of daylight in the day, people would spend more time outside and less time inside, therefore saving energy. Apparently the U.S. thought that was a good idea and incorporated daylight saving time as well.)

After the war, daylight saving time was abolished, but some states chose to continue using it. That created the confusion with transportation all over again, so daylight saving time was reincorporated nationally. 

So the argument continues — those favoring DST think it contributes to improved road safety, and a decrease in robberies — the extra daylight gives people more time for outdoor recreation, and the brighter evening boosts the tourism industry and local economies.
Opponents claim there is no justification to continue using daylight saving time — it doesn’t save energy and we’re not in the midst of a world war. It’s nothing but a nuisance that messes with our biological clock and life.

But no matter what you think, we’ll all be changing our clocks before we go to bed tonight or tomorrow — or at least some of them. A lot of ours automatically change — if we do away with DST, I wonder if all our appliances will be smart enough to know it — or — will we need to get all new stuff — or — maybe we’ll just have chaos…..
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A few weeks ago a friend loaned me a book to read. Claire mentioned that she’s like to read it and after I finished, she read it. We just returned the book. I finished the book in 2 or 3 days and Claire did the same.

But that often isn’t the case — we both have different criteria for books…. in the past, I pretty much always finished a book that I started and Claire often didn’t. Well, of course that got me to thinking. Should you finish every book you start?

I have a friend that says he always reads a book to the end, no matter what, because he’d feel like a quitter if he didn’t. I think Claire’s philosophy is that life is too short to read bad books. Obviously there’s no right answer to the question, but here’s some of my thoughts, and I have to admit that in the last few years, my view has changed a bit.

My original thinking was that if you give up on a book in the middle because  you don’t like a character, plot development, or something else, you may miss out — your opinion might change if you finish the book. Your opinion might not change, but you’ll never know if you don’t finish it.

But — things change…. I’ve gotten older and I’m more likely to abandon a book if it isn’t working for me. Reading is a personal experience and it shouldn’t be a chore. I’ve also become a little more particular about what I read — just because a book is on the best seller list or everyone’s talking about it doesn’t any longer inspire me to want to read it. I’ve kind of settled in to reading things that truly interest me. Someone once said if you read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking, or something like that. So I just read what interests me — I’m not concerned with other people’s opinions. 

I appreciate the fact that the author took the trouble to write the whole book and maybe I do owe it to that author to read the whole book before judging it. I guess I agree that I shouldn’t judge the book without finishing it, but there’s no reason I have to Judge it — if I’m not enjoying it, I just quit reading.
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