Bill Petro

EARTH DAY

April 22 is called Earth Day because it both commemorates and celebrates the observance of the anniversary of our discovery of planet Earth. At this time, by all accounts, there is general agreement that Earth is far superior to the place from which we came, as we shall see below.

Recently, however, there has been increased concern regarding our displacement of the original aboriginal inhabitants, as is often the case with more “enlightened” conquerors, as we like to think of ourselves.

The indigenous population, a kind of Eukaryota or more specifically Archaeplastida, is known in the vernacular as plants. You cannot have missed the increased coverage in the media on all things “green.” Of course, the Irish were the first to capitalize on this theme, but now everyone seems to have jumped on the bandwagon, with everything from green vehicles to green computing.

Even Google is gaining ground in going green, while garnering gajillions of Gmail guests giddy with great gobs of gleefully garnered gigabytes of storage.

Increased recognition of this under-represented earlier population of our planet, sometimes persecuted almost to the point of extinction — when was the last time you saw a chocolate bush — has brought greater attention to rampant plantocide: witness for example that in Kansas whole fields of wheat continue to be slaughtered.

Hence, this year there is special attention paid to underprivileged plants, with the motto:

“Take A Plant To Lunch…But Don’t Eat It.”

Instead, responsible Earth people might consider an alternative. One could chose instead animals, which already have the good sense to be made of meat. And they are higher in protein, like chocolate, one of the other four food groups.

So, in celebration, let’s respect our plant brethren. They’re often at least as intelligent as some people you know: have you ever noticed how a sunflower tracks the movement of the sun? Think about it. They’re also quiet and, while generally not good conversationalists, are better behaved than many human children.

Of course, this is with the exception of fungi, the so-called “trailer trash” of the plant kingdom, which have been disowned for phylogenic reasons, not to mention their being “photosynthetically challenged.” Some of these heterotrophs have, through remedial education, found a home in breweries and Italian cuisine.

Nevertheless, plants, as you’ll recall, are one of the reasons we came to Earth. Some of the other reasons include:

• Location: it’s right here. Look just below your feet.
• Memorable: it’s shaped like the new AT&T logo
• Spherical: which makes it convenient for those “round the world” trips and has a much more pleasing shape than where we came from. Did you ever wonder why we called the previous generation “squares”?
• Great restaurants: and great atmosphere, unlike, for example the Moon which has great restaurants but no atmosphere.
• Oxygen-Nitrogen atmosphere: so crucial for those of us who breathe, and better than methane in so many ways.
• Gravity: which is set at a convenient one “g” is quite handy for keeping everything in its place.
• Neighbors: generally far enough away that they don’t bother us much, and those who do are generally more intelligent than average, needing to understand things like calculus, tachyons, and three-phase cyclotronic nuclear-fissionable uranium isotope molecular reconstructors for trans-dimensional physics.

I don’t know about you, but I’m planning on spending the rest of my life right here on Earth.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood Earthling
www.billpetro.com

DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME

Daylight Saving Time, or DST, is a brilliant campaign to convince people that we’re getting more daylight each day, when in reality we’ve simply changed our clocks and then forgotten about it within two weeks. DST begins each year at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March in most of the United States and its territories, however there are some places that have not bought into this campaign: it is not observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands nor the state of Arizona except for the Navajo Indian Reservation, which does observe DST.

Standard Time begins each year at 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday of November. This is the time in the Fall to “Fall” back by moving your clocks back one hour at the resumption of Standard Time. In the Spring, we “Spring” forward an hour, losing an hour of sleep, and finally realizing where we get the names for half of the seasons of the year. However, with DST for Summer now occurring before the vernal equinox which brings Spring, shall we say “March forward”? What about the Southern Hemisphere which has the opposite seasons?

• In the United States, in 2008, DST is from 2:00 a.m. (local time) on March 9th until 2:00 a.m. (local time) on November 2nd.

• In 2009, DST is from 2:00 a.m. (local time) on March 8th until 2:00 a.m. (local time) on November 1st.

Why the change? Is this campaign on a roll, is it gaining energy? Indeed, it is all about energy.

Back in August 8, 2005, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Prior to 2007, DST began at 2:00 a.m. (local time) on the first Sunday in April, and ended at 2:00 a.m. (local time) on the last Sunday in October. The new rules for DST beginning in 2007 mean an extra four or five weeks of DST each year. There will now be a total of 238 days of DST, compared to a total of 210 days of DST in 2006 under the previous rules, and the U. S. will remain on DST for about 65% of the year.So think about it, DST will be in effect for most of the year.

It has spread to other countries as well, but cloaked under other names. In the European Union (EU) it goes by the name “summer time period” and happens from the last Sunday in March through the last Sunday in October. Most of Canada uses DST, except the majority of Saskatchewan and parts of northeastern British Columbia, but Manitoba and Ontario follow the US model to maintain “competitive advantage” with its major trading partner. In Russia though, they can’t get enough: they add an extra hour. During the Summer, Russia’s clocks are two hours ahead of standard time. During the winter, all 11 of the Russian time zones are an hour ahead of standard time. China and other parts of Asia and Africa ignore it completely. Closer to the equator, where the hours of daylight are similar throughout the seasons, they can see things better and are not fooled by the need for this “daylight saving” campaign.

You’re probably asking, “Bill… Petro… dot com, where did this all begin?” and well you might ask. Blame it on the trains. Back before 1883, major cities used to set their clocks according to local astronomical conditions, but the advent of the railroads necessitated a way of standardizing schedules, hence the introduction of “time zones.” Canada’s Sir Sandford Flemming advocated this time zone and hourly variation, which was adopted at the International Prime Meridian Conference in Washington the following year.

But it did not yet see universal use. Various parts of the world experienced controversy concerning the impact on agriculture, outdoor activities, and business. Many credit American Benjamin Franklin with convincing the modern idea in 1784 while envoy to France as a way of economizing on candles by rising earlier. Englishman William Willett sponsored DST throughout his life in the early 20th century. Germany and its territories used it throughout World War I and Britain and many of its allies later did the same. America standardized on it during WWI to save on coal usage. It was standardized upon again, year-round during WWII and again for two years during the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, both as means of saving energy.

Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. -Benjamin Franklin

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

HISTORY OF LEAP YEAR

The Leap Day, February 29, depicts a day that occurs only once every four years, every Leap Year or intercalary year when an extra day is inserted. But not every forth year, if that year ends in “00″ like 1900, then it is not a Leap Year. Except if that year ending in 00 is also divisible by 400 then it is a Leap Year. Unless it is a Tuesday and it is dark. OK, I made up that last rule. So, years like 2008 are Leap Years, being divisible by 4. 1900 is not a Leap Year as it ends in 00. The year 2000, you remember, the famous Y2K, when computers programmers only obeyed the first two rules and assumed that it wasn’t a Leap Year so that all the computers failed and the world came to and end? That was a Leap Year, as it was divisible by 4, and though it ended in 00, it was divisible by 400 (indeed, it’s divisible five times, if you’re still with me.)

How did we get into this calculatory conundrum? It has to do with a cumulative rounding error in trying to reconcile the Julian calendar with the tropical or astronomical calendar. The Julian calendar, established by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. lasted from 45 B.C. until A.D. 1582. and stipulated that they year should be 365 days for 3 years in a row, with every 4th year having 366 days. This meant that an average year was 365.25 days. But according to the tropical calendar, the year has 365.24219 days.

This tropical (or seasonal) calendar recognizes that the year is marked by two successive passages of the Sun through the vernal equinox (equal nights). You and I know that the Sun does not pass through the Earth’s sky, but rather the Earth orbits around the Sun — or at least you probably realized it since the Sun came up this morning — but it’s easier to explain this by considering this apparent motion of the Sun in our sky. And of course, this is just the easy explanation. A Leap Second is the fraction 1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 hours ephemeris time. But that was determined back in 1960. Since then, the second has been defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Cesium 133 atom. Perhaps that’s intuitively obvious to the most casual observer of the Newtonian dynamical theory of motion.

So where does this cumulative rounding error come in? Back in A.D. 730, an Anglo-Saxon monk named the Venerable Bede recognized that the Julian year was 11 minutes and 14 seconds too long, which would produce an error of about one day every 128 years. But there were a lot of other things going on then, and the Venerable Bede didn’t have a blog, so nothing was done about it for 800 years.

In A.D. 1582 this accumulated error was estimated at 10 days, and Pope Gregory XIII decreed that the day following Oct. 4 would be Oct. 15, pretty handy if you had a library book due during that time. This Gregorian calendar was adopted throughout much of the Catholic world, but not everywhere. Uncivilized parts of the British Empire, like America, made the change in 1752 when 2 September was followed by 14 September and New Year’s Day was changed from 25 March to 1 January.

Ultimately, to make future adjustments for the error, which amounts to about three days every 400 years, it was decided that years ending in “00″ would be normal years rather than Leap Years, with the exception of those divisible by 400. Unless it’s a Tuesday and dark.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

HISTORY OF MISTLETOE

We’ve mentioned previously that mistletoe was prominent in the traditions of the Druids and the lore of northern Europe. The Druids used the mistletoe of their sacred oak as part of their ritual five days after the new moon following the winter Solstice. In the middle ages it was hung from ceilings or placed above stable and house doors to drive off evil spirits and to insure fertility.

Mistletoe is a parasitic plant that grows on trees. Phoradendron flavescens or Viscum album sends its roots into the tree’s bark and derives its nutrients from the tree itself, though it does engage in photosynthesis.

The word can be traced back to 2nd century Anglo-Saxon “mistel” for the word dung and “tan” for twig, mistletan being the Old English version of the word. This suggests the belief that mistletoe grew from birds, though we know now that it is the birds’ droppings in trees or the seeds’ sticky nature that adheres to tree bark.

Some would trace the tradition of kissing under mistletoe back to the Saturnalia, indeed the Greek goddess Artemis (Roman: Diana), patron of Ephesus (Acts 19:24-41) wore a crown of mistletoe as an emblem of fertility and immortality. However, the most fully developed myth regarding mistletoe comes from the Norse mythology of the Vikings. Mistletoe’s curative powers and its belief that it can raise humans from the dead relates to the resurrection of the Norse god Baldar.

The story goes as follows. Baldar, the god of the summer sun, saw in a dream his death. Frigga, his mother and the goddess of beauty and love — and from whom we get the name Friday — compelled the elements, plants and animals to not kill Baldar. But she neglected to extract this same promise from the unique mistletoe. The evil god Loki (brother of Thor), realizing that mistletoe grows on trees and has no roots in the ground fashioned a poisoned dart from mistletoe and with the aid of Baldar’s blind brother Hoder shot the mistletoe missile to kill Baldar. His death brought winter and his mother’s lamentation.

Frigga’s tears over her son changed the red mistletoe berries white and raised Baldar from the dead. From her gratitude she blessed with a kiss everyone who walked beneath mistletoe, declaring that the mistletoe must forever after bring love rather that death into the world.

Later Christian customs called it Herbe de la Croix or Lignum Sanctae Crusis for “Wood of the Sacred Cross” because of the belief that it was used to supply the wood for Christ’s cross. For its role, it was condemned to be a parasitic vine. Further penance for the plant was that it bless everyone who walked beneath it.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

SCIENCE OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE

As we’ve mentioned before, the Romans celebrated a holiday known as the Saturnalia beginning on the Winter Solstice. The word Solstice comes from the Latin “solstitium” meaning “Sun, standing-still.” This year it will occur on December 22 at 06:08 UT (Greenwich Universal Time.)

Earth enjoys different seasons because the planet is tilted 23 degrees and 27 minutes off the perpendicular to the plane of orbit. This means that the earth revolves like a tilted spinning top. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of sunlight as the Sun is at its lowest arc in the sky, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. The farther north one is from the Equator, the more pronounced this is in Winter. However, as the Earth continues its orbit, the hemisphere that is angled closest to the sun changes, and the seasons are reversed.

In the Northern Hemisphere the sun appears at its lowest point in the sky, and its noontime elevation appears to be the same for several days before and after the solstice, so that it looks like the Sun is “standing still” until following the winter solstice, the days begin to grow longer and the nights shorter.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

070707

July 7, 2007.

Even more — seven AM, seven minutes and seven seconds: 07:07:07 07/07/07. That won’t happen again, at least for 12 more hours. It would make James Bond envious.

Of course, we recently had an event like this at three minutes and four seconds after 2 AM on the sixth of May of this year, namely 02:03:04 05/06/07.

I mentioned something similar last year, on April 5 at two minutes and three seconds after 1 o’clock, the time and date was 01:02:03 04/05/06. What is unique about this current phenomena, however, is that it doesn’t change if you live in Europe or someplace that uses dd/mm/yy format.

These kind of things happen more frequently than you’d think. I remember when I was a kid, being impressed that pennies that were dated 1961 had a date that looked the same upside down.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

SCIENCE OF THE SUMMER SOLSTICE

The word Solstice comes from the Latin solstitium meaning “Sun, standing-still.” This year the Summer Solstice occurs on June 21 at 18:06 (6:06 PM) UTC, or Coordinated Universal Time, or Zulu Time, or roughly Greenwich Mean Time.

This is also known as the Northern Solstice as the Sun is positioned directly above the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere. This time of year is known as Midsummer, though the official Midsummer Day is actually celebrated on June 24, thanks to differences between the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Christian festivals during this time of year are related to the birth of St. John the Baptist. In Bolivia and Peru it’s called the Festival of San Juan.

Earth enjoys different seasons because the planet is tilted 23 degrees and 27 minutes off the perpendicular to the plane of orbit. This means that the earth revolves like a tilted spinning top. The Summer Solstice is the longest day of sunlight as the Sun is at its highest arc in the sky, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. The farther north one is from the Equator, the more pronounced this is in Summer. However, as the Earth continues its orbit, the hemisphere that is angled closest to the sun changes, and the seasons are reversed.

In the Northern Hemisphere the sun appears at its highest point in the sky, and its noontime elevation appears to be the same for several days before and after the solstice, so that it looks like the Sun is “standing still” until following the Summer Solstice, the days begin to grow shorter and the nights longer.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

EARTH DAY

April 22 is called Earth Day because it both commemorates and celebrates the anniversary of our discovery of Earth. At this time, by all accounts, there is general agreement that it is far superior to the place from which we came, as we shall see below.

Recently, however, there has been increased concern regarding our displacement of the original aboriginal inhabitants, as is often the case with more “enlightened” conquerors, as we like to think of ourselves.

The indigenous population, a kind of Eukaryota or more specifically Archaeplastida, is known in the vernacular as plants. You cannot have missed the increased coverage in the media on all things “green.” Of course, the Irish were the first to capitalize on this, but now everyone seems to have jumped on the bandwagon, with everything from green cars to green computing.

Increased recognition of this under represented earlier population of our planet, sometimes persecuted almost to the point of extinction — when was the last time you saw a chocolate bush — has brought greater attention to rampant plantocide: witness for example that in Kansas whole fields of wheat continue to be slaughtered.

Hence, this year there is special attention paid to underprivileged plants, with the motto “Take A Plant To Lunch…But Don’t Eat It .” Instead, responsible Earth people might consider an alternative. One could chose instead animals, which already have the good sense to be made of meat. And they are higher in protein, like chocolate, one of the other four food groups.

So, in celebration, let’s respect our plant brethren. They’re often at least as intelligent as some people you know: have you ever noticed how a sunflower tracks the movement of the sun? Think about it. They’re also quiet and, while generally not good conversationalists, are better behaved than many human children.

(Of course, this is with the exception of fungi, the so-called “trailer trash” of the plant kingdom, which have been disowned for phylogenic reasons, not to mention their being “photosynthetically challenged.” Some of these heterotrophs have, through remedial education, found a home in breweries)

Nevertheless, plants, as you’ll recall, are one of the reasons we came to Earth. Some of the other reasons include:

• Location: it’s right here. Look just below your feet.
• Memorable: it’s shaped like the new Cingular logo (A.K.A. the new AT&T)
• Almost entirely spherical: which makes it convenient for those “round the world” trips and has a much more pleasing shape than where we came from. Did you ever wonder why we called the previous generation “squares”?
• Great restaurants: and great atmosphere, unlike, for example the Moon which has great restaurants but no atmosphere.
• Oxygen-Nitrogen atmosphere: so crucial for those of us who breathe, and better than methane in so many ways.
• Gravity: which is set at a convenient one “g” is quite handy for keeping everything in its place.
• Neighbors: generally far enough away that they don’t bother us much, and those who do are generally more intelligent than average, needing to understand things like calculus, tachyons, and three-phase cyclotronic nuclear-fissionable uranium isotope molecular reconstructors for trans-dimensional physics.

I don’t know about you, but I’m planning on spending the rest of my life right here on Earth.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

JAMES “SCOTTY” DOOHAN

The actor James Doohan, who played the beloved engineer Montgomery Scott, or “Scotty” on the original Star Trek’s U.S.S. Enterprise died today at his home in Redmond, Washington. He was 85 and had been battling Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, lung fibrosis and, most recently, pneumonia. Born March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia, he fought with the Royal Canadian Artillery during World War II, and landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, as part of the U.S.-led D-Day invasion. He lost a finger in the war, and it was rarely noticeable in the show, as they usually used a “stunt hand.”

He is immortalized by the phrase “Beam me up, Scotty,” although Capt. Kirk never issued that order during the TV series, and indeed didn’t utter it until the subsequent fourth movie.I met Mr. Doohan in 1975 on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley when I was a student. He was doing a play on campus about Ulysses S. Grant and I was doing a show featuring theatrical fencing (and you though I only studied history.) When I saw him sitting on the lawn I excitedly told my acting-student fencing partner, “That’s the actor Jimmy Doohan!” He replied, “Who?” I said “Scotty, from Star Trek.” We sat on the grass with him and talked for about an hour. We spoke about theater, which he loved, and how he would do that exclusively, if it paid well enough but needed to do the occasional movie or TV show to pay the bills. He had a rather gruff Canadian accent and discussed his skill and delight in accents. In the play, he portrayed an American Civil War officer. A Scottish post-doctoral friend of mine used to say, “When he comes on, we watch and laugh at how bad his accent is!”

When my friends, who knew what a Star Trek junkie I was, ask if Mr. Doohan and I spoke about Star Trek, I replied, “No, I didn’t want to seem like a sniveling fan.”

Here’s to ya, lad

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood Trek junkie
www.billpetro.com

MOON LANDING

It was 36 years ago today, July 20, 1969 when man first stepped on the moon. As Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder of Apollo 11’s Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) and stepped onto the lunar surface, he said “That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” What he meant to say, but didn’t in the exitement was “That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.”

Take a look tonight at the moon, it will be full tomorrow night.

There is a new feature at moon.google.com where you can see the landing site for not just the Apollo 11, but also the:

• Apollo 12 on Nov 19, 1969
• Apollo 14 on Feb 5, 1971
• Apollo 15 on Jul 30, 1971
• Apollo 16 on Apr 20, 1972
• Apollo 17 on Dec 11, 1972

Zoom all the way in by clicking the “+” symbol on the map to see the detail of the lunarscape.

You can watch the official NASA video clip here.

Bill Petro, your friendlyneighborhood skygazer
www.billpetro.com