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Elaboration 68
Our systems for calendar, time-keeping, place determination on the globe and so on, are just as primitive, and just
as 'only one step from random', as our arithmetics and geometrics, language and social organization that baffle our
children. One step further, logical organization (instead
of almost random agreement), would surprise and delight our
kids. Now, they have to start early in finding the illogical, the stupid, 'normal' (!), i.e. they are being made
stupid by us. What stupidity e.g. it is to have an imaginary line on the globe (maps), on one side of which it is
tomorrow, on the other side it is yesterday, a date-line!
Cannot we do better than that? When a man in Denmark speaks
over the telephone with a man in Mexico, he perceives clearly that both places (the whole planetary sphere) have the
same time. It shows by giving proper answers to questions
unforeseen, without a time-lag of more than a second. A
logical thinker would have a world time therefore (the
G. M. T. for instance), over the whole globe, but then without
a date-line, with Greenwich going East, from zero to 360,
i.e. Greenwich again. Still, it all is a question of silly
superstition to have each one's own time reckoning. When
the sun is amply risen, we have breakfast, and are going to
our work at the required time, does it matter whether this
time is called 11 or half past three? The superstition is
that the (named) time of day has something to do with sunrise and sunset. We can easily free ourselves (starting
with the more logical thinking kids) from such irrational
superstitions. Why should the zero large circle, the one of
Greenwich, not be 360 degrees as well, like the 12 on the
clock that is also zero? Nay, why have a sixty digit calculating system at all, when children have to learn to do
arithmetic in a ten digit system? They easily are being
made stupid by this.
Next: Elaboration 69
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Ven
2007-09-11