Elaboration 13.1

Just as it is almost impossible to read the time from a model, an analog, that runs twice as fast, is it almost impossible to make a working model of the earth's revolution when there are two different parts of the earth, one part has it Monday, the other part has it Tuesday. What waste of energy and effort is this, all over the world! Let H. K. Oram speak: "A fortnight after leaving harbour we crossed the International (!!!!) Date Line. Throughout our voyage from west to east round the world the ship's clocks had been put forward day by day and now, on reaching 180 degrees East longitude, we had to adjust by adding an extra day to our calendar. This, of course, was normal practice when making easting across the Pacific". ('Ready for Sea', Future books, 1974) This was in the last days of sail and one would expect for the days of nuclear bombs, we could do better. We could keep the hands off the clocks and calendars, just as we keep away from the standard meter or kilogram. Where are we when we have to change our standard when traveling? Even in 1940, it was possible to have a powerful transmitter on roughly zero longit. -latit. bleeping away happily the world-time, 24 hours a day. Because time determination is calendar and clock, why not have BOTH in one system like 1985. 08. 09. 03. 20., etc. Why, there is a huge university computer that informs the operator of the time of day AND of the time of year. Due to normal stupidity, unfortunately, the system (structure, organization) is somewhat lost. The h, min, sec, first, followed by month (!), day, year. What intelligence! With a little organization we need not print and calculate new calendars every year. Without date line then, it would be easy to compile a table of sunrise-sunset for all longitudes per latitude. Longitude calculation, then, would be as easy as latitude calculation, nay, even less so, because we would not need a sextant. Shooting the sun at midday, and looking at the sun at set or rise would give one the longitude and latitude. Of course we should incalculate the deviations for north and south for the calendar days. In this way we could easily check our compass needle. (On all latitudes the sun sets or rises pure east and west, only on two days per year (equinoxes) for the rest, dependable on the latitude, the positions move north or south every day.) Indeed, today, we have navigation satellites that enable us to just read off the position by the push of a button, but ... the stupid date-line still remains. What stupidity, in science-fictional language, would be revealed to an alien being who gets hold of a digital watch (blown into space from an exploded capsule) ? He, she, it, would study it, watch it (after all it is a watch), and observe soon that the most active window (the seconds) is on a decimal basis. But the next one, the deca-seconds, uses the same symbols: 0,1,2, etc. but only up to 5, i.e. a six digital system. Then, 'its madness but there's method in't', the following again is on a ten digital system followed by a six digital one. The next then, the single hours, is very peculiar. It moves twice in a row according to a decimal system, 10 digits, follows it with a 4 digital spell after which the 10 digital resumes, etc. The very first one, then, uses only a 3 digital system. They would wonder why a range of six windows, capable of counting 999,999 bits, (11 days in seconds) is used to count only up to 86,400, less than 10 %. The reader might think (wrongly) that they would soon hit on a 60 digital system. No way. First, when using such a system, one uses 60 symbols, a sort of improved alphabet. Secondly, the very first pair does not fit (as 24 digital) in a 60 digit system. The 24 is not even a whole part of 60, is less than a half, more than one quarter. With a 60 digital system, only 3 windows would be sufficient to count more than twice the 86,400. Six of them would count more than 46 billion, i.e. 9 times the earth's population, or 500,000 days in seconds, 1400 years. Suppose now, that these aliens would push a button which gives them the calendar. They would become 'really' betwattled by this. The use of a twelve digital system, it is true, would be an improvement over a decimal one, (though they themselves would use a 16-digit system, this being, like our compass-rose, excellently convertible into the scientific binary one), but why use three different digits (28 days, 30, and 31) none of which dividable by 12 and in obviously a random order? They would be familiar with the leap-year though since it is to be expected that the seasons do not fit in a whole and useful number. But why not having all months the same, and put 'intercalaries' in, like the Egyptians used to do (Herodotus) ? They would not be able to see that our new years do NOT start at all at significant points in the seasons, solstices, equinoxes, but at a random point after such a solstice. We certainly would soon be the laughing stock of the galaxy. They would come crowding over here in their UFO's to see how stupid we are. They would find that it surpasses their most exorbitant expectations. All this from alphabet and geometry, via self-preservation up till the very governmenting and rights & duties of man.