91–100 of 159 posts
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TV show that rained fireballs at your ancestors at random intervals...
It's funny and terrifying at the same time imagining our tv throwing fireballs randomly while watching it. Thanks for the chuckle.
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The Mayan calendrical system is the most complex to have ever been used. To write a full date in a Classical Mayan site, you need to include: * The current date in the 365-day solar calendar (18 months of 20 days + 5 extracalendrical days) * The current date in the 260-day ritual calendar (13 "months" of 20 days, the months don't work like regular months we're used to) * The "long count" date, i.e., the number of day…
This reminds me of the story of Bartolomé Arrazola. He was captured by the Mayans in the jungles of Guatemala: “[...] Then an idea flourished that he considered worthy of his talent, his universal culture and his arduous knowledge of Aristotle. He recalled that that day a total eclipse of the sun was expected. And he decided, in his innermost thoughts, to use that knowledge to deceive his oppressors and save his own…
https://ojalart.com/associate-editor-pamelyn-castoa-featured...
https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/encyclopedias-almanacs-tra...
https://www.academia.edu/29162442/Case_Study_The_Eclipse_by_...
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You can look around or call local park services, I'm seeing that Mont-Megantic, an observatory with federally peotected sky, isn't on their map. I'll look for a canadian ressource (for myself too!) Edit: I'm wrong, Mont-Megantic is the first International Dark Sky Reserve - they worked to get it protected federally because they research telescope design. Dang - I think they are quite rare. Maybe you can send an email…
https://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html I just found this, shows light pollution. Crazy how the East is much worse. Also Alberta?!?
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Wider your horizon a bit. By and large, the world is getting better and better for more and more people. To take your first example: American political theatre is small fry compared to billions lifting themselves out of abject poverty.
I would argue that it's imperative you should also widen your horizon and recognize you are viewing human history in too narrow of a lens (mostly post-victorian era). The poverty statistic is one that gets thrown around a lot, but it's abysmally low still, and due to how our modern societies place far greater importance on money than any civilization before, this paints a much darker picture of our current timeline.…
Taken up by a sovereign nation state, you mean? They are pervasive. Corporations are a drop in the bucket by comparison. And not all countries even have corporations.
> One might believe all civilizations were just as unequal, but they really weren't.
Why do you bring up inequality? Who cares about that? Let's care about the absolute well-being of people, especially those in lower income percentiles.
For them it's scant consolation in their poverty, if other people are also in poverty. (Ie equality is no consolation.)
> [...] we are still judging "poverty" based on "$1.25".
I didn't mention any of that. You can measure poverty by that metric, and we made huge strides. But you can also look at other indicators. Like life expectancy, or child mortality or access to the Internet, or access to AC, or access to food and clean water, etc. Almost any metric you can think of has gotten better.
And you might quibble with 1.25 1990-dollars as an absolute threshold for poverty, sure. But you can't quibble with it as one marker of relative progress amongst many. Or in other words: 1.25 dollar a day is a low bar, but the number of people who clear that low bar used to be much, much lower in the past than today.
That's progress! Let's hope people's incomes will keep clearing higher and higher bars in the future!
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Led by Bishop Diego De Landa, specifically. >We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction. The same individual of whom it's been said >ninety-nine percent of what we today know of the Mayas, we know as the result…
That quote still shocks me every time I read it. Such depravity.
I think the word you were looking for is “narrow-minded”. But even then, Landa thought he had gone through enough to see that there was nothing of value in the Maya books. Even tried to learn the language a little. He just didn’t have the mental and cultural framework to care about other perspectives.
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Interesting website. The closest dark sky place I can find on their map is about 2,630km (or 63h drive according to Google Maps) away from me.
I'm realising that they are open to people reporting dark skies near them, and even offer a way to so a dark sky census. The last time I saw the milky way, I was in a cheap campsite near the ocean in Ireland, which (of course) isn't recorded on the site. Hopefully you have good dark sky closer than 63h drive away!
There's probably a space somewhere in Malaysia that's dark, or I could take a cruise ship out to the ocean, if you go by absolute distance.
By convenience, it's probably easiest to take a plane somewhere.
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https://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html I just found this, shows light pollution. Crazy how the East is much worse. Also Alberta?!?
With oil drilling they often burn off the excess gas, which creates a lot of light pollution.
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The Mayan calendrical system is the most complex to have ever been used. To write a full date in a Classical Mayan site, you need to include: * The current date in the 365-day solar calendar (18 months of 20 days + 5 extracalendrical days) * The current date in the 260-day ritual calendar (13 "months" of 20 days, the months don't work like regular months we're used to) * The "long count" date, i.e., the number of day…
This reminds me of the story of Bartolomé Arrazola. He was captured by the Mayans in the jungles of Guatemala: “[...] Then an idea flourished that he considered worthy of his talent, his universal culture and his arduous knowledge of Aristotle. He recalled that that day a total eclipse of the sun was expected. And he decided, in his innermost thoughts, to use that knowledge to deceive his oppressors and save his own…
Ok, so when is the actual end of the world if not 2012?
The old one didn't say the end of the world was 2012 either. It was just the date going from 0.0.0.0.12.19.19.17.19 to 0.0.0.0.13.0.0.0.0 And there exist Mayan documents talking about dates that are still in the future! The rumor was just because the previous world supposedly ended after that amount of time, with the current world being the fourth, but it was specifically not supposed to happen to this one.
