h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That's a cool story,. FS. I don't think I'd have minded that kind of camping trip at all.

7 days in a week
52 weeks in a year
365 days in a year
366 in a leap year

52 X 7 = 364

for a year to be complete, the Earth has to return to its start point in its orbit

miles/yards/feet/inches/metric/ 1/8th - it all adds up to "they" can juggle the figures to fit whatever they want at the time

ask an atomic clock

Add to this the socalled daylight saving time:
They take away a whole hour from us in spring! Okay we get it back in the autumn - but where is the interest?
Not to mention the hassle of getting up at 2am and adjust your sundial with a monkey wrench and a torch

Do they still refuse to do this in Switzerland? On account of the cows?

Daylight Saving Time was only introduced because of the Great War, as Switzerland remained neutral, including the cows, it wouldn't surprise me...

<BB<

All of central Europe use daylight saving time, starting the last sunday of march at 2am

Daylight saving was invented in times without electrical light to save candles. They noticed that it doesn't work so they gave up on it but some clever guy reintroduced it in more recent times.

Yeah, Ben Franklin was on about it in the 18th Century - and you're right, it was to save on candles.

We suspect he was being funny. He claimed to be annoyed because the Parisians never got up before noon, which he found very wasteful.

You can read him here:

http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/franklin.html

Back when I was a young boy delivering bread early in the morning and later when I w*rked as a sailor on night watch seeing the sun rising over the ocean I felt sorry for all those that slept in

Once spring has finally started I intend to go for long bicycle rides early

Re 101
Yes Dmitri, that was the feeling I got from the story, a fun, fascinating time with a father who had long ago passed. I might someday be tempted to use it as a fiction piece, but I probably wont as it is too personal, he was best man at our wedding. It is a good story that should be shared though. I had never considered setting a transit with star sightings.

Re 102
Prof you have hit the nail on its head!
No matter how hard we want to try we can not change the length of a day, the number of days in a year, or the distance between two places.

We can change the numbers we use to represent them anyway we like but the real thing remain the same

The only reason for the numbers is to communicate with others. It is not possible to force them to change to our preferred numbers, all we can do is refuse to communicate with them. Is that what we really want to do?

Of course it is our right to grumble about among ourselves

RE 105
Bluebottle
I think I have posted this here someplace before but it fits here
My Mother's Father (my grandfather) was a railroad Engineer (Engine Driver in the UK) My Mother used tell us about when she was growing up. She would ask her father what time it was was during the summer. He would pull his pocket watch out, and gravely ask 'Your time or my time'. There was no practical way to jump a train an hour ahead, so the railroad never used daylight savings time. This would have been in the 1930's


RE 109
Pierce My favourite times in a night watch have been that moment when the dew forms. Everything is normal, then ,almost at once, it is all wet. New crew members ask 'when did it rain?'

The slow change from pitch dark to sunrise is always a reward in itself.

< Marvin Mode > Don't talk to me about sunsets, everybody talks about sunsets. It is dawn and the sunrise that are exciting, even when you know they are about to happen - it is a pleasant surprise!
< /Marvin Mode >

FS

in Brit, during the "industrial era" (again,saving candle power)the hour forward/back was to get that hour's extra work out of the employees

There's nothing really new about metric measures.

The bays above the columns of the Parthenon in Athens are a classical meter in height, a figure the ancient Greeks arrived at in probably the same way as the metric convention of the earl;y 19th century, taking 1 10,000,000th of the distance from the pole to the equator.

The Roman mile is also geocentric, 1 second of difference of longitude at the latitude of Rome.

An English ton is one cubic yard of water.

A metric ton is one cubic meter of water.

Cups, pints and quarts are anthropomorphic.

A cup is a double handful, made by cupping the hands.

Two cups make a pint.

"A pint (of water) is a pound, the world round...

UK and US pints are different though.

Anthropomorphic measures differ too, from person to person.

Asked to clarify the issue, Henry I made the yard the distance from the tip of his nose to the tip of his thumb.

He was a little bigger than I am.

My own yard (36 inches, 3 feet, 2 cubits, half a fathom) is the distance from the center of my breast bone to the tip of the middle finger of my outstretched arm.

My inch is the diameter at its base of one of my three middle fingers.

'UK and US pints are different though'

I think this calls for a few American pints and British pints s so we can ascertain the main differences. [Hic]

<BB<

That makes perfect sense, BB

As long as we don't have to drink certain brands of US'ian

They are not all bad, mind, but some of them are - well, you know - like making love in a canoe



PS: And before y'all start heckling me: the same goes for other brands from around the too, of course

I haven't drunk beer in ages, due to allergies. But I can tell you one thing from long ago. There are some US beers that are fine if you drink them locally. They just do not travel well.

If you live in St Louis, Budweiser's fine.

"If you live in St Louis, Budweiser's fine"

Somehow I doubt it.

Well, that was a long time ago, as I said, and I was never a beer connoisseur, even when I drank it.

I can prove that - I didn't think Koelsch was that bad. Although kvass was the worst thing I've ever drunk, including medication.