What is Digg?Sponsored by Travelzoo
$52 and Up-Airlines Slash Fares On Peak Holiday Flights. view!
travelzoo.com - This year, waiting until the last minute is NOT the best strategy. See why.
80 Comments
- captinherb, on 10/12/2007, -9/+177I don't care how uninteresting you found the article, one sentence about how it wasn't worth your time was not worth my time.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+49Dugg for using the word "sexagesimal" in the description.
- jon314, on 10/12/2007, -1/+26I know! Heaven forbid having to read two whole pages! What are these people at Scientific American thinking? How do they ever hope to sell any MAGAZINES by expecting people to read! Idiots.
- hiPpymIck, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23i read some where that the way the Egyptians made right-angles for building the Pyramids etc
was to have a length of rope with 12 equally-spaced knots..
drive two spikes into the ground 4 knots apart (securing the rope)
then pull to make the other two sides straight as well and drive in that stake
the only possible result is a right-angled triangle 3x4x5
(famous whole number Pythagorean triple...3 squared x 4 sqared = 5 squared)
another reason for them to like twelve..
along with its ability to make whole number fractions
(1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6 & 1/12 = 6, 4, 3, 2, 1) - Hipple, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23"a two page article about why minutes and seconds are divided as they are is not worth my time."
I think all the people who are digging you down have no appreciation for a good pun... - MioTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22"Not only are the trains running on time, they are running on metric time. Remember this time people, 80 past 2 on April 47th, it's the dawn of an enlightened Springfield."
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2024 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case... Coincidence? I think not.
- jull1234, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17I once dreamed that world had moved to base 60 for everything. Made sense at the time..
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18"Not only are the trains running on time, they are running on metric time! Remember this time people, 80 past 2 on April 47th, it's the dawn of an enlightened Springfield."
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Try asking this on Yahoo Answers..lol...
"Uh I dunno...maybe it was the easiest way to divide up a circular clock?"
'Web 2.0' at it's finest... - jon314, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15That's called a nightmare. =)
- SultanTravi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Are you kidding? This was pretty interesting and informative (much more so than your average Digg article).
I found it especially interesting that they add a second every once in a while. I've often wondered if the universe is really so perfect that simply by adding 1 day every 4 years we can keep things perfectly on track. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11OMG, if you add 5+4 then 6 + 3 + 2, you get 9/11
:o - m00dy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9We seriously need more articles like these on Digg.
How about an intellectual section? - gutterboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Waste of time? It only took me 1,654,673,718,600 energy transitions of a cesium atom to read that whole article.
- jull1234, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8just wait one picoday... I've never heard anything that crazy in all my gigadays.
- jull1234, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7(int)3.7 == 3, but that's quite a stretch.
- gann, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7FTA: "Although it is unknown why 60 was chosen, it is notably convenient for expressing fractions, since 60 is the smallest number divisible by the first six counting numbers as well as by 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30."
I always think that's the reason. - thadiusdean, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7It's not too late! We can perfect the MKS system yet!
- jtbandes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7"Why the hell not."
That's basically the principle on which everything was founded. - chrisbasham, on 07/22/2008, -0/+5How scary is it: I was thinking about the 60 minute / 60 second thing just earlier today. What can I say? Digg provides.
- migetlarynx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I have a friend who proposed dividing time using a metric counting system as his science fair project in high school. He made some great arguments for it. In fact, he made it to the state level and came in 3rd for the math division.
- VhaidraU, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Imagine how slow time would seem to pass if hours were 1/10th of a day and minutes were 1/10th of that and seconds were only 1/10th of that? Or would we even call them that? Would it be decidays, centidays and millidays? Also, would we go to 10 day weeks, but only 36.5 weeks a year? My head hurts!
- dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@keyboardduder:
"I still think Time should be metric."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time
http://www.swatch.com/internettime/
Time now is .376 - Tacgnol, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Amazing that the Sumerians managed to leave such a deep and lasting mark in all human culture. Their system rocks.
- LeftyMills, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5In America, electricity was alternated 60 times a second. When television came along, the A line was changed 60 times a second, and the B line 60 times. This resulted in NTSC.
In Europe, they liked the metric system, so electricity was alternated 50 times a second. Their TV lines change 50 times a second. European TV systems are either PAL or SECAM. - Graeleight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@geminitojanus
Yes, as a programmer I can see how horrible an idea that would be.
All those horrible, horrible billable hours. - resplence, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Thanks to documented evidence of the Egyptians' use of sundials, most historians credit them with being the first civilization to divide the day into smaller parts."
I read 'sundials' as 'sandals' a few times and spent a good minute wondering how the hell they made the connection that wearing light footwear -> dividing the day into smaller parts. - course6, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Interestingly, in order to keep atomic time in agreement with astronomical time, leap seconds occasionally must be added to UTC. Thus, not all minutes contain 60 seconds. A few rare minutes, occurring at a rate of about eight per decade, actually contain 61."
Having written software to analyze satellite data, I can fully appreciate how hard it really is to figure out "when" something happened.
"Ah, according to our data, the solar storm happened at.... 3495029 seconds from .... January 31, 1979? Wait, is that where +1 second is still Jan 31, or is that where 1 second is actually the next day, Feb1? Wait, are we counting *leap seconds* too? Oh wait, our probe was out of comission for a few days? How many seconds was that? Did they clock still count those or do I need to factor that into the code? Ad nasuem.... - jinushaun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4According to TFA, it's easier to count to twelve by using your thumb and counting the knuckles on the four fingers of an open palm. Each of the four fingers has three knuckles/folds.
- jull1234, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The real point here is that there are ten 1's in 10... that 12 means twelve, so to say. Most numbers we see day to day are decimal.
- jull1234, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Nope. Laughed good and hard (on the inside) during the first week of lectures about the Babylonians in my History of Science course back in college.
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Not after you realize the economic impact of switching to Metric time. All of the chips that need to be upgraded, all of the software, all of the clocks.. we'd spend more time fixing the hardware than it would be worth to convert.
Just look at how bad the daylight's savings time was. My car still has the wrong time, my bank took a week to get all of their computers correct, and their ATM is still wrong. Imagine that on a scale of _everything_.
And then, how are you going to get people to adopt it? We can't even get people to move over to Metric here in the states. - spongman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+33 + 4 + 5 = 12
3 * 4 * 5 = 60
12 has factors 2, 3, 4, 6
10 has factors 2, 5 - HUKI365, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4No daylight savings time has nothing to do with it. Check out a thing called the leap year, dude, for the reason why a day is not exactly 24 hours.
- FTLJohnson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's also workable as a hand based number system, if you count a closed fist as a digit, along with fingers and thumbs.
IE (from left to right): Fist, Thumb, Index, Middle, Ring, Pinky, Fist, Pinky, Ring, Middle, Index, Thumb - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Simply because humans need a system like that in order to stay organized
but if you think about it, you're not doing something "tomorrow", you're just doing something in X hours - Quakes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The US isn't the world, my friend, which people living there often seem to forget.
- duckrank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Interesting. I had always thought it was because 60 min/sec (like 360 deg) was just an easy number to split up into whole numbers, i.e.
1/2 = 30, 1/3 = 20, 1/4 = 15, 1/5 = 12, 1/6 = 10
So for practical purposes, 60 is a great number for splitting up an hour or minute because any practical (everyday) fraction of that time would be a whole number.
Very cool to learn the true history of keeping time though. - greyfade, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2so the Babylonian matematical model is a nightmare? news to me. seemed to work pretty well for them.
- tehloki, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Daylight savings time is a tool for saving energy/money. It's to extend the number of waking hours each person spends in daylight, to save on lighting/heating costs.
- 8177, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3We would have a leap week every four years. However we would have to omit the leap weak every 7 years to accomodate the leap day we used to have. then after every 700 years we would omit that again to account for the 100 year rule. The only thing that would change would be the fact that febuary would cease to exist and the first of january would appear every second friday, except good friday, because the christians wouldnt have it.
Well, whatever. Makes sense to me. - hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Just release hardware that supports both measures of time. When the number of units that only support the first measure of time drops low enough, start shipping units that only support the new measure of time.
- whitehornmatt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm glad that didn't result in PAL TVs refreshing 10 times a second, and wish it meant 100 times a second.
- jull1234, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Glad to help out!
- VeganG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Short answer: Those wacky Egyptians and their crazy way of thinking.
- Antebios, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm sure the Annunaki have something to do with it.
- sheslikeheroine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1god forbid you have to spend five minutes to read something informative instead of stumbling while stuffing your spare hand into a bag of cheetos.
- keyboardduder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ dachettah,
Thanks! thats awesome! - laceration, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I always thought a second was the elemental unit of time because it's basically how fast the heart beats(unless you are a conditioned athlete or overweight and out of shape). I don't think I ever read it anyplace, just seems logical.
-
Show 51 - 80 of 80 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is