This noise needed it's own thread, so I shall start one.
But this being a Wankel rotary thread, and because @aeromomentum likes thinking about spherical coordinates, I shall comment instead about the early Sumarian ideological supremacy in the space domain. Even though they themselves were all about working in base 60 (!), the Mesopotamians had been watching Venus appear to (from earth's point of view) traverse a great circle around them (an ecliptic), and after about 1500 years of study (!!) they developed a structured method for describing positions on these circles, to (as I understand it from the lay press) improve their ability to record and thus study the heavens. The circles were divided into 12 sections, and each of those had 30 divisions: 360 degrees.
What I really love about rotary engines of all kinds is that, worshipping as I do at the alter of Nature or God or Thermodynamics or Applied Mathematics or whatever name one wishes to give to The Fundamental Laws Governing The Universe, rotary engines are what bacteria use to twizzle around their flagella!
If it's good enough for auld Charlie Darwin, it's good enough for me!
As an aside, if anyone does have strong feelings about mathematics and circles and things, I can commend www.mathstodon.xyz which is a Mastodon server run by (and for) people who like maths. Mostly maths teachers but also engineers, programmers, and lay people who just want to be around people speaking maths. Mastodon is a server-end program that uses activitypub protocols to create a federated social media network between servers, so Mathstodon.xyz is one activitypub server that federates with many other activitypub servers to create networked communication for social media posts. This is similar to the way aol.com is one email server that federates with many other email servers to create networked communication for email messages.
It's volunteer-run/donation-based social media (remind you of anything? and the newsfeed has no algorithm so much like an RSS reader one just has to subscribe/follow lots of users/sources in order to have a colourful feed full of interesting things. It openly publishes all messages, so one ought not to have expectations of 'privacy' on it. I'm happy to respond to a direct message on this forum if anyone fancies it and needs a steer.
Sorry about that. Got a bit overexcited there. I'll get back to work :$
I'm a big base 12 fan.
But this being a Wankel rotary thread, and because @aeromomentum likes thinking about spherical coordinates, I shall comment instead about the early Sumarian ideological supremacy in the space domain. Even though they themselves were all about working in base 60 (!), the Mesopotamians had been watching Venus appear to (from earth's point of view) traverse a great circle around them (an ecliptic), and after about 1500 years of study (!!) they developed a structured method for describing positions on these circles, to (as I understand it from the lay press) improve their ability to record and thus study the heavens. The circles were divided into 12 sections, and each of those had 30 divisions: 360 degrees.
What I really love about rotary engines of all kinds is that, worshipping as I do at the alter of Nature or God or Thermodynamics or Applied Mathematics or whatever name one wishes to give to The Fundamental Laws Governing The Universe, rotary engines are what bacteria use to twizzle around their flagella!
If it's good enough for auld Charlie Darwin, it's good enough for me!
As an aside, if anyone does have strong feelings about mathematics and circles and things, I can commend www.mathstodon.xyz which is a Mastodon server run by (and for) people who like maths. Mostly maths teachers but also engineers, programmers, and lay people who just want to be around people speaking maths. Mastodon is a server-end program that uses activitypub protocols to create a federated social media network between servers, so Mathstodon.xyz is one activitypub server that federates with many other activitypub servers to create networked communication for social media posts. This is similar to the way aol.com is one email server that federates with many other email servers to create networked communication for email messages.
It's volunteer-run/donation-based social media (remind you of anything? and the newsfeed has no algorithm so much like an RSS reader one just has to subscribe/follow lots of users/sources in order to have a colourful feed full of interesting things. It openly publishes all messages, so one ought not to have expectations of 'privacy' on it. I'm happy to respond to a direct message on this forum if anyone fancies it and needs a steer.
Sorry about that. Got a bit overexcited there. I'll get back to work :$
