Oct 8 2024 - What time is it, google?

 

That's one of the top 3 questions on a regular basis - what time is it google? The importance of time.  When did time become important?  Perhaps always.  So important that the Babylonians and Egyptians measured time at least 5,000 years ago.  Calendars organized communal activities and public events, scheduled shipments, and regulated cycles of planting and harvesting.  They used the solar day, the lunar month, and the solar year.   I guess I could manage the solar day - I have a few sundials in the garden as decorative elements.  It would take a lot of skill to accurately use a sundial.    There is so much invention in clocks and time pieces.  I read through the history in a breeze, but it is a substantial body of knowledge and engineering.  What is being worked on now?  NASA wants to come up with a way to keep track of time on the moon - an entire frame of time reference for the moon. " Because there’s less gravity on the moon, time there moves a tad quicker — 58.7 microseconds every day — compared to Earth. So the White House Tuesday instructed NASA and other U.S agencies to work with international agencies to come up with a new moon-centric time reference system."  And a funny thought: "Unlike on Earth, the moon will not have daylight saving time." From the New Scientist: "Any random sequence of events, such as the lapping of ocean waves on the shore, can become a clock – and physicists have now devised a mathematical procedure for making such an odd timepiece and for measuring its precision."  That article isHERE except you have to subscribe to read it. And from Euronews - Melting ice caps.  The human-caused consequence of climate change is slowing the speed at which the Earth rotates, increasing the length of a day... by a few milliseconds. And interspersed in the news about time is the news in Time Magazine.  It was going to be called Facts, but then the name was changed to Time with the slogan - "Take Time - It's Brief". That's the clock tower at Filoli Gardens, south of San Francisco.

Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

May 31 2024 - Which Moral Compass?

 

The idea of "moral compass" and Trump. I check on this:  There are dozens of articles with "moral compass" in the headline since 2017. Not just "moral compass"  but "lacks moral compass".  The very best and most copied is this one- it scrolls for pages: Trump has 'moral compass of an axe murderer'  -  quoted from a Georgian republican.   Such a compelling phrase, no wonder if is repeated so many times.  Even Ivanka Trump is in on the phrase with her own headline in the Politico in 2019:   'Ivanka Trump tells donors she got her moral compass from her dad' Vanity Fair took up the headline and added 'unironically' to the quote.   Other sources proclaim that he is missing a moral compass.  And still others that he has broken America's moral compass.    At the same time, moral compass and politician has been put together so much that the Oxford Languages definition of moral compass says this:   moral compass - noun used in reference to a person's ability to judge what is right and wrong and act accordingly. "he is by no means the only senior politician who has mislaid his moral compass"   And variation of the spelling of axe. Is it ax?  Or is it axe?  Ax is described as "technically the preferred American spelling" but that "axe" is still widely used in the US and is still a correct way to spell the word.   Here's the Grimsby Clock on Main Street.

Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

 

"How did the term "logging in" get associated with computers?   The term "log" comes from the chip log historically used to record distance traveled at sea and was recorded in a ship's log or logbook. "The noun login comes from the verb (to) log in and by analogy with the verb to clock in. Computer systems keep a log of users' access to the system." "To sign in connotes the same idea but is based on the analogy of manually signing a log book or visitors book." Maybe login in and sign in got used to differentiate them from clocking in at the factory.  And in so doing, elevated logging in to a professional sort of activity. Clocking in is a well-understood expression in the industrial era applied to "workers".  Before industrialization, workers didn't need to line up at a factory entrance every day to "punch in" or "clock in".   "The fires of the forges and kilns could not be allowed to go out — otherwise precious hours were lost to relighting them. Bobbins of thread in the textile mills needed to be continually replaced lest the cloth be ruined. Production in most places had to be steady and running near capacity for the business to be profitable." It was the factory that demanded precise timed activity.  Clocking-in was followed by time procedures in the work place.  "By the early 1800s, the timed workday was expected in almost every factory. In Troy, New York, Benjamin Hanks designed a large clock with multiple dials that let workers know the time and tracked production processes in his iron mill."  As long as there's "industrial", there will be time clocks for employee attendance and work activities.  Hourly employees are generally ruled by the clock - formally or informally.  Now you can look up labour law guides for clocking in and out of work. There are best practices for your business on clocking and out.   Clocking-in  turns out to not be a subject for jokes and laughter. The informal network of joke collections show only one joke so far.  I assume that it is because these are not jokes for children.  There are lots of cartoons about time clocks - cartoons seem more adult.  Here'sone site. Here's the joke that was found: DEREK: Why did the worker put a clock under his desk? GEORGE: Why? DEREK: Because he wanted to work overtime!   And I wonder who would "clock-in" at the Niagara Falls Floral Clock.  Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Aug 7 2022 - Sheets and Pillowcases

 

Sheets and pillowcases used to be made of cotton.  That's it.  That's all.  In winter, they would dry on the line into white cardboard sheets.  "Freeze-dried and snow bleached."  Now when I go into Sleep Country, there's everything imaginable.   I got the bamboo pillow cases - bamboo is used to make rayon.  Very smooth and cooling. And the trend now about smooth, soft and cooling in sheets and pillow cases.   And what's available today?  Not just cotton.  ,Cotton sateen is available - again very smooth and extra soft.  Sateen is different than satin - it is cotton and has more vertical threads than horizontal, so  it is more fragile.  Satin has very thin, high-thread-count synthetic materials such as nylon, polyester, or acetate.   The smoothest cotton is Egyptian cotton - it has extremely high thread count.  Generally a  high thread count also means warmer.   What about flax linen - they are said to be soothing and breathable, lightweight and sourced from fields in France and Belgium.  Doesn't that sound like a vacation as you sleep? We live in the time of luxury linens available to everyone.  Remember when the Westin Hotel introduced the "Heavenly Bed"?  That was just over twenty years ago.  It kicked off the luxury bed linen for all trend.  Now we're advised on how often we should replace everything in the bedroom - pillows?  1 to 2 years, sheets? 2 years, and so on.  Toss, toss.  That's part of luxury living. And today's picture continues the investigation of time.  Isn't time  elusive and strange?  I checked out this article in space.com  for a better understanding of time. They let me know it is also illusive.  Complicated.  I went to work on the floral clock and gave time a few twists.

Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Oct 31 2020 - On Holiday Time

 

This year's Halloween feels like gridlock: it is Halloween on a Saturday with the time change from daylight savings time tonight - and if you look up - it is a full moon.  Isn't it even supposed to be a blue moon? How often does the time change with Halloween? It looks like the last one was And a full moon!  A full noon on Halloween is around every 19 years.  And the time change on the same day? It looks like the last one was 2015, and then before that 2009.  In 1982 Toronto, Saskatoon and Halifax made kids go trick-or-treating on the Saturday October 30th so they wouldn't be in the dark.  There's a movement to make Halloween on the last Saturday of October to extend the party time, etc.   Perhaps with the Pandemic, we aren't used to so much happening at once.  And with the Pandemic, there's so little happening that this seems like a lot.   Who helps the little pumpkins cross the road safely? The crossing gourd. What type of plants do well on all Hallow’s Eve? Bam-BOO What do you call a witch’s garage? A broom closet. What kind of food would you find on a haunted beach? A sand-witch! What was the witch’s favorite subject in school? Spelling. Here we are with the ever-lasting supply of Chrysanthemums from the Hamilton Gage Park Show. Its theme was First Responders - so there was a bus, and an ambulance as backdrops.

Read past POTDs at my Blog: https://marilyncornwell.blogspot.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Where Time Goes

Dr. Seuss said, “How did it get so late so soon?”  We wonder WHERE time goes.  Isn't that so interesting:  we attempt to locate it somewhere as though it can be placed on a map.   I guess it can.  TimeMap is available from Lexis/Nexis. It is a way of transforming legal case facts into visual timelines.  I took a look at the functionality and the visual representations.  Time is a line with dates and boxes above and below.  In the boxes are "facts".  I would assume that facts are things that happened.  There are "versions" - versions according to people involved in the the case facts. That's interesting. Our non-case lives don't have to capture "versions."  We have simple calendars with days and time slots that we can fill in with things to do.  We call this time management.  The promise is that with the right time management techniques, we can take control of our time, making our work efficient, productive, and relatively stress-free.  Our social order espouses this view, but we've found limited satisfaction in it.  We even have bucket lists to demonstrate that we are in pursuit of ending our days with the sense of nothing left undone.   So let us go back - way back.  In the first century AD, the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote On The Shortness of Life. “This space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily, and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live,” he said, chiding his fellow citizens for wasting their days on pointless busyness, and “baking their bodies in the sun”. "But the man who … organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day…"   Today's image shows motion blur of the Toronto subway scene. Motion blur fascinates me as a representation of time passing.  And then the clocks from my Redbubble site - a hilarious commentary on our current approach to time.  Somehow Redbubble has randomly selected from each season.

Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

WHAT YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW ... Daylight Savings Time

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW...this is a regular headline in the internet.  Today's topic is what you need to know about the time change to daylight saving time this Sunday.  There was nothing that I needed to know in the article on Daylight Saving Time from Globalnews.ca.  But it got me to look at it.  What if there is something important this year and this weekend? When I think of a clock - I see one of those regulation school clocks. Isn't this such a familiar sight all through my generation's childhood and well into adulthood.  We would see these clocks in schools, hospitals, industries.  What does the ITC stand for on this clock?     It stands for independent transmit clock.  Looking at pictures of classrooms, there is the electric clock high on the wall in most of them.  I assume they are electromagnetic. It is interesting how little moI know about the time-keeping of clocks and yet they are so ingrained in everything we do today. Remember the school bell in the classrooms?  It signalled the end of class.  It must have also signalled the beginning, but it is the end that seems more appealing to the memory.  The move to Daylight Savings Time is a welcome one - it signals the end of winter approaches and the beginning of spring is here. Today's image was taken at Vineland Research - one of its buildings has a wall of boston ivy that turns a beautiful red in the fall.  The windows seem to be eyes reflecting the sky.