Don: 0:15

welcome back to the uncannery everybody. I'm don and I'm here tonight with ron and doug.

Ron: 0:22

Hey, it's us again, it's us yeah, Very excited to be invited back. I didn't think you would keep me on the podcast this long. We're still.

Doug: 0:31

I mean, there's still a vote, that's right. Yeah.

Don: 0:33

The draft is coming. I think yeah.

Doug: 0:36

That's right, yeah, Everybody listening. Please vote in on your favorites Text. Take out your Nokia.

Don: 0:43

Absolutely uh take out your Nokia type R O.

Doug: 0:47

N 2, 1 800. We need that sponsorship from Nokia. No, that's right.

Don: 0:54

Well, um it, it does happen to be, uh, just the young days of the new year. So, happy new year to uh, to both of you, um and uh, and thinking of the new year, I, I wanted to uh to both of you, um and uh, and thinking of the new year, I wanted to, um, uh wanted to start tonight by uh, by talking about apologizing.

Don: 1:10

Well, by asking about the, the passage of time. Have you ever like, when you were little, like before you had a concept of time? How did you measure your days, or your, or your events in your life? How did you?

Ron: 1:31

So I definitely remember. I don't know if this was something that just my family did or if other people did the same thing, but I would measure time frequently by the length of cartoon episodes. So if we had to go visit a family member and they were further away. We'd be like how long will it take, mom? And she'd say, like it'll be two Rugrats episodes.

Ron: 1:53

And that was like I could understand that If she said like it'll be 45 minutes to an hour, I'd be like I don't understand, but I can picture sitting in front of a TV for that amount of time.

Don: 2:02

And did you actually have Rugrats playing in the car on the way there?

Ron: 2:06

No, we didn't have televisions and cars yet. I don't think, yeah, but it was just like. That was how my brain understood the passage of time. It was immediate.

Doug: 2:17

Wow, and does that mean because Rugrats would often have two episodes inside of a single episode?

Ron: 2:27

Are we talking a storyline? I want to say it was probably a full, like two episode or two storyline block of rugrats so it'd be four. Well, if it's two episodes, four storylines, it's true, I mean one episode of two storylines and it probably was your mom hedging on, not knowing whether it was right.

Don: 2:44

So yeah, she was just like it could be anywhere from a half hour to three hours and, and it would fit, exactly and it, like you said, it is a unit of time that can be easily broken or extended into whatever past period you need yeah

Doug: 2:57

yeah, to pull us completely off topic, I was uh really weirded out looking at, um, apparently they're trying to reboot rugrats or they have, but now it's all 3d kind of knockoff, pixar-ish type animation and it uh can't be. I'm just old, but yeah, I couldn't do it. At least it's not live action. Oh yeah, the babies cgi their mouths.

Ron: 3:25

Yeah, the babies CGI.

Doug: 3:29

It's like real adults, but CG babies, like they're Scooby-Doo.

Don: 3:33

Just thinking about that True pain. So, doug, how about you Any special ways that you marked time?

Doug: 3:42

Ways that I marked time. I think that I thought the thing that felt the longest when I was younger was maybe a school day, so probably thinking of how much time till recess, then lunch, then break, then leaving home. I mean, I think that that's generally how I started to organize time, because I think before school I I don't think that I was thinking about that as much. I even remember, uh, when my yeah, like my mom and dad would ask me like okay, we'll do that in five minutes, I would be asking has it been five minutes? Yeah, within seconds of them saying that, Before you go to school.

Ron: 4:23

That's a very like paradisiacal time. Right, that's Eden. Right, there is no sun and there is no moon, Not, at all. All the world is a garden to be explored. And then you go to school and it's like what are these structures humans have built?

Don: 4:38

Yeah, I'm even trying to remember, like I remember distinctly keeping track of time in high school, like how many minutes until this period is over, oh yeah, but in elementary school I, I really don't like I don't remember. I don't remember paying that close of attention to a clock back then, like there were clocks.

Doug: 4:55

I know there were clocks in all the rooms, but I don't remember yeah yeah, and I didn't think about a good point, I didn't think about the clock. I just began to get a certain rhythm, for it's going to be lunch in just a second, I feel it, and I was pretty right on most of the time, yeah. So I think that I started to think about things in those types of increments and I kind of remember asking parents like is it about the time for when school starts to lunch? And then they would give me an idea of what it would be.

Don: 5:27

Yeah, that's a it's a good segue that you have just given us, talking about, um, about getting into a rhythm and just sort of, I think, intuiting how, the passage of time and how cause. What I'd like to talk about, uh, in this episode is the measurement of time and how we have come to rely on a system and how that system was sort of developed. So we want to get into our special uncannery magic bus that we have. We'll go all the way back to the beginning of civilization.

Ron: 6:01

Oh my gosh, that was worth every penny we spent on that. I know right.

Don: 6:08

And I want us to try to see if we can figure out. How did we figure out to measure the passage of time? Measuring distance is one thing, because we've got body parts that are all certain lengths and you hold out your arms and that's how tall you are. Cubid is from the-.

Ron: 6:25

How tall is he? He's two and a half arms.

Don: 6:28

But that's, I mean it's. I'm six foot, Like it's, like it's the same. Somebody's foot was that foot, you know Right, and that's how tall I am.

Ron: 6:36

Wow, I find that guy. Is that what we're doing today?

Don: 7:11

no-transcript tell us oh, it's three o'clock, not three 15. For most of human history we would have no idea it was three o'clock, it just was. It was still daytime, it was nighttime. Those were the two sort of divisions, and beyond that it didn't matter, because if it was nighttime I got to sleep and it was daytime I had to go to work, and you don't have to work again until daytime again, and that was all that anybody had to care about, right, Right? So how did we get from there to all of the complications that we have now? What do you think like? What would be the first thing, what would be the first rhythm, that, um, that would get noticed, you think well, I feel like you mentioned, it has to be the the day right like it has to be.

Ron: 7:59

Oh, this is the daytime, this is the nighttime. In the daytime I work and I'm hot and I'm sweaty, and in the nighttime the leopards come out, or saber-toothed tiger yeah, I would agree with that.

Doug: 8:11

I think about this is coming back like the bus is coming back to minecraft in today's world, um, but I think about that for um, the fact that it's so successful, that video game is so successful amongst all age groups, and I think it's because it drops you onto an island and you have to figure out how to start constructing stuff before night happens, because night is when all of the baddies come out and whatnot. Um, and I think I mean I've watched three-year-olds play minecraft before and I they intuitively understand. I have to get this done before this time she just loves life indeed, um, all right, so then, so, so I agree.

Don: 9:01

I think day nine is the most obvious rhythm that gets picked up. So then, what comes next? If we're not administrators of government, we're just Joe Blow cavemen.

Ron: 9:16

My favorite movie.

Don: 9:20

What rhythm is going to matter to us next? What are we going to have to figure out?

Doug: 9:24

We're hunter gatherers. Is that what we're thinking?

Don: 9:26

Yeah.

Ron: 9:27

Um so you want to know when, when, when's the good time for the animals, right, like like? When are the the water Buffalo going to be in the in the Valley and when are the other types of water Buffalo?

Don: 9:41

in the Canyon. So animal migration would matter, right, and, and the the gathering part, it would be the seasons that would affect us. So we'd have to figure out how can we? So? So how would you, how would we go about figuring out when those things would happen?

Ron: 10:01

is it too? Is it too difficult to start creating, uh, like to start recognizing and recording patterns of weather, right? So I mean, you got, this is the snowy time, this is the monsoon time, right, this would be. So you'd be like, oh, usually around this time of year, this is when we can expect these sorts of things. And then that also probably ties in with the animals.

Don: 10:26

But is animals. But is that also too? Is that too big? Do we need to think smaller? I don't think so. I mean because we're, you know, in our, in our magic, our magic bus, we're all the way back with hunter gatherer times, like we're, we're, uh, I think that's, I think that's about right. But the thing that that kind of weirds me out a little bit is we've grown up knowing that there's a cycle.

Don: 10:42

We know that yeah that when it's hot, you know six months later it will be cold and then six months later it will be hot. And we know physically that that's how it's going to work because of the physics of the gravitational pull of the sun and the solar system. But hunter gatherers like I wonder how long it was. Just a mystery. Like you know it's cold now, how you know it's cold now, how much longer will it be cold and and you know how long would it take to get a sense of that rhythm Right, and can you pass that rhythm on to your children?

Don: 11:10

or is that something that they have to experience for themselves? Cause we can pass it on because we've got calendars and clocks and stuff like that, but when we're, when we don't have any way to record the passage of time, we're just experiencing the passage of time. Can you pass that on, or do you think that's something that just has to be experienced?

Ron: 11:28

I think you can pass it on, but it's a crap shoot if the kids believe you or not yeah so it's just like today yeah, yeah, trust me, there's gonna be that's still hot.

Doug: 11:44

Told you it's hot again.

Ron: 11:49

Yeah, I don't know. I wonder if those, if that's my brain is going to like, probably that starts to tie into like early mystical experiences or perceptions of nature, spirits and things like that Right when it's like, yeah it's, it's freezing and terrible and all my cows are dead. I better start praying to anything to you know, bring the spring. And you pray long enough and eventually the spring does arrive. You're like, wow, it worked. So maybe sort of religious tradition is a way to record and pass on that kind of information. Mm-hmm.

Don: 12:24

What about the? Somebody has to be there that they can figure out, and it's attached to those religious, um, I think, uh, um significance though is, there's a way we can figure out how long it's going to be before it gets cold and before it gets hot again, like, like. Even the hunter-gatherers can figure it out, like oh we got it.

Ron: 12:47

What is it? It's the good old moon. Yeah, because the moon changes shape in the sky.

Don: 12:53

It does. It changes shape in the sky and it does so in a very predictable way, um, and unfortunately it's a super, uh inconvenient amount of time. It's like 29.6 days or whatever is is a cycle of the moon, but that's um, that's pretty close to uh to to to a month. So that's that passage of time that we can figure out. If we can count the number of moons until we get to summer, right, or whatever we called summer back then, then it wouldn't be cold anymore and then, uh, the moon's going to. So the uh, the original um, the way the time was counted was was through that, that, the moon. But then how do we get from the moon to a year to uh to then, of course, having to get to hours in a day. How many moons should there be in a year?

Ron: 13:55

How many would be convenient. I do like the possibility of a world where we don't have these answers and we get to decide and we're like there are going to be 36 moons in a year and then a year just becomes this really long period of time. Like it could be the reign of a chieftain or something right. Like that's a unit of human life right.

Doug: 14:14

How long did?

Ron: 14:14

this guy or something. But if you're thinking for, like, how do we find a rational or like a way to explain this to many people? Um, I don't know. That's my answer, yeah.

Don: 14:33

Let's not put Ron in charge of this.

Doug: 14:35

And you're wait. No, you're asking how it ask one more time.

Don: 14:43

How many?

Ron: 14:43

moons in a year is the question. Well, I feel like if you, if you would follow the moons until you find a repeat in the question, well, I feel like if you, you would follow the moons until you find a repeat in the pattern, right, so like eventually a winner would arrive again I think that that's why I'm having trouble with it is like how they would know a year because it's been cold and hot a certain amount of times, and then they would divide that by moons.

Doug: 15:02

Is that what we're thinking?

Don: 15:05

Yeah, we're trying to figure it out.

Doug: 15:08

I wouldn't be in charge of weather.

Ron: 15:10

Let's ask Joe Blow Caveman Joe Blow Caveman, what do you make of all these moons? Let's go to the higher glenics Moon scary. Pale, white face of death in sky.

Don: 15:24

Because here's the problem. So the babylonians figured this out, and they figured it out by about 500 bc, but the babylonians started well before 500 bc. The babylonians go all the way back to to 1800 bc, so it took them some time to uh to figure this out. But the, the lunar cycle, they could predict the start of the month on a 19 year cycle. So exactly 235 lunar months works out in the, the, the regular scheme. But that's a that's like too long of a time to conceptualize, like if we made a year the equivalent of 19 years.

Don: 16:04

Right, right, like our brain wouldn't like that's not the way a cycle would work yeah so, um, so they divided those, uh, that 19 year cycle up into um seven long years that had 13 months in them, and 12 short years that had 12 months in them, and so you had to wait for the astronomers to tell you every year whether it was going to be a long year or a short year, and then sometimes it had 12 months and sometimes it had 13 months, depending upon how many moons there were in the year, to try to keep us in the ballpark of in time with the astronomical cycle of the Earth around the sun. And that happens to be also where our degrees come from too. That's why we have 360 degrees in a circle. Uh, this comes from the babylonians counting the uh, the movement of the sun across the sky.

Don: 16:54

Wow, yeah, but, um, they then decided to divide the uh, the babylonians did the, the day, into 12 equal parts, so sundown to sundown went 12 equal parts, so instead of 24, they were basically two-hour parts and those were called the ru, and then they divided the ru into 30 equal sections, called us. So you had 360 us in a day in a 24-hour period. Yeah, um, which? Uh, again, it's not quite, not quite our time keeping right, but you can see the.

Don: 17:33

The base 12 is in there um and the uh, the, the base 60 is in there. Um, both of those numbers are kind of odd, though, like right, if you're going to start counting something like most of us wouldn't choose, hey, let's. Let's count by 12s, or let's count by 60s. Right um any ideas why they would choose those weird numbers like we. We count things like we count eggs by 12s, we count it dozens you've got a word for it.

Ron: 18:04

Is it a passionate and unruly king?

Don: 18:07

The whims of a passionate ruler the mad Babylonian king 12 wanted everything named after himself.

Ron: 18:18

I've read this Christian Anderson tale.

Doug: 18:22

Let's see, yeah, it it. I find it confusing because we usually count digits you know, like that's a big part of, so I would imagine that they'd be thinking of something, but I don't know what. We have 12 of all, 10 fingers and two nipples. That's it. All 10 fingers and two nipples. Everybody's got them.

Don: 18:52

Some people have more than two. Ah, the 13 is here. That's how we got a baker's dozen.

Doug: 19:01

You do what your job was going to be if you woke up with that. Yeah, we're burned with that third nipple He'll bake like crazy.

Don: 19:09

Actually, it's funny that you mentioned your fingers. We do usually count by tens because we've got ten fingers. It's easy to count that way. But actually this is one of the reasons that we have the 12 as the basis for some of the counting, as well as 60. Because the Babylonians inherited from the Sumerians a numerical system that was base 60. So rather than base 10, it was base 60. And the way that they would count those was using the fingers. So usually we would count a single number on each digit because the sumerians were ancient aliens.

Doug: 19:51

Aha, now we're taking that's next podcast.

Don: 19:54

So, as I was saying, usually we count, uh, on our fingers one number per digit. But if you look at, take your non-dominant hand, usually, and if you count with your thumb and, rather than counting your digits, count the space between your knuckles, like on your pinky finger, you'll have one, two, three on your pinky finger, four, five, six on your ring finger, seven, eight, nine on your middle finger, 10, 11, 12 on your index finger. You can count a dozen with your hand. So apparently this is the way the Babylonians would count their I don't know sheaves of wheat or eggs. So you can count a dozen and then, with your dominant hand, you have five fingers, you can keep track of those dozens, which five dozen would count? 60. 60. That's cool.

Ron: 20:39

That's clever. We should still do that.

Don: 20:41

Yeah, if you were only Babylonian, you could.

Ron: 20:44

Yeah, I've we should still do that. Yeah, and if you were?

Doug: 20:45

only Babylonian you could. Yeah, yeah, I've only been stuck on 10 the entire time.

Ron: 20:48

I'm sorry what happened to you Babylonians.

Don: 20:57

So that's actually what happened, though, with the way the calendar got invented so you had this they figured out that they could divide the sun's ecliptic arc into 12, and then they could divide those 12 pieces into 30 additional pieces, which is about a month, and that's how they wound up with the 360-day year, which of course, put them out of phase a little bit with the astronomical cycle, but it wasn't that important. Back then People didn't have paper calendars in their household that they were keeping track of days. They could just say, hey, at the end of the, at the end of the year, we need five more days in order to get back on track with the uh the. Usually they were measuring from the uh the spring equinox, and then they just would wait five days, and then they would say now we're starting a new year, and it was fine, because there was only a few thousand people and nobody had a calendar to like correct somebody and say no, it's Thursday, cause it wasn't Thursday, it just was another day. I had to go to work.

Ron: 21:55

That's really cool. Imagine getting everyone on board with hey, we're just throwing five more days on this one, right, can't even get on board with time zones.

Doug: 22:01

No. People hate time zones. Yeah, absolutely Call you ahead.

Don: 22:11

So the Egyptians are credited with dividing the day into 24 hours instead of the 12., and I don't know how those two merged, but somehow those merged, so we had a 12-hour day, and the hours, though, were just a division, a fractional division of the amount of sunlight in the day.

Don: 22:34

So it wasn't a passage of 60 minutes. Like you couldn't have a stopwatch in ancient Egypt and say, oh, it's been an hour. You just would say, well, it's been one twelfth of the movement of the sun across the sky, um, which they would measure with a stick, um, and so that would mean that your day was longer in the summertime than it was in the wintertime. So, um, but how would you get paid back? Then you said paid, like yeah, if you were a paid worker, how would you get paid?

Don: 23:02

clamshells yeah right like a flintstone yeah you wouldn't get paid by the hour. Is the point you get paid by by the day, right? So I would want to only work winter days, because winter days are shorter, that's right of course in egypt they don't change as much as they do in Northern Europe Right right. But anyways.

Ron: 23:30

Would you get time and a half on a summer day?

Doug: 23:33

Mm-hmm.

Ron: 23:33

Is that where time and a half comes from?

Doug: 23:37

It's not Get the bosses in here, yeah.

Don: 23:43

Then we have to move forward quite a bit of time before we actually get minutes being counted, um, uh, so a minute is a one 60th division of that hour, right, so we got an hour is one 12th of a daytime or one 12th of the nighttime. We would divide that into 60, mostly based because of that's how the Babylonians and Sumerians were dividing things, but the 60 was kept because of how fractional it is. So apparently the Babylonians and the Sumerians didn't have a concept of fractions, so you couldn't have by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 without any fractions. The only number you can divide by is 7. And the same is true for 360.

Don: 24:37

So 7 kind of becomes this mystical, magical number that doesn't work, but all the other numbers do work. Number that doesn't work but all the other numbers do work. Um, and they think that that might be why seven is, uh, one of the reasons it's been given sort of that mystical, magical, um reputation. Yeah, um, but then how many days did we wind up within a week? Seven, oh my gosh, right. So like it's weird the whole thing.

Don: 25:03

uh maps out just why do we have seven days in a week, though?

Doug: 25:10

Because we got the 10 digits to count and then we've got the knuckles, and so when you get fingers removed for doing bad things, let him cook, he's on it, it you better, not it's not going well is it one of those holdovers?

Ron: 25:33

but I mean, like it kind of works out right, what's we give? What's seven times four, 28, eight.

Don: 25:40

So it kind of works into our, our 30-day approximate months that we've created it's close to our 30-day month, it's closer to our 29 point, some days lunar calendar as well, but it's still not perfect for either of those right right. So the the moon cycle keeps moving a little bit if we, if we're counting by sevens, um, uh. Oddly enough, the reason we have seven days in a week seems to be because people liked it better. There was actually an eight-day week that was used by the Etruscans that the Romans inherited, and the eight-day week was used by ancient Rome, um and uh, um.

Don: 26:26

It was uh, um, a market system. And so the days of the week, the eight days a week where they didn't have names, they just were lettered Um, so it was a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, um and um. Each little town would have market days on a different letter. So if you were a traveling um marketeer, you would be able to have a circuit of, like, eight little villages you could visit and uh, you would have, uh, have a different market experience on each one of those days, and you can.

Ron: 26:57

So um, that's a real small business-minded society.

Doug: 27:01

They're really out there helping them out sorry, little billy, you're not getting oranges until d, that's right when does the orange man come, but the?

Don: 27:16

the Romans encountered a seven day week from Egypt and and others and, and apparently people liked seven days better because one of those days was a day without a market. So you had six days of market and then a day without a market for festivals and religious purposes, and then, um, so we just sort of landed on seven. Wow yeah.

Ron: 27:38

Can we do that again? Can we bring that back up for debate you?

Don: 27:42

bet how many days? How many days? Let's just try six.

Ron: 27:45

I mean, I'm not to try on anything crazy, but six sounds okay. How many to try on anything crazy, but six sounds okay? How many work days in your six-day week? Four, baby, no three, I'm going hard three on, three off, would you?

Don: 27:58

go every other day or would you go three in a block and three in a?

Ron: 28:01

block. I like three in a block. I'm kind of glad we work in a block. I would, because I want the. I want the block of time off and then like I think, I think, the, I think you live really big. You know, and you have, you know, big tragedy block of working. You got big, big joy. Block of not working. Hmm, big tragedy.

Doug: 28:22

Big tragedy, big joy. That's my new rap album. We'll be plugging that at the end of the cast, good.

Don: 28:33

Um, but then we needed to name them because A, b, c, d, e, f, they weren't very inventive names. That wasn't cool with everybody. So we needed to come up with names for the days of the week. Do you know what the days of the week are named after?

Ron: 28:46

they're gods right, at least in English. Many of them are like norse gods right thursday thursday according to neil gaiman, right? Yeah, you got thursday wednesday's like woden's day, right? Right friday, freya or something uh-huh, and then, uh, sunday is. Everyone knows the famous god, famous god Sun of the Norse pantheon. Saturday would be the famous Mr Tubness.

Doug: 29:19

Tubness Day Narnia show, though I was not expecting that.

Ron: 29:26

That's as far as I got.

Don: 29:28

You skipped Monday.

Doug: 29:29

Yeah, Monday is the one that I'm going.

Ron: 29:32

Moon. You got, moon you got sun Is Saturday, like star day or something like that.

Doug: 29:38

Or the day to sit.

Don: 29:41

I sat on day.

Doug: 29:44

The day of sitting, my favorite Tuesday, tuesday is very strange.

Ron: 29:50

Tear. Tear is a Norse god, tews is Tyr that's Tyr's day. Tyr's day, tyr's day you're grinning, like you know. I do, he does, you're grinning like a man watching Apesadon well, think about my response earlier.

Don: 30:06

Apes would probably be more articulate well, you're right, they're named after gods and they were named after the Babylonian gods, actually, originally because the Babylonians had that seven-day week that the Etruscans messed up. So they named the days of the week after their seven favorite gods, and then the Greeks took those and just changed the names to their seven gods. And then the Romans took those and just changed the names to their seven gods. And then the Romans took those and just changed the names to the Latin gods. And so in most languages, so in Spanish and French, you can see the names of the Latin god names there. So, for example, miraculous in Spanish is named after the god Mercury, who's the messenger god.

Don: 30:55

When the Anglo-Saxons encountered the Romans, they basically said, hey, the seven-day week thing is kind of cool, you've got a way to count that. But we don't have Mercury as a god, we have Woden, who was, of course, the head god in the Norse and Anglo-Saxon pantheon, but he also was a messenger. He would deliver messages. So Wednesday became as Woden's day. Like you pointed out, thursday does come from Thor in the Latin. That's jueves, in Spanish rather rather uh, which is jove. So it's for jupiter, who was the god of thunder in greek and then. So, rather than taking the head god and making it the head god, we just took the thunder part of it.

Ron: 31:45

Um, curious coincidence, almost like the gods were given to us by an ancient species of extraplanar beings.

Don: 31:57

It's funny. You should mention that I just saw, actually, a post that had a picture of the oldest pair of socks that exist in the world that apparently were produced in Egypt in the 5th century and they just have two toes in Egypt in the fifth century. And uh, they just have two toes in them, like two equal piece. It's right, like so. It's very strange. Indeed, it seems to be um they're out there.

Ron: 32:20

Yeah, they don't buy the official narrative. People I want to believe by my book All right so uh, do you know spanish or french?

Don: 32:30

do you know what friday is?

Ron: 32:32

um, I used to definitely took german oops free talk, yep friday's viernes yes, which is similar to spring. It is yeah yeah, it's.

Don: 32:48

Venus is the is the latin god, so it's the only day of the week named after um. Well, it's not true. It's a day of the week named after um, goddess of beauty, so it's named after a, a female god, and so um. The female god in the anglo-saxon is freya, freya, which is, so it's freya's day um saturday. You guys don't know who Saturday is named after.

Ron: 33:11

Saturn.

Don: 33:12

Oh, of course.

Ron: 33:13

It is Saturn, horry old Saturn, with his great white beard, who is the father of Jupiter.

Don: 33:20

And Anglo-Saxons didn't have anybody, so they're like, well, we'll just keep the name.

Don: 33:25

So Saturn is named after the Roman god, saturn, but the others they switched over to uh to Anglo-Saxon, so um in Latin, uh, now the in Spanish. The Sunday is named after the holy day, the Domingo Um, but it is named after the sun. Monday is named after the moon, there's like. So where do we get the name of the moon from? Might be from a goddess named mona um, who was a goddess of the moon um. And tuesday is named after uh, two uh which is a brother up here I think okay um.

Don: 33:59

Two is the god of war, but so the, the positions, like the, the positions of the days of the week all line up. So, uh, two is the god of war. From the Anglo-Saxons, which uh is Martis, in in the Latin, which is for Mars, the God of war, um, so, uh, um, the days of the week all come from the, uh, the, the Pantheon, but um, it's actually, um, they named each hour of the day after each one of those gods. So the day was named after the god of the first hour of the day, and because there's seven of them and we've got 24 hours in a day, when you put that together, every day moves three gods over, and so we wind up with seven different gods, luckily, over that pattern, um, but uh, I don't know what they did with that knowledge. Like, why would you know? Like, at 10 o'clock it's venus time, like I don't know it's venus testers in my house you know.

Doug: 35:04

Going back to german, I feel like they kind of had a figure like wednesday is mitvok the day of the middle folk yeah middle of the week. Couldn't have been easier. They knew what they were doing, but then it gets weird, like dean's tog is tuesday I don't understand dean's tog.

Ron: 35:22

Yeah, who's dean? What's it mean? Yeah?

Doug: 35:26

don't know. Yeah, the tog is always day, but um yeah, I don't have anything for dint, so I got carried away with wednesday um, all right, so then we need to divide our hours down into to smaller pieces?

Don: 35:44

um, and, and what do we divide them into?

Ron: 35:48

minutes.

Don: 35:49

Minutes, yeah, and then minutes are divided into seconds.

Doug: 35:54

Seconds this we know, Don't do milliseconds, though. That's where it gets weird. Why do we switch back?

Don: 36:03

So the division of the hour into 60 minutes, the, the, what does minute mean? Well there's, you guys both have studied english before.

Ron: 36:16

Yeah, I used to use this word and people looked at me like this is not a word, but it is minute right.

Don: 36:21

It's like a small, small it is, and a minute is a small part of an hour, and that's actually where that comes from. It's and and it's again. It's another pattern that people don't pay attention to, but actually the the way that you place the emphasis in the word changes it from an adjective to a noun, or vice versa. Yeah, so so minute is the adjective meaning small, and then if we wanted to make it a noun, we would change it to a minute. Same thing you do with produce and produce, um, so uh, it always gets the blue squigglies in Microsoft word.

Ron: 37:00

Minute does minute that they don't like you using my new. They're like that's not right, that's not.

Don: 37:06

Hmm, computers take over the world. I guess we'll.

Ron: 37:09

Yeah, grammarly AI, I think they shrink the vocabulary.

Don: 37:12

They do.

Doug: 37:13

Yeah, they do.

Don: 37:14

So the official Latin name for it is pars minuta prima, the very first small part. And that actually is important, because if we divide it into 60 small parts, then we're going to divide each of those small parts into a further 60 small parts. Those would be our seconds. That would be pars minuta secunda, which is where our second comes from. So my minutes are called minutes because they're small and seconds are called seconds because they're the second small part, the second small part that's crazy Mm-hmm that's crazy.

Ron: 37:56

Why do education is so designed to just make you remember things like with when you're probably someone's teacher was cool and taught them this stuff, but like when you're a kid. That's like. I just need you to understand that there are 60 seconds in a minute. You know right like who cares what any of these words mean? Just Just know, that but full circle.

Doug: 38:10

Going back to that conversation of how I started to look at time, I think it's because, systematically right, you're in situations where it's like I need you to have the base level of knowledge that all of us do so you can just interact, and so a lot of that fun stuff gets in the way, because at five I think you just want to play, but you also need to learn what seconds are in the way, because at five, I think you just want to play, but you also need to learn what seconds are.

Doug: 38:33

So you're not going to get the fun at five. I'm like who's miraculous? I'm not even I'm not even hearing that word. I'm just thinking about recess. I still want to know who dean is.

Don: 38:40

Yeah, and why did he get a whole day? Yeah poor dean. Yeah, but mean it's a good point because the and and I think it's a point that's relevant because it it goes to like the whole new math and you know, and now the common core has come in and is trying to change things again.

Don: 39:01

And uh, and we're not. Uh, students are not being taught times tables, because that's just memorization. They want, uh, you know, to be able to, to do the mathematical reasoning, to arrive at what those solutions are. So which is the like, which is the more relevant? Should you just know the fact, or do you need to know the history of where the fact came from? Is it?

Ron: 39:25

I mean the. The first one is definitely most relevant, right, like, just have the fact right, because that's the information you need to draw to mind. But I feel like the second is maybe you know, this is maybe dumb, but like, I feel like if you, if you arm someone with the knowledge of the, of where it all comes from, that's how you start to engender like a intellectual curiosity, right, yeah.

Ron: 39:49

I feel, and that's like a it's like I feel and that's like it's like a teach a man to fish or give him a fish sort of situation.

Doug: 39:57

I for sure do not retain things without the second part. The second part, if I can understand how it fits into the lore or the, that's when I become ingrained or it becomes engrossing for me of like. I would like to know about that now because I see how it's part of a larger thing.

Don: 40:16

And I agree with that, Like that's. It's one of the reasons why.

Doug: 40:19

Etymology of words is so interesting to me because it helps me remember new vocabulary, except for the Dean talk, which apparently I don't get to ever know that's

Ron: 40:31

the Germans and like etymology, you start to realize, like, how much of our knowledge is based on things that no one really understands anymore, like it's so far removed, right, like we think of, like, oh, the ancient world, oh, those Babylonians, sure, maybe they existed, right, but the fact that we're like still like they're, they're, they're sort of base level systems, still are integrated into our daily lives in such a degree and we don't even recognize or know that says a lot about, like, how knowledge uh, passes through generations. Right, and like what is kept like yeah, it was useful, what, why that's not important? Right, what is kept like yeah, it was useful, what, what, why that's not important.

Don: 41:10

Right, and that's I mean, and that's what's crazy to me is cause, literally like 3000 years ago, Bob the Babylonian said hey Joe, blow, let's count. That's the caveman. Oh yeah, sorry, oh yeah.

Doug: 41:23

Later man.

Don: 41:25

Let's, and now we still are. Yeah, but nobody knows. Well, like it's impossible to know who Bob the Babylonian actually was, that came up with that idea. But like, how does that last 3,000 years? Right, and you know, people can't remember. You know, I don't know. Last week's meme, exactly Like everything to now seems to be moving so fast.

Ron: 41:50

So yeah, and I used to actually as a Last week's meme, exactly Like everything to now seems to be moving so fast and I used to actually, as a kid, always hate that it was 60, that like an hour was 60 minutes and a minute was 60 seconds. I was like why? Why can't it just be 100?

Doug: 42:04

Money is 100. Money is 100.

Don: 42:07

So you're a milliseconds guy, got it, which is an innovation in british money, of course. Like just before our lifetimes, right in the early 1970s, they moved from old british money to the decimal system that the american money has been using. But, um, what do you think? What do you think about decimal time, like would that? Would that solve a lot of our problems if we had a hundred minutes in an hour, and I mean we would have 10 hours in a day um, I mean, I can't make a real argument against it just because it's so ingrained in me.

Doug: 42:39

Like I'm not, I'm not eight anymore, you know.

Ron: 42:42

So, like I don't know, I've dropped my qualm with time right but um uh, no, I don't think it actually adds anything right Like the base idea that 100 is such a beautiful easy divisible number is, I think, again related to our anatomy, right.

Ron: 42:59

It's like, well, because we stare at these, you know two groups of five digits all day. So we're just sort of like our brains are programmed to think of that as easily. But I don't see why it's any harder now that if you just look at your hands in a different way right like we're using the spaces between the knuckles, the same kind of thing count doug's nipples, lincoln, I'll tell you, I'm not a baker because there have been attempts to improve, to improve both timekeeping and calendar design by making it a decimal system.

Don: 43:35

And decimal time does exist today in certain computer applications, oh yeah. But what's strange about those decimal times?

Don: 43:47

I don't understand the particular purpose that they serve in computer, in the computer world, but a lot of them are based off just like you know, Bob's birthday from 1973., like they all count from a particular event that happened in the past and they just are counting the number of minutes since that event happened. Yeah, but to the. The French revolution actually tried to improve on the, the calendar keeping and timekeeping, um, and if you think about it, well, what was I mean? So this is a test. You guys weren't warned was coming. Um, what uh, what was the? What was the purpose of the French revolution? What were they trying to uh to to improve in in, in general overall?

Doug: 44:29

We're not loving the aristocracy, let's just start there. Yeah.

Ron: 44:33

Don't like them, don't like their clergy friends either.

Don: 44:36

No, the first two estates, right so? And the first estate, the clergy friends. They're all in charge of the religious stuff, and we just talked about all the days of the week being named after Clergy stuff right.

Ron: 44:49

Well, after God right.

Don: 44:54

And granted they're clergy stuff, right, well, after gods right, and granted their gods that that the clergy in the french revolution would for sure have said we're, we're pagan, yet we're still using them. Even today they still use them. But, uh, but we needed to find a way to remove all of those religious references. And what's the purpose of a, of an annual calendar to record history and to keep track of festival days?

Don: 45:13

oh, yeah, yeah because, where does our current calendar like? Who was in charge of developing our current calendar? The church, it was, and the whole purpose of the church, uh, developing a process of the calendar was to find the day of easter actually was, was the original goal of the development of the AD BC time system in the sixth century. Um and uh. So all of that in the French revolution, if we're, if we're, you know, purist in, you know, trying to eliminate all influence of religion on our society, which was one of their goals we have to completely redo everything, because the whole calendar is based on religious festivals, like the placement of christmas, the placement easter, saints days, the names of the days a week are all so uh, so they basically just like went blank slate and started over. So, think, metric system, how many days you're going to have in a week? 10, yeah, 10 days in a week that's not going to fly, is it?

Don: 46:13

how many? Well depends how many work days would you have?

Doug: 46:16

oh, five easy so basically at work week non-work yeah yeah, um, they went nine what so you got nine work days and then you have one day off.

Don: 46:30

That was not a work day, but of course it replaced sunday, but it wasn't really sunday, because sunday would have been a religious day. It just was a non-work day.

Doug: 46:39

Um so how many people like I think I do?

Don: 46:41

they probably didn't like this very much well, I wonder, like again, like every day, you know I I know uh, forever, jacques, a peasant in the, um, the, the street, um, like, did they even know what day it was? Like the only reason they would know is because somebody at church told them today's Christmas or whatever. Like they didn't ever have a reason to. I wouldn't think the majority of them um merchants and things like that that have shipments and and things like that, of course they, of course they would have. But but the general population, I wonder if they they would have? Um, so they've got a 10-day week. So how many days are how many? How many days we're going to have in a month? 30? So yeah, we got three weeks in a in a month. So that sounds better. Sure, yeah, three weeks in a month. How many months in a year? Twelve.

Don: 47:35

There are yeah, I don't know why, because it doesn't fit the whole metric system.

Ron: 47:39

You can't go around changing everything too fast, right.

Doug: 47:41

People will lose their minds, that's enough. I think that people would.

Ron: 47:46

And so what? We have 30 hours in a day too.

Don: 47:49

We'll get to that. We'll get to that. So let's, let's get the calendar worked out first. So we've got 12 months of 30 days. That's do we need to do the new math.

Doug: 48:02

Oh, I'm sorry 360, 360.

Don: 48:03

So we're going to be short five days, five days we are. So we're going to add those five days at the end of the year and those are going to be the only holidays we get all year.

Ron: 48:16

All next to each other. Uh-huh, it's like having your birthday on Christmas, yeah.

Don: 48:22

Well, and they're all smushed together, they all happen at the same time and, uh, the whole purpose is to, um, um, get us back on track with the, uh, the, the movement of the sun across the sky. People would be going wild, like absolutely nuts those are your purge days.

Ron: 48:43

Oh yeah, those five days that don't exist yeah well, and they placed them in September as well.

Don: 48:50

I'm trying to remember what they started. It was like the September massacres was the day that they started counting from. It was like September 22nd. So you get the middle of September, you get five days off and that would be your only break from work for the whole year. All right, so let's come for the whole year, but all right, so let's come back to to the day then. Yeah so, yeah. So how many hours in a day we're going to again thinking metric system, like it's not metric system but thinking?

Ron: 49:21

maybe 20, maybe 25, 25.

Don: 49:24

That seems more round to you than than 24.

Ron: 49:27

Yeah.

Don: 49:28

Yeah, if we're staying decimal 20, maybe back to 20. No, they chose 10. Ooh, yeah, uh, which means that, uh, an hour is like three hours long, like our sense of three hours would be. How long an hour is?

Don: 49:45

because they had 10 hours divided into 100 decimal minutes and each decimal minute was divided into 100 decimal seconds. So the actual count like one decimal hour is 144 conventional minutes. So it's like two hours and a half or so. That's a lot of Rugrats episodes Too many. Just seems like it would make the day go so slow.

Don: 50:11

Right, like looking at the clock, like it would take forever for it to move, uh, even the tiniest little bit. Yeah, um, so, uh, they um, there you go. Um, not surprisingly, as you pointed out, this was not super popular. It only lasted about eight years. And then popular only lasted about eight years and then they eight whole years, that's a long time decided to pull it off. They, um, they had to change the names of everything too. We, getting back to the, the calendar, um, they didn't want to name any of the months after, uh, any of the things that what are we never talked about this?

Ron: 50:43

do you know?

Don: 50:43

what? What did our? What are our month?

Ron: 50:45

some of they're like very roman right july j. July is Julius and August is Augustus and September is famous. Septiembre is the traitor.

Doug: 51:01

December is kind of confusing oh.

Ron: 51:03

Sept is a numerical right Seven.

Don: 51:05

Sept is seven.

Ron: 51:06

So it's not the seventh month. It's not, they screwed it up somewhere. September, October does make sense, though, yeah, eight November is.

Doug: 51:17

November, but yeah, then they skip, and then we're in December, which is 10 again.

Don: 51:21

December is 10 again.

Doug: 51:22

Yeah.

Don: 51:23

It's true, but it's the 12th month. It gets weird, Holy cow. What about January? January?

Ron: 51:30

January.

Don: 51:37

I cow. What about january? January, I feel like I know, I want to know, I don't know. January's janice oh yeah, there he is.

Ron: 51:40

And february fabulous, they don't know febru is a mystery.

Don: 51:50

Lost the time. Yeah, there's a possible festival of forgiveness that occurred that may have had a name similar to February.

Doug: 51:59

February is when you give up those grudges March the.

Ron: 52:04

Ides, yeah, big Ides time Mark.

Don: 52:08

All the months had an Ides, though, I know, but March, march, the I'ds were particularly potent.

Ron: 52:16

But what was March named after I got? Either Mars or Mark was a big name back then.

Don: 52:23

Mars. Okay yeah, april's Aprilis, which is a springtime goddess, may is Maya and June is probably Juno, makes sense, and Julius, as you point out, is Julius Caesar and Augustus was Augustus Caesar.

Ron: 52:43

Those must have replaced prior months.

Don: 52:46

They did, they did. Julius replaced Quintilius, poor Quint, oh, they did, they did. Uh, julius replaced quintilius, and uh, and sextilius for uh, august. So, but you've already, you've already kind of landed on um, on something uh important about the way that we number the months um, because September is the ninth month of our year, but September means um 7th month, october, 8th, november, 9th, 9th, and December is Big 10. Big 10, yeah, so we squeezed them in. How did we get them off? How did we get off counting?

Ron: 53:29

Did they? If you've been listening carefully.

Don: 53:32

I gave you the answer earlier tonight.

Ron: 53:35

I haven't been but here's my guess Julius didn't want his month happening in the winter, so he went and he shoved, he moved it two months over yeah, and they moved everything back I could see him doing that.

Don: 53:50

That's, that fits the profile for sure, but that's not what happened?

Ron: 53:54

you told us I did. What did you tell us Doug Doug? Consult your notes, please. Let me see here.

Doug: 54:03

Drawn a blank, quite literally.

Don: 54:06

What is the first day of the year, january 1st? Now it is January 1st, but if we go all the way back in time, we need something. January 1st has no astronomical marker on it, so we don't have a way to say it's january oh, did we start the calendar at spring?

Ron: 54:27

we did what?

Don: 54:28

what's the marker? What's the astronomical marker?

Ron: 54:31

oh the equinox.

Don: 54:33

So march was our first month. If you count from March, then September is the seventh month and July is the fifth month, quintilis. So all of the numbers work out fine if you count from March, because originally, prior to Julius Caesar getting his hands on it, the Romans were doing the same thing that the Etruscans were doing, where they would have 10 months, uh, they would have, uh, 10 months, and then they would have, like winter, yeah, so between December and the first day of spring was just like dead time. Um, they didn't have a name for it, they didn't count the months, it just was. It was.

Don: 55:12

The year is over and now we're waiting for the astronomers to tell us that it's the spring equinox and we would start again and the Romans actually would count from the start of the new moon and they would count the number of days prior to. So the way they would express the date would be it's like six days before the new moon in March. Like it's super. You can think Roman numerals are confusing. Roman calendaring would have been even worse, but that's where our names of the months come from. So we're still recognizing the Roman gods and a couple of Caesars thrown in there, but the French Revolution. Of course we're trying to get rid of all religious references. So they named their months after the I don't know the, the quality of the time of year. So, uh, they had vintage. Uh, of course they would say it in french, but uh, vintage, uh cold and frost, they would have snowy, rainy and windy. Uh, their springtime months were um flowery, andy and meadow, so they all were sort of I'm born in meadow, that's right.

Ron: 56:26

Can you imagine being born in windy?

Don: 56:32

I think I had an aunt who was born in windy.

Ron: 56:35

I think I had one who should have been.

Doug: 56:39

Oh, no names here.

Don: 56:43

The British, of course got a hold of that though. So the British of course got a hold of the names, and they came up with their own parody names. So the British would call it Wheezy, sneezy and Freezy.

Doug: 56:54

Slippy.

Don: 56:55

Drippy and Nippy, showery, flowery Bowery, and then Hoppy Croppy and Poppy.

Ron: 57:00

All 12 dwarves, that's right. Those biting British satirists. You can't escape them, no matter what you do. Always around the corner, all right.

Don: 57:14

So what would we do to make time better?

Ron: 57:19

the measurement of time, freeze it, stop it. Um, it's a very like fun kind of question, because when you started talking about the how the, the french tried to change their day and their calendar and you said like, yeah, 10 days in a week, yeah, my heart, my heart, my heart sank, you know. And so that I think, how you react to that kind of a thing tells you a lot about how much we we feel about time and how time isn't really just a sort of it's not just a rational, calculated, necessary measurement, right, but we have a lot of like emotional stakes tied into the way we think about time, right? So, yeah, do you want the day to move fast? You want it to move slow? Um, you know, by speeding down an hour, maybe you know time's really flying, but then you have more hours in a day.

Ron: 58:11

I'm trying to think back, like when, like you were saying, doug, as a kid right, you're a kid what do you? What do you want time to be? And I don't, I don't know if it really matters, right, like, hey, uh, you know you got four hours until until lunch. Is that that different from two hours? Because you've reduced the minutes in an hour like as a kid does that sound better sound worse.

Doug: 58:35

Well, I think of the fact that you, you literally described the time before, knowing what time is, as Eden, as John. Yeah, I mean that tells you everything. Um, I suppose, thinking about time, everything is based on efficiency, isn't it? I mean, realistically, I frequently have yeah connotations of efficiency tied to time.

Ron: 58:59

I measure how effective or productive I am being based on the amount of time something took, an activity took right and even every society mentioned.

Doug: 59:09

We're looking at these are market days, these festival days. We're eliminating this because we're creating a new system that is even identifying the way that we're doing things so we can be more efficient. And then French Revolution it's about how many work days and then days off that you have. So it seems that almost every construction of time is based on the efficiency of times that you should be working and resting, in a sense, so making time better. I guess the next question would be like in terms of overall happiness, because I think moving away from that would be the greatest way to do that.

Don: 59:46

But and that's what I'm wondering if, going back to the idea that for the majority of human history people haven't been keeping time the way that we had do in our, in our culture? Right, yeah it, it, there's records from, uh, from ancient, uh, roman times, of the romans would name their years after whoever was the consul, um, administratively. But the person in the street, like they, wouldn't have a reason to say, oh, it's the first, you know the fourth year of of marcus aurelius, or like it just wouldn't matter. They would mark it from important events oh, it's the fourth year of Marcus Aurelius, or like it just wouldn't matter, they would mark it from important events Like, oh, it's the fourth year from the Great Famine, or it's the fourth year from the major earthquake, or right, there would be these important markers in their lives that then became the delineator of time, as opposed to this arbitrary measure of you know progress, right, and I think it's still actually that.

Ron: 1:00:41

It is like, when I think about time, I can't, I can't tell you what happened in 2011, but I do mark a major like. I mark the relationship of different, of myself and other things, two major milestones in my life. So so like in 2011,. Uh, I did graduate. So like that's a like things that happened after I graduated is like a easy for me to figure out. Uh like, uh, you know what was going on there. And like the COVID-19 pandemic has been the latest big culturally X years since then Right.

Doug: 1:01:15

I was just going to say people big culturally. Oh, it's been x years since then. Right, I was just gonna say people. I I've thought a lot about this recently. People now say it was covid, yeah, which is like I mean, that's not even a sentence that makes sense if we're talking about time, but people call it that because that's it's a new epic?

Don: 1:01:32

yeah, it is yeah I had a moment tonight where I actually earlier before, uh, before you guys came, uh, came to do the podcast tonight where, um, I was, uh, I was at an event that uh, I've been uh, uh, a work event that I've been doing for a number of of years, and what I realized tonight was that I have almost been doing it for half of my entire life, was that I have almost been doing it for half of my entire life. That was one of those moments that I'd never thought about it in that term before.

Doug: 1:02:03

Right.

Don: 1:02:03

Like, um, like I agree with you. I think there's major moments in in my life that kind of like mark new starts of a of a period of my life and uh, and I've never thought of it, though in terms of a fraction of my entire life, the way that it struck me tonight and uh, and it, it, it didn't make me happy to think of it that way.

Ron: 1:02:27

Actually, it was rather foreboding, because it depends on which side of that of the of the that calendar, if you will. You're on right, like um. I think we were talking once and you were like when you're a kid, you know, it's it's November, it's it's September, cause that means it's almost Christmas time, right? And then how? Like, oh my gosh, it takes forever to get to Christmas and the anticipation of every Christmas and Christmas is like it's may as well be three months long in your head, and now at 34.

Don: 1:02:57

It is three months long because it starts in August.

Ron: 1:02:59

Yeah, we fixed that. But now, at 34, it's like, oh, it's Christmas and it flies by and it doesn't have the same impact. And you correctly pointed out, don, to me that the reason this is is because Do you remember, I do I was one of your. No, no, no, I want you.

Don: 1:03:19

Yeah, and it wasn't me that found it, it was a. It's a, it's a research study, so it's it's officially somehow determined, but it has to do with the fraction of your life that it is.

Ron: 1:03:30

Yeah.

Don: 1:03:30

Right when you're five years old. Next Christmas is 20% of your life away.

Doug: 1:03:35

Right, that takes forever to get there.

Don: 1:03:37

I'm 50 years old. Christmas is, you know, 2% of my life. Until we get to the next one, like it'll, it'll be here tomorrow, yeah, so yeah, it's uh. It all moves much more quickly than uh than I think we want it to.

Ron: 1:03:50

And I think there are times where, uh, we choose to be cognizant of time as it is kept, and then we forget it entirely. And for me it's every day when I'm at work, I know exactly what time it is, and as soon as I get home, you know. You look at the clock. Oh my God, it's 945, right, like you've, completely you know you no longer are ruled by time in that way. And I think that goes back to your thing, doug, which is because particularly telling time during the day is is an invention of a, of a society that works right and is paid by the hour and has to produce by the hour and et cetera.

Ron: 1:04:27

Right, and when I'm not doing that, I don't care what time it is, as long as I have more of it, so I can keep doing fun stuff on my own, right, yeah.

Doug: 1:04:34

In expression, time flies when you're having fun goes. Yeah, kind of outlines that yeah.

Don: 1:04:42

Well, thank you both for a good discussion about about the passage time next time that I will be hosting, so it won't be the next time that our listeners are listening, but the next time around I'm going to monkey wrench this. So I'm I I hope that y'all enjoy your, your calm sense of of existential time right now, cause uh, uh, we'll see what happens next.

Ron: 1:05:07

Okay, I'm excited, I'm, I'm. I'm open to exploring new perceptions of time and new feelings about it. Thank you so much, don, for bringing this to our attention. I'm a much wiser person now.

Don: 1:05:20

All right, thanks, join us next time. Thanks.