Do you know?

• Only 10% of the cells in our body are human; the rest are bacteria and parasites. (Ref. "Human Wildlife by Dr. Robert Buckman)
• Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born within a few hours of each other--on Feb. 12, 1809.
• Isaac Newton (1624-1727) was born the year Galileo died.
• Albert Einstein was born the year James Maxwell (1831-1879) died.

The Alands and the Falklands

Reference: “Cultures and Organizations—Software of the Mind” by Geert Hofsteede; ISBN: 0-07-029307-4

The Aland islands are a small archipelago halfway between Sweden and Finland; as part of Finland they belonged to the Tsarist Russian empire. When Finland declared itself independent from Russia n 1917 the majority of the 30,000 inhabitants of the islands wanted to join Sweden, which had ruled them before 1809. The Finns then arrested the leaders of the pro-Swedish movement. After emotional negotiations in which the newly created League of Nations participated, all parties, in 1912, agreed to a solution in which the islands remained Finnish but with a large amount of regional autonomy.

The Falkland islands are also a small archipelago disputed by two nations: the United Kingdom which has colonized the islands since 1833 and nearby Argentina which claims rights on them since 1767 and has tried to get the United Nations to support its claim. The Falklands are about 8 times as large as the Alands but with less than 1/15 of the Alands number of inhabitants: about 1800 poor sheep farmers. The Argentinean military occupied the islands in April 1982 whereupon the British sent an expeditionary force, which chased off the occupiers, at the cost of (officially) 725 Argentinean and 225 British lives and enormous financial expense. Besides, the economy of the islands has been further damaged because it cannot develop without trade relations with the Argentinean hinterland.

Today, the Falklands remain a disputed territory needing constant British subsidies and military presence; the Alands have become a prosperous part of Finland, attracting many Swedish tourists.

Longitude & Latitude & International Date Line

A key geographical question throughout the human experience has been, "Where am I?" In classical Greece and China, attempts were made to create logical grid systems of the world to answer this question. The ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy created a grid system and listed the coordinates for places throughout the known world in his book Geography. But it wasn't until the middle ages that the latitude and longitude system was developed and implemented. This system is written in degrees.

Latitude
• When looking at a map, latitude lines run horizontally.
• Latitude lines are also known as parallels since they are parallel and are an equal distant from each other. Each degree of latitude is approximately 69 miles (111 km) apart; there is a variation due to the fact that the earth is not a perfect sphere but an oblate ellipsoid (slightly egg-shaped).
• Degrees latitude are numbered from 0° to 90° north and south. Zero degrees is the equator, the imaginary line which divides our planet into the northern and southern hemispheres. 90° north is the North Pole and 90° south is the South Pole.
The Equator
• The equator is located at zero degrees latitude.
• The equator divides the planet into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
• The equator runs through Indonesia, Ecuador, northern Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Kenya, among other countries.
• It is 24,901.55 miles (40,075.16 kilometers) long.
• On the equator, the sun is directly overhead at noon on the two equinoxes - near March and September 21.
The Tropic of Cancer
• The Tropic of Cancer is located at 23.5° North of the equator.
• It runs through Mexico, the Bahamas, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, and southern China.
The Tropic of Capricorn
• The Tropic of Capricorn lies at 23.5° South of the equator.
• It runs through Australia, Chile, southern Brazil (Brazil is the only country that passes through both the equator and a tropic), and northern South Africa.

Longitude
• The vertical longitude lines are also known as meridians. They converge at the poles and are widest at the equator (about 69 miles or 111 km apart).
• Zero degrees longitude is located at Greenwich, England (0°). The degrees continue 180° east and 180° west where they meet and form the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean.
• Greenwich, the site of the British Royal Greenwich Observatory, was established as the site of the Prime Meridian by an international conference in 1884.
• The Prime Meridian at zero degrees longitude and the line of longitude opposite the Prime Meridian (near the International Date Line) at 180 degrees longitude that divides the earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
• The Eastern Hemisphere consists of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia while the Western Hemisphere includes North and South American.
• Some place the boundaries between the hemispheres at 20° West and 160° East so as to not run through Europe and Africa.
• The International Date Line divides Two Days on the Earth's Surface

The International Date Line
• While the equator divides the earth into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, it is the Prime Meridian at zero degrees longitude and the line of longitude opposite the Prime Meridian (near the International Date Line) at 180 degrees longitude that divides the earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
• The Eastern Hemisphere consists of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia while the Western Hemisphere includes North and South American. Some place the boundaries between the hemispheres at 20° West and 160° East so as to not run through Europe and Africa.
• The International Date Line divides Two Days on the Earth's Surface.
• While the world is divided into 24 time zones, there has to be a place where there is a difference in days, somewhere the day truly "starts" on the planet.
• Thus, the 180° line of longitude, exactly one-half way around the planet from Greenwich, England and 0° longitude is approximately where the International Date Line is located. Cross the line from the east to the west and a day is added. Cross from west to the east and a day is subtracted.
• Without the International Date Line, people who travel west around the planet would discover that when they returned home, it would seem as though an extra day had passed. This situation actually happened to Magellan's crew when they returned home after their circumnavigation of the earth.

• The International Date Line is not a straight line, either. Since its beginning, it has zigzagged to avoid spitting apart countries into two days. It bends through the Bering Strait to avoid placing far northeastern Russia in a different day than the rest of the country. Unfortunately, tiny Kiribati was split. In 1995 the island country of Kiribati decided to move the International Date Line. Since the line is simply established by international agreement and there are not treaties or formal agreements associated with the line, most of the rest of the world followed Kiribati and moved the line on their maps. Most recent maps show the change and you'll see the big panhandle zigzag which keeps Kiribati all within the same day. Now eastern Kiribati and Hawaii, which are located in the same area of longitude, are a whole day apart.

The Three Laws of Robotics

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

From Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D., as quoted in I, Robot.
In Robots and Empire (ch. 63), the "Zeroth Law" is extrapolated, and the other Three Laws modified accordingly:

0-th. A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Unlike the Three Laws, however, the Zeroth Law is not a fundamental part of positronic robotic engineering, is not part of all positronic robots, and, in fact, requires a very sophisticated robot to even accept it.

Asimov claimed that the Three Laws were originated by John W. Campbell in a conversation they had on December 23, 1940. Campbell in turn maintained that he picked them out of Asimov's stories and discussions, and that his role was merely to state them explicitly

Light & Electromagnetic Wave

James Clerk Maxwell enshrined the wave theory when he successfully conjectured a connection between light, electricity, and magnetism. He came up with equations that described the behavior of electric and magnetic fields, and when they were combined they predicted electromagnetic waves. He found that these electromagnetic waves had to travel at a certain speed: approximately 186,000 miles per second, which is the speed of light.

Light is the visible manifestation of a whole spectrum of electromagnetic waves. This includes what we now call AM radio signals (wavelength = 300 yards), FM radio signals (wave length = 3 yards), and microwaves (3 inches). As the wavelengths get shorter (i.e. the frequency of the wave increases), they produce the spectrum of visible light, ranging from red (25 millionths of an inch) to violet (14 millionths of an inch). Even shorter wavelengths produce ultraviolet rays, X-rays, and gamma rays. When we speak of "light" and the "speed of light," we mean all electromagnetic waves, not just the ones that are visible to our eyes.

Measure the Circumference of the Earth

How Do You Measure the Circumference of the Earth with a Stick and a Ruler

Aristotle, 400 B.C. Knew that Earth must be round because he saw that the planet cast a curved shadow on the Moon during an eclipse.

Greek, Erastosthenes (276 – 196 B.C.)
Erastosthenes heard of a well in Syene (what is now Aswan, Egypt) in which the Sun’s reflection could be seen on June 21, the longest day of the year. He figured that meant the Sun was directly over the well on that day. He also knew that Syene was pretty much due south of the city of Alexandrea. By measuring the shadow cast by an obelis (a tall carved stone) in Alexandria on June 21, he computed the length of two sides of a right triangle—the length of the shadow and the height of the obelisk. Then he figured the angle of the remaining side of the triangle—about 7 degrees, or 1/50 of a full circle—and knew that was how far the Sun was from being directly overhead in Alexandria.

Erastosthenes learned that it took a camel fifty days to travel from Alexandria to Syene. Since the average well-fed camel could cover 10 miles a day. He figured the distance between the two cities is 500 miles. Multiply that by 50, he came up with a circumference of 25,000 miles.

Fact: The Earth’s actual circumference is 24,901 miles at the equator.
Only 0.4% error.