One year ago today: January 7, 2020, revealing teen perspectives.
Five years ago today: January 7, 2016, experts lie.
Nine years ago today: January 7, 2012, Yeah, yeah, bang, bang.
Random years ago today: January 7, 2008, regularly mistaken for boss.
They got to Pence. He chickened out at the last minute and will go down in history as a coward. His claim is he did not have the authority to reject, when in fact this country has been nearly a year run by polliticians who did not have the authority to do what they did. There is trouble and turmoil ahead and Trump will be the champion. Please, let it be that all-important third party, so he can sway what the others do.
The GP of the Sun at 2021-01-08 @ 13:14:41 was, in my calculation W16°57.91’ Long. And S22.098° Lat. Right away, you notice a compromise. It is the latitude given as a decimal fraction. The traditional map positioning sites have been removed and replaced with whacked out versions, see below. I could not find a site that lt me enter the proper coordinates and display a location, which should be the first thing s computerized system should do. Everyone I found today was screwy.
That explains the curly-horned animal. When the above coordinates were entered, it came back with a position in the Van Bach game preserve in Namibia, near some town called Okahandja. I immediately recognized this as wrong, as my mind’s eye told me the sun should be in the middle of the Atlantic, southwest of St. Helena.. I went to several sites, all of which had at least one major defect. I’m reminded of that Navy guy who said about the recruits he’s getting these days, that they cannot even read maps. They are reliant on smart phones, prompting him to say, “Their new god is the battery.”
It wasn’t that cold but I could not take it. I stayed indoors and read more on celestial navigation. There is no one correct way to learn this topic that is right for everyone. I find the more different articles I read, the better my understanding. One thing has changed. When I first looked into this for curiosity’s sake, the Internet was full of beginner’s information on the topic (but no advanced material that was followable). In particular for me, there were quite a number of instructions on how to calculate the GP, which I memorized well enough to get correct answers without really understanding it that well.
Just a few years later, I went back to find that info. It’s changed to mostly books for sale. That would not in itself be so bad, but the free articles have disappeared. Yes, folks, that represents the new American business model. If you can’t complete, do the cancel culture thing on the competition. Coupled with the MicroSoft model, (the printing of manuals only accurate to the third chapter), it quickly becomes a wasteful process buying manuals hoping what you need is covered. Over the years I’ve reviewed dozens of 600 page books that contained 20 pages of useful material.
Fortunately, I have all of the original books Iearned from, just not here [in Tennessee]. You need a new Almanac for each year, very hard to find in print any more, but for practice, any will do. The numbers change, but not the method. You find the GP of the Sun (I don’t navigate by night) by first an hourly readying, then using “correction tables” to find the offset of minutes and seconds. This process is known by the confusing term “entering the tables”. I wanted a refresher and found nothing suitable on-line. That can mean it’s there, as in this video, but beginning at the 20 minute mark.
Bamboo bridge, Cambodia.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
I won’t specify which sites I tested this morning, but a short description of the shamelessly horrid low level of educationin this country is revealed. Where to even start? The nautical tables. Most so-called navigation sites just copy and paste the pages onto a web site. Stupid, stupid, stupid. You must scroll down by trial and error to find most dates, and there is no way to earmark the correct page like a book. This shows the people loading the pages have never used the pages--a typical situation with C+ coding--if it only appears to work, that is good enough for them.
This picture, if you look close, shows my favorite lounge shirt wil a fine patina of cat fur. Leave it lying on any piece of furniture and you know who will find it. The Reb is back, freeing me up tomorrow to drive to the nearest Sam Ash, in Madison. There is also a big Chrylser dealership where I can find out why my seats don’t fold down. I this mission is successful, I will own a foot (drum) pedal that cost more than by guitar, bass, and PA system combined. Please let it be a non-millennial design. Did I mention the GPS in the minivan is GPS? Most menus are non-intuitive, but the only way to get out of them is to tediously back out to the top layer. Ah, the convenience of the GPS offset by the need to pull off the road and park to get it to work once in a while.
And that headlight for the minivan, if I wanted it replaced instead of repaired? That’ $1,100 just for the part. After market keys can be cut from the VIN (vehicle ID number) but only work 50% of the time. The gamble will cost you $80. But it’s a bigger gamble to have only one key to your vehicle these days. The paradox about all these aspects is that in theory, each part can be sold as an improvement—but the overall system suffers. Like encapsulated programming (C+), it only works reasonably well when you have a supremely educated group in charge.
Such groups no longer exist. Back in the day stupid people got constant reminders that they were stupid. Occasionally, they learned something from all the feedback. What’s changed is idiots are now isolated from consequences. In an age of trolling social media and participation awards, there are blithering idiots in positions to really muck things up. Criticism like learning curves, assessment, and self-correction offend them. Bunch of wimps. Think about it, who else even devises a system of cutting keys that don’t work half the time?
