Saturday  29 Feb 2020           1 comment

The Gregorian calendar was decreed by a papal bull ending with a stern warning:

It is therefore entirely forbidden to any man to infringe these our precepts and decrees, mandates, statutes, will, approval, prohibition, sublation, abolition, exhortation and request, or to dare to bear witness or proceed against them. If nevertheless any presume to make such an attempt, they are to know that they will incur the indignation of almighty God and of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul.

19²=361, so we could have nineteen months of (usually) nineteen days each. Why the pope didn't do that instead is beyond me.

Saturday  15 Feb 2020           1 comment

The articles I've read about Betelgeuse getting dimmer all make a point of saying it's a huge longshot for it to go supernova any time soon. We'll see about that.

Saturday  01 Feb 2020           1 comment

Like many a town in the western USA, Lone Pine has a mountain monogram. It just read LP when I moved here but high school students are now in the habit of adding the (low‑order digits of the) year. I took this pic yesterday while it still reads 19. I wasn't aware of the small pieces of graffiti on nearby rocks until I looked closely at this pic.



This hillside appears in a well-known Ansel Adams photo from 1944. Mr. Adams says that he expunged the LP:

The enterprising youth of the Lone Pine High School had climbed the rocky slopes of the Alabama Hills and whitewashed a huge white L P for the world to see. It is a hideous and insulting scar on one of the great vistas of our land, and shows in every photograph made of the area. I ruthlessly removed what I could of the L P from the negative (in the left-hand hill), and have always spotted out any remaining trace in the print. I have been criticized by some for doing this, but I am not enough of a purist to perpetuate the scar and thereby destroy — for me, at least — the extraordinary beauty and perfection of the scene.