March 2003

Quetzalcoatl

I found this page a few years back and had saved it. Ever wonder why the Aztecs let the Spaniards on their land in the first place. Each time they came on shore, they could have wiped the ships crew out. But one was a blonde haired Spaniard and thought of as a god.

"The consensus of opinion among anthropologists," writes Native American scholar Todd Downing, "is that Quetzalcoatl is the embodiment of a solar myth, hence his association with the east coast or the Atlantic. Yellow was the sacred color of the sun, so as its messenger he was given a beard like the rays of the sun." This theory points up one of the cruelest ironies of the Conquest. Where most of the Spaniards were dark-haired Mediterranean types, one obviously descended from blond Visigoths was Cortes's second in command, the fair-skinned, yellow-bearded Pedro de Alvarado. If the Aztecs saw Alvarado as an embodiment of their lost god, they selected the conquistador who was by far the most notorious for his cruelty toward Mexico's Indian population.

tswg.gov

Inventors have flooded this agency with 16,000 proposals since 9/11. Anti-terrorism gadgets, designed to prevent or protect against terrorist attacks. Site is quite interesting to browse thru.

Radio Controlled Clocks

An interesting govt site - that explains how "radio-controlled clocks" work. An atomic clock has an atomic oscillator inside (such as a cesium or rubidium oscillator). A radio-controlled clock has a radio inside, which receives a signal that comes from a place where an atomic clock is located. This is from the FAQ section.

What is the origin of hours, minutes and seconds?

A sundial described in 1300 BCE reveals that the Egyptians determined a daily cycle to be made up of ten hours of daylight from sunrise to sunset, two hours of twilight and twelve hours of night. Their calendar year was divided into 36 decans, each ten days long, plus five extra days, totaling to a 365 day year. Each decan was equivalent to a third of the zodiacal sign and was represented by a decanal constellation. The night corresponded to about twelve decans, half a day to eighteen decans. Similar to the system used in Oriental clocks, the night was thus divided into twelve hours, with seasonable variations of the hour's length. Later, Hellenistic astronomers introduced equinoctial hours of equal length.

The Babylonians (in about 300-100 BCE) performed astronomical calculation in the sexagesimal (base-60) system. This was extremely convenient for simplifying time division, since 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 10. What we now call a minute derives from the first fractional sexagesimal place; the second fractional place is the origin of the second.

Wacky Packages

Wacky Packages are stickers (peel and punch-out) that were released by the Topps Chewing Gum company (and their Canadian partner OPC) between 1967 and 1992. They parodied common household products and were extremely popular among children in the 1970's. I don't remember them too much. Great site on the subject and this link is to a page of one of the early developers.

For most of us who worked for the product development department of the Topps Chewing Gum Company in the 1960s and 1970s, everything we worked on kind of blends together. I think we all regarded what we were doing as just a way to make a living at the time. Wacky Packages...Funny Little Joke Books...Bazooka Joe....cards of funny monsters... We never gave any of this all that much thought. But now, thirty-some-odd years later, Wacky Packages have become some sort of historical icons. So here I will endeavor to trace the steps involved in creating a typical Wacky Packages series back in seventies.

Where's George

Ever wonder where that dollar bill in your pocket has been? Maybe a few months ago it was in Delaware. Ever got a bill that had "Where's George" rubber stamped on it? I never have - but they are out there. This site was started a few years back and is very active and fun. Enter the denomination, series (year), and serial number of the bill and if previously entered by others it will show a history. Or you may be the first. Registering is no big deal and I would suggest reading the FAQ section. Here is the main site page.

History of Money

This is meant to be a short section from two sites, to scan the pages. I take a paragraph from each page that I found interesting. This is a short chronology from Nova.

9,000 -- 6,000 BC: Cattle
Cattle, which include anything from cows, to sheep, to camels, are the first and oldest form of money. With the advent of agriculture came the use of grain and other vegetable or plant products as a standard form of barter in many cultures.

This is a more indepth page on origins of money and banking, taken from a book the author wrote.

Many societies had laws requiring compensation in some form for crimes of violence, instead of the Old Testament approach of "an eye for an eye". The author notes that the word to "pay" is derived from the Latin "pacare" meaning originally to pacify, appease, or make peace with - through the appropriate unit of value customarily acceptable to both sides. A similarly widespread custom was payment for brides in order to compensate the head of the family for the loss of a daughter's services. Rulers have since very ancient times imposed taxes on or exacted tribute from their subjects. Religious obligations might also entail payment of tribute or sacrifices of some kind. Thus in many societies there was a requirement for a means of payment for blood-money, bride-money, tax or tribute and this gave a great impetus to the spread of money.

He also had an interesting page on warfare and financial history.

The Spanish conquests in the New World were, like the Crusades, partly motivated by missionary zeal but also by greed. The Europe of the Middle Ages had often experienced shortages of bullion but with the conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru, and the opening of the silver mines in Potosi (now in Bolivia) the dearth gave way to abundance leading to problems of inflation in Europe. The repercussions of the Spanish conquests were felt as far away as China. Initially imports of silver from the New World gave a boost to the Chinese economy but eventually the country became dangerously dependent on that source for its basic monetary supplies. The stage was reached when the total annual output of China's own silver mines was less than that carried in a single Spanish galleon sailing from Acapulco. As a result, when bullion imports started to dry up after 1640 the Chinese economy, the world's largest, was plunged into a terrible recession which undermined the stability of the Ming Empire (1368-1644).