bipch erastosthenes schooled b.o.b. 2,230 years ago
Ok so this is cool but I always wondered how they knew the shadows were different at the same instant. I mean it is not like they had phones. How did they sync up that instant. I feel like that would be interesting to know but no one ever says.
^^^Does anybody know this one? How, that far apart, the time at which the shadows were observed was synced up? I am genuinely curious, not a goddamn moron asking a gotcha question. High/Low tide? (I live in the middle of the country I do not know for the precise habits of tidal activity.) The appearance of a star (or planet) in the sky? Something as utterly mundane as sunrise?
Well, first of all, it wasn’t actually pillars! Eratosthenes was told about a well in Syene that, in the summer solstice every year (June 21st) would be illuminated at the bottom entirely and without any cast shadows. This indicated that the sun was directly overhead. Going off that well known curiosity and an intelligent hunch, our dude Eratosthenes waited until high noon of the summer solstice to measure the angle of a shadow cast by a stick in Alexandria. (Sidenote: Eratosthenes was a librarian of the infamous Library of Alexandria.)
His next course of action was to hire bematists, surveyors of the time whose professional specialty was to measure distance by walking with equal length steps. They measured a distance between Alexandria and Syene of about 5000 stadia. (Guess where the word stadium comes from.) Once he had that measurement, Eratosthenes did his math-y thing, and there you have it.
ANSWER EVEN COOLER THAN I HOPED!!
Eratosthenes’ work was thorough enough that by the time he finished revising his calculations, he ended up only 66 km off of the actual polar circumference of the Earth, or an error margin of 0.16%. [wiki]
“The calculus is straightforward. If Harris wins the election, it doesn’t matter. Democratic administrations don’t play that way. Donald Trump’s do. We don’t have to predict how a future Trump administration will act. We have plenty of evidence from the last one. Just ask AT&T and CNN. At a minimum, having Trump win after endorsing Harris invites a very unfriendly regulatory environment — and probably a lot worse than that. This is a bad sign well in advance of whatever happens on November 5th. And it’s an important reminder that without actually doing anything, he threatens, he sends a message, and the message is received. I will say again, we can’t know for a certainty why the Post is choosing not to endorse anyone this year. But, seriously, what other possible explanation could there be? They’re afraid of antagonizing the Trump supporters in their reader base? Does that count for the LA Times too? Seriously, it doesn’t pass the laugh test. We know what’s going on here.”
“Let’s review: First, Harris was criticized for not doing enough interviews — so she did multiple interviews, including with nontraditional media. She was criticized for not doing hostile interviews — so she went toe to toe with Bret Baier of Fox News. She was criticized as being comfortable only at scripted rallies — so she did unscripted events, such as the town hall on Wednesday. Along the way, she wiped the floor with Trump during their one televised debate. Trump, meanwhile, stands before his MAGA crowds and spews nonstop lies, ominous threats, impossible promises and utter gibberish. His rhetoric is dismissed, or looked past, without first being interrogated.”
