Prometheus Council

[canter]

I think that going to the metric system would be best since the US is the only country that is still using the standard system....
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The will to survive is the greatest asset you have.

[Randy]

Agreed. Sometimes even the US should get with the program!
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-Randy

[Gene]

I disagree. The metric system is based off of 10; the “American” system is based off of ancient mathematical system of 12, 36, 72, and 360. This system established pi, rods, furlongs etc. and gives us the pentagram, the triangles et al. While it seems complicated, when understood it explains why things of antiquity were built the way they were, and all relate to mathematical structures such as the Fibonacci numbers or the Golden number system. This system was used as early as the Sumerians and Babylonians and is astronomically correct in that is allows for much more accurate and precise measurement of the celestial workings and the way nature works.

While 5, 10, 20 etc. are in theory easier to mentally manipulate, this is only because Americans (and much of the rest of the world) are not correctly taught how to train their mind to process math. All ancient structures are based off of the Fibonacci – golden number system including the pyramids.

It would stand to reason that if the ancients used this system there was a damn good reason. And we shouldn’t deviate from it.
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The 4 inches of gray matter between your ears is your primary weapon, everything else is for expediency

[canter]

Gene while a very interesting post and i will look into it a lil bit more. I do remember a NASA snafu a few years back with NASA crashed a martian probe into the surface of mars because the operator screwed up and punched in standard format instead of metric numbers? (just a question)

also the ancient mayans used the metric system as well. they used that math to create all their structures and while talking to my math professors at college they also agree metric is better than standard math.....
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The will to survive is the greatest asset you have.

[Gene]

Mixing the two (ANSI vs metric) can have fatal results to humans and martian probes, as is using a computer and electronic calculator vs. the old slide rule. The trick is to pick one and stick to it, never ever mix the two.

When designing a building older engineers were using slide rulers. [Slide rulers work very well, and engineers have put men on the moon and to the bottom of the ocean - and all returned]. A modern contractural structural engineer checked the figures using a calculator, and rounded the fourth place decimal down. The end result was a miscalculation, and the building failed - fortunately, it was during construciton and not occupied. Lesson learned - don't mix systems!!

I still vote ANSI

Incidently the Mayans did not use a "metric" system, they used a base 20 system. It sounds like metric, but in fact it is not, it is numbered differently.

The metric is a base 10 system. To us we think 20 is twice 10, therefore it is a "metric" system. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In metric 32 is represented as 30, 10+10+10+2=32

In Mayan, 30 is represented, as 2+20+10=32

Notice how the numbers are written differently and more importantly, calculated differently.
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The 4 inches of gray matter between your ears is your primary weapon, everything else is for expediency

[Gene]

A case for the power of base 12 numerical systems. Just because we have misplaced the true meaning and reason WHY we use this system, doesn’t mean we should replace it because the rest of the world is. Somewhere, somebody somehow recognized the advantages of base 12 and have thus we have 12 months in the year, 12 hours on the clock, and 12 inches in the foot but we have generally lost the “why”. If we based ancient mathematics on our physical representation, we would have – voile – 10, or even 20 bases. Why? Because we have ten digits on our hands, and ten digits on our feet! But, every ancient mathematical, scientific base system does not start with base 10 – why? The ancients have imbedded these numbers into our conscience and sub-conscience, into our symbolism and into EVERY known ancient religion the world over – regardless of their language spoken, intrinsic philosophical and theological belief system. Again, - so why?

As a practical matter, people tend to divide groups into halves, thirds, and quarters. A dozen is the smallest number that allows you to do this. The primary advantage of 12 over 10 is that you cannot take a 1/3 or a 1/4 of 10 and get an even number, whereas, you can with 12. Nor can you write a third of 10 as a decimal. The number goes on forever, 3.3333. . . Being able to take a third and a forth of your base number and get a whole number is very handy. A secondary advantage is that 12 has more divisors, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, &12 verses 1, 2, 5, & 10 for 10. The metric system is incomplete because it does not have a calendar of 10 months, a clock of 10 hours, nor a circle of 100 degrees, because they don’t work – and the ancients knew it!

The venerable clock has twelve hours displayed on its face. There are sixty minutes in an hour, and sixty seconds in a minute. Sixty is twelve times five: There are twenty four hours in a day, which of course is two chunks of twelve, and twelve months in a year. There are 360 degrees in a circle. 360 has an enormous number of divisors - including twelve!

There are a couple of other "common" ways to measure angles, one is radians and the other is grads (or grades). Grads however make for an interesting comparison with degrees. A grad is one hundredth of a right-angle, in other words there are four hundred grads in a full circle. So you could talk about percentages of right-angles and the grad would be the percentage. This has a certain appeal to it (half a right angle is fifty % or fifty grads) but in practice what if you wanted to say "a third of a right-angle"? You would immediately bump into the same problem as writing out the decimal for "one third", you can without using fractions. It's (in base 10) 33.333333....%. Whereas in degrees half a right-angle is forty five degrees and a third of a right-angle is thirty degrees.

Egyptians (and Indians) liked counting in base 12 is it that 12 has a larger number of integer factors than 10. ie. 12/6=2, 12/4=3, 12/3=4, 12/2=6, while 10/5=2 and 10/2=5 are all there are for the number 10?
The Egyptians divided the clock into 12 hours of daytime and 12 hours of night-time (or alternatively 10 hours between sunrise and sunset, an hour for each twilight period and 12 hours of darkness).

The ancient Egyptians divided their night-time into 12 hours which was based on the number of "decan" stars which were seen to rise during summer nights, these Decans were used as a calendar by the ancient Egyptians: each decan would rise above the dawn horizon for ten days every year. A "decan" star was a star which rose just before sunrise at the beginning of a 10-day "decade" in Ancient Egypt. 36 "decan" stars marked the passage of a year for the Egyptians (or 36 10 day periods or 36 X 10 = 360 days plus 5 added days to make up to 365 days). During summer nights, 12 decan stars rose - one for each "hour". (The flaw being the ancient Egyptian year being 6 hours too short which over the years would eventually make a real error - for example over 40 years the calendar would be in error of 10 days).

In music the range of hearing is divided up into octaves. According to convention, each octave holds exactly twelve notes, and there are about eleven octaves.

12 = number of constellations in the zodiac.

30 = the number of degrees allocated along the ecliptic to each zodiacal constellation

72 = the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a processional shift of one degree along the ecliptic.

360 = the total number of degrees in the ecliptic

72 x 30 = 2160 = the number of years required for the sun to complete a passage of 30 degrees along the ecliptic; which is to pass entirely through any one of the 12 zodiacal constellations.

2160 x 12 (or 360 x 72) = 25,920 is the number of years in one complete precessional cycle or ‘Great Year’, and thus the total number of years required to bring about the ‘Great Return’.

36 = the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a precessional shift of half a degree along the ecliptic, it is also one tenth of a circle.

4320 = the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a processional shift of 60 degrees which is two zodiacal constellations. This processional shift travels the reverse of the normal zodiac, we are currently transitioning from the “Age of Pisces” (as in fish, fish is the old representation of Christian doxology) to the “Age of Aquarius” (as in violent or rapid/swift change or destruction). Kind of neat how the ancients knew all this stuff huh!

The plane of the earth’s orbit, projected outwards to form a great circle in the celestial sphere is known as the ecliptic. Ringed around the ecliptic is a starry belt that extends approximately 7 degrees north and 7 degrees south, are the 12 constellations of the zodiac. Though not exact, each constellation can be considered to occupy a space of 30 degrees along the ecliptic or 360/12 = 30.

A calendar based off of transitions between the sun and the zodiac, with specific astronomical points of congruence – this is an efficient and highly effective calendar capable of telling dates – exact dated for eons and epochs in groups of 41,000; 10,500; 2500; 72; 36 years and 12 month groups with degrees, hours, minutes and seconds. See – there are those numbers again!

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The 4 inches of gray matter between your ears is your primary weapon, everything else is for expediency

[canter]

that does say alot, and i can understand your point of view..

the only point i wish to bring up is your term for octive.

when i was in music classes and mathmatical terminology the prefix OCT was used to describe the number 8 ie octagon and such and in class (piano) an octive was 8 notes ABCDEFG are the notes and the flats and sharps are not counted in the octive...at least thats what i was taught.
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The will to survive is the greatest asset you have.

[Gene]

Canter, you correctly represented what you were taught and what is currently taught in music; it only teaches those vibration tones that human can 'hear' for obvious reasons. What is taught is generally the audible threshold of the vibration tones that humans can hear. The frequency range that completes the octaves is above or below the humans range. Like a dog whistle, most humans cannot hear it, but that doesn't mean it don't exist.

And, speaking of music, the music of the spheres is based on the sphere, another version of 360 degrees, 90 degrees above and below a horizon etc. - like the start of celestial mechanics, and naturally Tesla worked with vibration and harmonic sequences - and music is nothing more than harmonic vibrations that humans find enjoyable - or unenjoyable!
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The 4 inches of gray matter between your ears is your primary weapon, everything else is for expediency

[canter]

so them i guessing thats the basis for ultrasounds and sonar then?
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The will to survive is the greatest asset you have.

[JoeNashville]