1. I was watching TV the other day and saw another of those ‘anti-smoking’ public service announcements… Over the years the act of smoking a cigarette has been relegated to fewer and fewer legal places, various governments have been taxing tobacco products more and more. And most people feel fine about this in that tobacco has been legally proven to be a leading cause of a variety of cancers, and a leading cause of death.
All of these abridgements seem to beg the obvious question that smoking tobacco should be either made into an action taken only with (prescribed) controlled substances, or that it should be made illegal. I am not advocating this, I am only extrapolating what I have seen take place over the last several decades…
While this may seem to be a plausible and reasonable topic to legislate out of existence, the real fact is that this will not take place in my lifetime…governments make too much money off these ‘sin’ taxes.
2. Over the millennia, people all over the world have spent much of their time in the evenings and at night looking at the sky. This was the start of astronomy, astrology, the source, and means of describing many legends and myths. Nowadays, very few watch the skies (especially in the developed world). It is as if most people have presumed that we have professionals to deal with this in our modern world…
I have always wondered why this is so true, what with the ever present light pollution obscuring the sky for many of us, and the continuous growth of science fiction (and space as a setting) for so much of popular entertainment…
3. We live in a world made of seven day weeks. This division of time may be one of the most omnipresent ways to see the hegemony of western culture. All culture didn’t start out with this sort of means of dividing and segmenting time. The Egyptians had 10 day weeks; the Romans used the eight day Nundinal cycle only to finally change under Constantine. The Chinese had 10 day weeks…
Interestingly enough, the use of seven days for a week is a relict coming from all the way back in time to the Sumerians (it came to use from the Babylonian captivity of the Jews). The fact is that the seven day week has the same source as our use of 360 degrees in a circle and you can see that this also leads to a 24 hour day…
I think that it is amazing to know that some of the most fundamental structures we use or time, distance, and our orientation come from the fifth millennium B.C.E.
Why Seven Days in a Week?
http://www.hermetic.ch/cal_stud/hlwc/why_seven.htm
Why are there seven days in a week?
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/444/why-are-there-seven-days-in-a-week
Week
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week
