Re: Time in South Dakota (Date and Time on Cindu)

Mark, I have to say this...
You are really knowledgeable. I'm muchly impressed. Very very muchly.

I wonder how much I'd be astounded to find out all the things everyone else
on this list knew. I can't even begin to estimate my potential surprise
because there just isn't enough brain in me to contemplate the number of
subject areas and their depths in the world.

Eugene

On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 2:13 AM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

> On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 1:37 PM, ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...> wrote:
> > At one point I considered having the Circle circle/globe consist of
> > 400 "degrees" but my math skills simply weren't up to the task, so I
> stayed
> > with 360.
>
> That unit (1/100 of a right angle) is actually called a grad(e); it
> was proposed as part of the metric system and was, I think, adopted by
> the French for artillery calculations.  My calculators used to have it
> as an available option for the trigonometric functions.  But it's
> mostly died out in favor of degrees and radians.
>
> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grad_%28angle%29
>
> GeekTrivia: the original Star Trek "Technical Manual" stated that
> Starfleet used grads, but this was contradicted by onscreen evidence,
> notably Star Trek II, which showed them clearly using degrees. (On the
> other hand, there was that time that Kirk said "Bring us about, Mr.
> Sulu, 360 degrees...", so maybe they really use 1/720 of a circle...
> ;-))
>
> Oddly, the manual also specified that a relative bearing of "0 mark 0"
> was due *aft* instead of the expected forward.
>
> --
> Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>