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BrainEmail Trivia
Saturday April 15, 2006
Since I talked about the Easter name earlier today, I though I would give the standard answer on how they pick the date for Easter, i.e. the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.
I look it up an discovered I was not quite correct. The U.S. Naval Observatory offers a more interesting and arcane answer!
Here is the introduction to their answer!
The commonly stated rule, that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the Full Moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, is somewhat misleading because it is not a precise statement of the actual ecclesiastical rules. In order that the date should be incontrovertibly fixed, and determinable indefinitely in advance, the Church constructed tables to be used permanently for calculating the age of the Moon. Easter is determined by the "ecclesiastical moon" defined by these tables, which is not strictly identical with the real Moon. In addition, the vernal equinox (the time at which the apparent longitude of the Sun is zero degrees) is fixed at March 21, not by the actual motion of the Sun. Moreover, the date of Easter is determined independently of any meridian of longitude, and is always the same in all time zones, unlike astronomical phenomena.
--- If this has not brought “tears to your eyes” you can get the full details by clicking on the Naval Observatory site below ! ---
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Source: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/AA/faq/docs/easter.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- You should note that this is the Western Easter. The Eastern Churches have a different interpretation and thus a different date. Many erroneously think it is due to the difference between the Gregorian and Julian Calendars. This is not the case since both Easters are derived from astronomical phenomena regardless of how the calendars differ. For example, certain Eastern churches use the same formula but then insist that it is the next Sunday after Passover has ended. As a result most years have the Eastern Church Easter a week later than the Easter in the Western Church. About once every 7 years they line up as it did on April 15, 2001 . You can also have a very wide gap, as in 2002, when the Western Church had it on March 31 and the Eastern Church had it on May 5. This happens about once every 11 years.
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Easter comes to us through the Anglo-Saxon Eastre, and usually found in the plural, Eastron. The German word is Ostern. It stands for the heathen festival at the vernal equinox in April, honoring the Teutonic goddess of dawn. This is why the word Easter is tied in with the word for East. Aurora.
It was not uncommon to convert or link pagan holidays with Christian holidays to make the conversion process more palatable to the pagan population. (For example, the Christmas date was moved so it could be linked with the Roman Saturnalia at the Winter Solstice.)
Other cultures, such as Russia, use the older terms pascha or paska that link Easter with its roots in the Passover.
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Friday March 10, 2006
If you’re too young to remember, a trolley looks like a bus, rolls on tracks like a railroad car, is powered from overhead wires, and is usually found in cities. (Today, very few cities use trolleys.) Trolley systems were also called “interurban”.
Transportation and technology provides us with some of the weirdest coinage of words. Trolley is no exception.
A trolley normally picks up electricity from a long pole on the roof. The spring-loaded pole has a wheel on the end that rolls on an electrified overhead wire. This wheel is called the troll, thus trolley was named after this little wheel.
So where did troll come from? The Welsh troell means wheel, reel, pulley, windlas, etc. The old French troul, trouil (treuil) means reel, winch.
So how did the word troll get linked to rotating devices?
Animals that had a certain saunter or gait gave the appearance of rotation to their motion. Also, hounds on the move in packs would sometimes swarm or swirl in a sort of rotary motion.
The old French word for this motion was troller (trôler): “hounds to trowle, raunge, or hunt out of order”. (from Cotgrave, R., an old French-English dictionary, 1611)
So . . . trolleys ultimately got their name from swirling dogs!
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Tuesday February 28, 2006
Carnival has an interesting etymology and it is tied in with the Christian season of Lent. Lent begins on Wed. The word Carnival literally means "to remove meat"?
French: Carnaval Italian: Carnevale from the Latin carnelevarium, carnilevamen or derived from the original Latin: Carnem Levare . . to remove meat . . or . . down with meat . . or . . farewell to meat.
As with Mardi Gras (French for fat Tuesday), carnival is celebrated on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. This is the beginning of Lent, when people have to start fasting from meat. In the old days Carnival was another name for Shrove Tuesday or Shrove-tide. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Trivial Notes: to shrove or confess (repent) your sins, and to begin fasting (from meat).
Certain Eastern Rite Christian churches start their Lent on the Monday before Ash Wednesday and skip the Tuesday festival!
The start of lent is based on the astronomical setting of the Easter date (which is close to the astronomical selection of Passover). In the Western church, Ash Wednesday can be as early as February 3 and as late as March 9.
Lent is supposed to be “40 days” of fasting but there are 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. This is because Sundays are not counted in the fast!
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Saturday February 25, 2006
The problem is they pressurize the cabins to an equivalent altitude of 8000 feet and not the pressure found at sea level. This keeps the flexing stress down on the aircraft body, especially if a high flying plane makes a lot of short hop landings. The aircraft would overly expand and contract with each landing cycle if they used full sea level pressure. The less stress the aircraft body gets, the more longevity they can get out of the airframe. I would speculate that they would have to make the body more robust if they decided to use sea level pressure (14.7 LB/sq. in). The 8000 foot specification saves carrying the additional weight that would be needed to beef up the cabin structure if they flew at high altitude with inside pressure at sea level.
Look at the bright side. If you land in Santa Fe, NM, you will already be adapted to the +7000 foot altitude!
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I was surprised at how many sites I found on the Internet when I plugged in "Cabin Pressure at 8000 feet".
It seems that this 8000 foot equivalent pressure gives problems to people who scuba dive right before a flight. Check out the sites.
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