Astronomy
Our moon and our planet
Written somewhen at the end of the 20th century
Let think of "UP" as the direction of the earth axis coming out
of the north pole.
Then our planet is turning in a counter-clock direction,
i.e. the surface is moving from west toward east.
Looking at the moon at night, we see it rising in the east and apparently
moving toward west. In reality the moon is also moving counter-clockwise,i.e.
from west toward east: just that our (the earth) rotation is quicker.
You can notice that the rising time in the east will be at a later hour
every night.
The tide seems coming from the east, in reality is the earth moving
"underneath" the water. The high water level of the tide is
connected with the gravity attraction of the moon, thus moves counter-clockwise
staying connected with the movement of the moon. Just that as written above the
rotation of the earth is quicker than the one of the moon, thus giving the
wrong impression, that the tide is moving from east to west.
At the end of the winter (in the northern hemisphere) (beginning of spring)
the moon is on top of our heads while in the late summer it is low above
the horizon. This has to do with the inclination of the earth rotation axis
on the ecliptic plane. The plane described by the moon orbit has a constant small angle to the ecliptic plane, and do not change while the earth is circling the sun. In winter the earth axis is inclined away from the sun, and thus the
sun rays arrives on the northern hemisphere at a low angle. But then at night
the moon is seen high over the horizon.
Oh, I should draw a sketch which would explain better then hundred of words ...
Well in the meantime think about it yourself!
Red sky at sunset and the coming nice weather
Written somewhen at the end of the 20th century
In order to explain the principle of what happens, I have to simplify
the whole thing. So let us consider a few facts:
- In Europe the main wind direction is from west toward east.
Of course this is not really true, but the saying about the
red sky bringing good weather is valid only for west wind situations.
- The blue components of the sun rays spectrum are scattered by the
atmosphere, and this is why we see our sky as blue
- The red parts of the sun ray spectrum go straight on through the
atmospehere
thus the sun at sun set is reddish, because the rays have
to go through a longer part of the atmosphere,
loosing more and more
of the blue components.
Now imagine that you are outside your home in the evening.
On your top you see some clouds. Look toward south, then the sun set
is on your right side, toward west. If far away in the west the sky is
clear (i.e. no clouds), then the rays of the sun can reach the clouds
which are above you. And as the sun is "going
down" the rays have to cross a longer part of the atmosphere thus
loosing some of the blue components (by scattering) and thus becoming
more red, giving
the nice reddish colour to the clouds above your head. But this means
that this part of sky without clouds will move toward you, and you
will have in a few hours a clear sky (as we suppose that the wind is
blowing from west toward east).
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Psychology, society, sociology and human behavior
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THE 100% SYNDROME
5th December 2016
We live in a basically rich world but in spite of this fact we have too
many poor people and too many unhappy people. Why this?
About unhappiness I think that our western society has a "100% syndrome"!!
I notice that in nearly all fields of life we require "100%" of something.
For instance in sport only the winner count (100%) all the rest is hardly
noticed.
In business only the best count (100%) all the rest is considered
scrap.
In office one is expected to delivery 100% of is attention and
effort.
A men is expected to be 100% virile and strong.
Women are expected to be 100% beautiful.
And the worst of all is that we want to be 100% sure about everything.
This is the main disgrace of human kind: we are not able to cope with
uncertainty.
We always wish to be secure about our income, we wish to
know why we are on this planet and what happen if we die.
Nature is not at all 100%, in anything!
Nothing is 100% perfect.
Nature does not have a goal, nature is just some energy with rules.
WE SHOULD LEARN THAT NOTHING IS PERFECT!
Your partner is not perfect, your mobile phone neither.
What you are doing is not perfect in spite of your efforts. Your boss is not perfect. Life is sometime a mess.
Well, let us accept that our lover is not the best of all. What count is that
he/she is our lover and stick to us in spite of our being very less than
100% of everything.
Business and religion take advantage of our desire for security:
advertisements promise you happiness, religion promise you salvation.
I do not say that we should not try to improve ourself and our world, but I
am saying that we have to accept that 100% will never ever be reached in
any field.
So please be tolerant to people that are not able to reach what do you
think is 100%.
Happiness can be achieved with much less than the maximum imaginable.
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The tribe syndrom
17th March 2019
The behavior of the human race has been determined by the evolution.
The first goal was survival and soon mankind
discovered, that the ideal group of people in order to survive was
between 30 and 120 members. This was then a tribe.
The very important point here is, that having defined somebody as
a member of the tribe means that everybody else is NOT a member.
This is the first social wall between people
appearing in man history.
We should stop a moment here to reflect about the importance of
this point.
Inside the tribe we also have families, which was the core of the
social organisation at that time.
We have now to understand that this kind of social organisation
imply that every individual must behave in conformity of the rules of
the group, thus there is a social pressure upon every
member, if they don't want to became "traitors" and as a
consequence, killed or exiled from the group (tribe, nation).
I would like to emphasis the wall which is build
between members of the group and outsiders. We find this in many aspect
of our social life. For instance the skin colour: one of the big nonsense
in our socalled "civilised" world. But also religions are
responsible for a huge wall between people, as well as the "nation"
as an evolution of the former tribe.
Everything which allows to say we builds a wall
between "us" and the others.
If we want to build a peaceful society on this planets we should
avoid building walls and instead we should build bridges bewteen the
different groups (tribes, nations) of people.
One first step is to understand that NOBODY has the 100% truth.
The next step is showing respect toward others.
Next is to accept do discuss together and try to compromise.
Here there is a big point to consider: where do we put our
red lines? (work on progress ...)
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Order versus chaos
11 January 2020
why humans want to have
order instead of chaos?
It is in our nature: we are struggling for
survival, and chaos is dangerous because it is unknown. Order is
easily to overview: you can predict it. But finally one should
realise that evolution, and thus progress, came out of chaos!!!
I think that we should learn to face chaos and take the best
out of it.
If everything is "in order", then is basically dead.
Life come out of dis-order, thus out of chaos.
Artists are the
ones who create the chaos that we need in our minds in order to
get out of the (pre)fixed order, which kill progress.
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Moral truth
11 January 2020
Mankind is unable to separate subjective from objective truth.
I support a probabilistic view of everything,
in where we try
to improve the probability that some idea can approximate the
reality in which we live.
Thus no absolute truth exists.
Then we have to discuss and try together to build up a theory which
has a high probability of being correct. This means that we
have to stay humble and respect other ideas, be able to discuss
in a civilised way and try to find a good compromise. The difficulty
stay in where we draw the red lines.
For instance I strongly
disagree with all the actions which are un-reversibly done on
children, mostly for religious raison. Killing for whatever
raison is also beyond the red line for me. And so on.
But as
you see, we can and have to sit down and discuss those matters, if we agree
that nothing can be and never will be "absolute".
This means that there is no "world of God" whatsoever.
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