Todays candles have been optimized for millenia not to flicker. But it turns out when we bundle three of them together, we can undo all of these optimizations and the resulting triplet will start to naturally oscillate. A fascinating fact is that the oscillation frequency is rather stable at ~9.9Hz as it mainly depends on gravity and diameter of the flame. 

We use a rather unusual approach based on a wire suspended in the flame, that can sense capacitance changes caused by the ionized gases in the flame, to detect this frequency and divide it down to 1Hz.

Half hour sandglass from the wreck of HMS Invincible, before 1758

A sandglass was a method of keeping time at sea, this helped keep track of watches on deck, regulating life on board. During sea passages, the naval watch system divided 24 hours of the day into six four-hour watches with half the ship’s company on watch and the other half off duty. Each four-hour watch was marked every 30 minutes by ringing the ship’s quarterdeck bell.

After the first 30 minutes, one bell would be sounded; thirty minutes later two bells, and so on up to eight bells at the end of the four-hour watch. The circular ends are all made of turned oak marked with a large broad arrow.

source: https://www.museumstorecompany.com/Maya-Mayan-Calendar-p4823.html

The Maya are a group of people who lived in Mesoamerica from about 2600 BCE through the Spanish conquest of the Americas, though there are small pockets of Maya still living today in the highlands of Guatemala and Chiapas, with millions still speaking the Mayan language and who still follow the cycles of their historical calendars.

source: https://www.livescience.com/25662-how-mayan-calendar-works.html

The Maya calendar is actually three interlocking calendars that work together to give each day within the greater cycle a unique identifier. The shortest calendar is 260 days known as the Tzolkin or Tzolk'in. It is a combination of twenty day names with thirteen day numbers. The next was a solar calendar known as the Haab'. It is created by having eighteen twenty-day months with five 'unnamed' days. Combing the two, it takes 52 Haab' for the combination of the two to return back to their initial orientation. In addition to these two, there is the Long Count calendar, which is used to keep track of events that occur more often than the 52 years, or a person's lifetime at the time. There are also additions to these three that add the phase of the moon to any date.

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One of my pet peeves for the CQL Netflix translations is their poor consistency with how they translate Shichen. I’ve seen it where half a shichen is one hour and half a shichen is half an hour. It gets CONFUSING for people! 

So I’m writing this as for my sanity. And just share some basic stuff I got either off Baidu or from reading too much Wuxia as a kid.

时辰 (shíchén) is two hours!! Each shichen has the same name as the single character chinese zodiac animals (This is known as dì|zhī,  地支or earthly branches): 

子（zǐ）- Rat/Mouse

丑（chǒu）- Ox/Cow

寅（yín）- Tiger

卯（mǎo）- Bunny/Rabbit

辰（chén）- Dragon

巳（sì）- Snake

午（wǔ）- Horse

未（wèi）- Sheep/Goat

申（shēn）- Monkey

酉（yǒu） - Chicken/Rooster

戌（xū） - Dog

亥（hài ）-Pig

According to Baidu, pre-Tang, 子 is from 0000 to 0200 and so forth. 

And then starting sometime during Tang, 子 was from 2300 to 0100.  丑 from 0100 to 0300 and so on and so forth. 

I usually go with the 2300-0100 version.  But it doesn’t really matter, imo. 

Another term you’ll potentially come across is 更 (gēng). It is a way to record time specifically used at night.  The most common one you hear is san geng or third geng which is associated with midnight. 

19:00-21:00 -- first 更

21:00-23:00 -- second 更

23:00-01:00 -- third 更

01:00-03:00 -- fourth 更

03:00-05:00 -- fifth 更

Another thing I kept on wondering is how long is one stick of incense worth of time? It can’t be that long because i’ve burnt incense before! And it’s not that long! But it turns out, after much googling, it’s not a specific period of time. Some authors use it to describe 5 minutes and some for 30 minutes and everything in between. Alas. So you can choose what you want when writing fic but stay consistent! :) 

When people talk about birthdays in Wuxia, they will ask for the 8 characters of your birth (生辰八字). Year, Month, Day, Time are each represented by two characters. In addition to the dìzhī cycle, there is the heavenly roots (tiān|gān, 天干) cycle. In terms of zodiac years, tiāngān determines your element.These two cycles rotate to make 60 years which is called a 甲子 (Jiǎzǐ, jia is the first tiāngān and zi is the first  dìzhī). Months, days, and time are also defined by these characters -- all associated with elements, but I don’t actually know the calculations. 

There are 12 months in a lunar calendar year. Each month is either 29 or 30 days. The full moon falls on the 15th day +/- 1 day. Due to trying to keep the seasons from shifting, there are leap months. This is why the Lunar New Year is sometimes in Feb, moves slowly back into mid Jan, and then jumps to mid Feb again. They occur about 7 times every 19 years. 

One neat thing is farmers still need to know where on a solar calendar seasons land for crops. There are 24 节气 for that! Some holidays (e.g winter solstice and QingMingJie) are assigned by these. 

There are actually wikipedia articles about these topics that I know very little about! 

Since tumblr hates links, you can find wiki articles on: Chinese calendar, Four Pillars of Destiny (生辰八字), Solar term (节气 )

Some of you have asked me to make a lesson on how to pronounce “decades” and “centuries” in Hebrew.

Since we are at the beginning of a New Year I thought it was a perfect time to teach it! Happy New Year!

Per Olov Ultvedt (July 5, 1927 - 2006) was a Finnish-born Swedish artist and art educator. He came to Sweden as a child and studied there at the Royal Swedish Academy, where he later also became a professor and vice-president.

He was inspired by Jean Tinguely to make mobiles and installations, often involving time pieces and commenting on the notion of time.