CSotD: It’s About Time
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At first glance, today's F Minus was amusing, but then I started thinking, well, wait a minute, where DID seconds come from? I know about dividing time into years, which took a few tries to get right, and about months, which would make more sense if they were completely lunar, but got caught up in the problems with timing the year. But then it starts to break down, because, for one thing, the numbers are apparently based on geometry, since they were all established before the Arabs came along and said, "Wait, wait, try this system …"
But the second question is, what need did the ancients have for a unit of time as small as a second? That is, in a world that didn't bother to invent the millimeter until they needed it, why aren't there 24 minutes in an hour and 24 seconds in a minute, to match the hours in a day? What could happen in a second that was significant enough that you needed to time it?
To answer this question, we have to go back in time. Way back. Way, way, way back … (cue harp music and dissolve)
The title of today's entry should plant a particularly nasty earworm in the brain of anyone who was a TV watcher in 1966, when the (apparently) immortal Sherwood Schwartz created a sitcom by that title, which was funny for about six episodes and then wasn't funny for the rest of the season and then wasn't on anymore. Like "Gilligan's Island," it had a couple of pretty good actors anchoring the cast — in this case, Imogene Coca and Joe E. Ross, with Mike Mazurki. But to say that the writing and the concept didn't come up to the standards of "Gilligan's Island" pretty much tells the story. (The animated credits, however, have a nice "Fractured Fairy Tales" style.)
Here's part of an episode, for those who either want a burst of nostalgia or want to find out how a bad Sherwood Schwartz show differs from all those good ones. One thing I noticed, which I hadn't when the show first aired, is that they changed Imogene Coca's character from "Shag" to "Shad." It being only a couple of years after the British Invasion, some youngster must have tipped them about the slang implications of her original name.
The show didn't vanish without a small impact in my circle — My little brother was in eighth grade at the time, and one of his friends was nicknamed "Gronk." The nickname was well-earned and long outlasted the show.
And I hope nobody clicked on any of that expecting an answer to why we have 60 seconds in a minute.
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