All In Good Time

A Bloggie posed the question: What is up with the times on your blog entries? They seem to be hours ahead. Or do you have some powers of time travel?

Although the content for Scarred Bark is created here in Maryland, the posting is handled through our affiliate in London. For those of you with a burning desire for more useless knowledge, here is a link to the history of time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Mean_Time

It's easy to forget how much the Royal Navy influenced the shape of our modern world. Their mastery of timekeeping in the days of sail gave them dominance over their rivals. If you have the time, read Longitude by Dava Sobel

http://www.davasobel.com/

(The book was made into a PBS TV show - in case you don't like to read) It presents a fascinating technical problem and the struggle between competing groups to find an answer. There is a valuable lesson here about using government stimulus to bring about desired results: If you want to find a solution to a problem, stop handing out grants; instead, offer a 10 billion dollar prize to the person who finds the solution. Maybe that's too much money. How about 10 prizes of 1 billion each to solve 10 different problems all at once. Yeah, I know, again with the multitasking, but it's not my money so what do I care. In a country with an annual deficit exceeding one trillion dollars, you'd think we could scrape up a couple of billion in prize money from somewhere. Maybe we should offer a prize to the person who solves our budget deficit problem. We could always borrow the prize money from the Federal Reserve - they seem to have more than their fair share.