This essay developed out of a trip with a friend to the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History; but I only completed it as an answer to a comment on Slashdot yesterday.

It got pretty good feedback:

• "...I'd just like to say that it is quite simply one of the greatest and most interesting posts I have ever read on Slashdot." (posted Anonymous Coward)
• "...this is one of those memorable posts that you wish you could give a bonus on top of some mod-points. If this is your own writing, please keep it up, it makes up for all the trolls and blabbering idiots out there." (geschild (43455))

and even those posting the praise themselves got modded up (!), so I thought I'd post it again, hoping to let a wider audience see it. Yes, it is my own writing -- and thank you for the generous praise (and mod points).

But more than just seeing, I'd like to see your comments, especially about what you think should be included in a calendar of the last "ten years" of humanity's history. Whether you have a sentence to describe a "minute" -- that is, a particular year --, an "hour", or an epoch, let me know what for you are the highlights of the calendar. What should be the brief description for each "day"? "Dark Age to Atomic Age" or "Feudalism to Democracy" or "The Last Day of Scarcity" for the last day?

Take a look, and let me know your thoughts. Here's the essay, as it originally appeared:

Part of the challenge of learning history or understanding evolution (human or otherwise) is to begin to grasp the enormous differences and the great epochs of time -- time far, far in excess of the span of any single human's life, time measured in the millions of years -- that separate us from our origins.

Let's play a game by pretending that every year only lasts a minute. It's 2004 today, so, by this game's metric, a "minute" ago it was 2003, and thirty-five minutes ago -- a little over half an hour ago -- Neil Armstrong, in 1969, set foot on the moon. In these terms, World War Two ended just a minute less than an hour ago. Three hours and forty-eight minutes ago -- in 1776 -- Thomas Jefferson declared independence for one nation while, essentially simultaneously in our terms, Adam Smith revealed an Invisible Hand that regulated commerce among all nations.

Each hour is comprised of sixty minutes, each day of twenty-four hours, for a total of 1440 minutes per day. So by our scheme, one "day" ago, 1440 minutes ago, an English King named Riothamus -- or Arthur -- had just recently failed to keep south-western England from plunging into barbarity in 564. Since Arthur's reign, the rest of "yesterday" saw the Dark Ages in Europe offset by the flowering of Islamic science and mathematics, the rebirth of Europe in the Renaissance, the exploration and colonization of most of the world by Europeans, and, an hour ago, the beginning of the atomic age. All this in one busy "day".

Even given the brevity of our metric, compressing one year of 525600 minutes into a single minute, it's still easily possible to recite the salient historical events on a year in the sixty seconds we are given, and even include our own particular history: "1903: first heavier-than-air flight; Grandma born." or "1943: Battle of Guadalcanal, Allied invasion of Italy, Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazis, Dad born."

But what's most interesting isn't those years, like 1943, crammed full of events, but the far greater number of years which our histories don't distinguish from one another. Two days ago, 48 hours ago, we come to the year 875 BC (since there's no year zero, 1 AD being preceded immediately by 1 BC). While I'm sure that a historian of that era could come with an interesting event of that year, the nearest I can come up with is the ascension of Osorkon II to the pharaoh's throne in Egypt the next year in 874 BC. The remainder of day two will be pretty packed: Rome will be founded and will reign for most of the day, Christ will be born and crucified in a brief half-hour - but will give rise to over a "day" of Christianity.

Going back another day, three "days" ago starts with the year 2315 BC, right in the middle of Sargon of Akkad's creation of the first recorded empire, in Mesopotamia - and the first writing with a known author, Sargon's daughter Enheduanna's hymns. After Sargon and his daughter, the day will see the beginnings of monotheism and Judaism, the founding of Athens and the fall of Troy.

Four "days" ago opened with 3755 BC, just six years after 3761 BC, the first year of the Hebrew calendar. This "day" saw the beginning of writing, the use of sails and potter's wheels, and the first cities.

Five "days" ago was ushered in with the year 5195 BC. During this "day", man began using ploughs in Europe. Toward the end of the day is 4004 BC, the year Bishop Ussher reconstructed from the Christian Bible as the Day of Creation.

Six "days" ago, it was 6635 BC. This day saw the formation of the English Channel (!) as the glaciers melted, and the domestication of the cow.

Seven days ago, the first "minute" of the "day" is 8075 BC. This "day" sees the beginning of rice cultivation and the domestication of the cat.

Nine days ago sees the beginning of agriculture.

But Neandertals went extinct a full twenty-one days ago.

And it was a full month ago when the first humans of our sort (not Neandertal) entered Europe.

Human culture, in the form of rubbing red ocher on our bodies and burying our dead, began about forty-five days ago.

Sometime over three months ago, the total human population fell to about one thousands persons, in an evolutionary bottle-neck, and "Mitochondrial Eve" had her daughters, daughters who became the mothers of the entire now-living human race.

But it was a full year ago (half a million years ago in real terms) that our sort of human diverged from Neandertals.

Two "years" ago, modern humans were nowhere to be found; Homo erectus, with his stereotyped stone flaking, was the smartest biped.

Five "years" ago, Homo habilis appeared on the African savanna.

Eight "years" ago (in reality, about 3.9 million years ago) the dominant hominids were the Australopithecine.

And it was "only" ten "years" ago (five to six million years before present) that some mutation began the divergence of humans and chimpanzees from the same ancestral hominid.

But it was fully 125 "years" ago (65 million years ago) that the last of the dinosaurs died, allowing mammals to conquer the Earth.

It's been a long long time.

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - American liberty was found dead at the Supreme Court this morning. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss it - even if you believe you don't need civil liberties because you're not a criminal, there's no denying its importance to the Founding Fathers. Truly an American icon.

The U.S. Supreme Court today handed down its decision in Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of the state of Nevada, 03-5554, ruling that Americans have no constitutional right to refuse to give their names when asked to by police. The Court, in the opinion written by Mr. Justice Kennedy, explicitly says that police can demand your name even without probable cause to make an arrest, in the course of a so-called Terry stop, because "[o]btaining a suspect's name in the course of a Terry stop serves important government interests".

Slashdot previously discussed the Hiibel case in February.

In order to gauge who Slashdotters' opinions in the upcoming United States Presidential election, I've added a series of five user journal entries, immediate "below" this one.

Please indicate which candidate you support for President of The United States by adding a comment to the journal recording tallies for the single candidate you support.

In order, the journals are for supporters of

• Republican candidate George W. Bush
• Democratic candidate John Kerry
• Independent candidate Ralph Nader
• Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik
• and finally a journal for supporters of candidates not listed above.

Please note that you should indicate the candidate you support even if he or she is not currently on the ballot in your state, or if you are illegible to vote for one reasons of age, residency, citizenship, or civil disability -- the point is to indicate support, not to predict the actual electoral outcome. But is you are illegible to vote, or your preferred candidate is not on the ballot, I'd appreciate your noting that, and the reason you can't vote for whom you support, along with your comment.

If the candidate or party you support is not explicitly listed, please add a comment to the fourth journal entry, "Supporters of a candidate or party not listed above", and begin the subject line of the comment with the party affiliation (if any) and candidate name of the candidate you support.

Please comment only in a single "candidate" journal. You may add a brief sentence indicating the reasons for your support, but please reserve longer advocacy or argument for this journal entry. Anonymous entries, multiple entries, and entries by the same user in more than one tally journal will not be recorded in the final tally of "votes".

(But multiple or anonymous entries commenting on the candidates or on this straw poll are more than welcome in this journal only.)

Thank you for participating in orthogonal's straw poll!

Please comment here if you support the election of Republican Party candidate George W. Bush to the Presidency of the United States.

Please note: For purposes of the straw poll, George W. Bush is considered the presumptive candidate of the Republican Party.

Anonymous entries will not be included in the final tally. All other entries, even those with text opposing the candidate, will be construed as support for candidate George W. Bush. If you support another candidate, please post in the corresponding journal entry.

Please add only a single comment to only one of the four tally journals. Additional comments or advocacy can be added to the latest journal entry which announces this Straw Poll.

Please comment here if you support the election of Democratic Party candidate John Kerry to the Presidency of the United States.

Please note: For purposes of the straw poll, John Kerry is considered the presumptive candidate of the Democratic Party.

Anonymous entries will not be included in the final tally. All other entries, even those with text opposing the candidate, will be construed as support for candidate John Kerry. If you support another candidate, please post in the corresponding journal entry.

Please add only a single comment to only one of the four tally journals. Additional comments or advocacy can be added to the latest journal entry which announces this Straw Poll.

Please comment here if you support the election of candidate Ralph Nader to the Presidency of the United States.

Please note: Ralph Nader is not currently the Green Party candidate for President; the Green Party may endorse Nader or may run their own candidate, David Cobb. Please comment here only if you will support Nader regardless of the Green Party's decision. If you intend to support the Green party candidate regardless of whether that candidate is Nader or not, please add your comment to the last journal in this series, for "Supporters of a candidate or party not listed above" candidates.

Anonymous entries will not be included in the final tally. All other entries, even those with text opposing the candidate, will be construed as support for candidate Ralph Nader. If you support another candidate, please post in the corresponding journal entry.

Please add only a single comment to only one of the four tally journals. Additional comments or advocacy can be added to the latest journal entry which announces this Straw Poll.

Please comment here if you support the election of Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik to the Presidency of the United States.

Anonymous entries will not be included in the final tally. All other entries, even those with text opposing the candidate, will be construed as support for candidate Michael Badnarik. If you support another candidate, please post in the corresponding journal entry.

Please add only a single comment to only one of the four tally journals. Additional comments or advocacy can be added to the latest journal entry which announces this Straw Poll.

Please comment here if you support a candidate or party for President of the United States other than the ones listed in the journal entries above.

If you're listing your "vote" here, please prefix your comment's subject with the name of the Party and Candidate you support. Anonymous entries, or entries not indicating a Candidate or Party will not be included in the final tally.

Please add only a single comment to only one of the four tally journals. Additional comments or advocacy can be added to the latest journal entry which announces this Straw Poll.

I need election results for US House of Representative in the early 1800s (1800-1840, let's say). Please let me know where I can find this on the web.

(No, it's not for a homework project -- I wish I was that young. But it probably will turn up as a journal entry here.)

Thanks.

Nevermind, found what I needed

A Moscow court has banned Jehovah's Witnesses from operating within that city.

As an atheist, I'm appalled and fearful for Russian democracy. But I'm also not wholly unconcerned about my own country, the United States of America. The Russian ruling is more obviously religious persecution, but less obvious persecution goes on here too.

I've seen several people comment that the Russian ruling isn't so bad, because, well, Jehovah's witnesses go door to door and are, well, annoying. One person went so far as to relate her fears that the Jehovah's Witnesses could recruit the vulnerable:

The Watchtower is a destructive cult that actively and aggressively recruits new members.... it is wise to protect the vulnerable from their "message" whenever possible.

Perhaps it was because I'd just finished re-reading, for the Nth time, Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, which ends with the martyrdom at the hands of a mob, of the leader of a "disruptive cult", perhaps it was just my strong faith in that marvelous secular Bible, the U.S. Constitution, perhaps it was my own sense of being a religious minority, but I composed the following response. Your comments, as always, are welcome:

And, meaning no offense to you or to anyone, at one time Christianity was a cult that actively and aggressively recruited new members. Or at least that's what (now Saint) Paul's Epistles (to the Romans, the Corinthians, the Ephesians, the Philippians, the Colossians, and the Thessalonians) suggest.

Despite Paul's recruiting, the Christian cult -- or religion as it's now more usually referred to -- is very often credited with many fine accomplishments.

Speaking as an atheist, I have no particular axe to grind when it comes to debating the merits of one sect over another -- no sect has and none likely will overcome my incredulity. So believe me when I say that I am not enraging in any special pleading for the Jehovah's Witnesses.

As Christ said, the poor will be always with us (paraphrasing Matthew 26:11), and just so the vulnerable also will be with us always.

Protecting the vulnerable from used car salesmen (and I'm particularly vulnerable here) or spammers is one thing; but protecting them from the expression of beliefs, political ideologies, and indeed, theologies, smacks of condescension: if they are so vulnerable that they can't be trusted to determine their own faith, how can we trust them to decide their country's future in the voting booth? Shall we (re-)institute a literacy tests at the polling place and religious tests for office?

How shall we determine --and who shall determine -- what constitutes a "real" religion and what is an objectionable "cult" from which the vulnerable are to be protected? I have here some nominees for the position of Defensor Fidei, "Defender of the Faith": perhaps that Roman so unimpeachable that he was asked to be Governor of all Judea, Pontius Pilate? No? How about the well respected Jewish High Priest, Caiaphas -- he has some strong opinions on what's a real religion? No? Perhaps Uncle Joe Stalin -- he has some equally strong opinions about cults, especially cults of personality? No again? Is perhaps having a Defensor Fidei not so appealing when he's not of your sect?

And where does it end? Even if we agree that Jehovah's Witnesses are "bad cultists" -- and the Russian Orthodox Church, according to the article, very much agrees -- what about other Protestant splinter groups? As recently as 1770, the Colony of Massachusetts seized 400 acres of Baptist land -- in order to build a State-established church. Perhaps the Primates of the Russian Orthodox Church see the wisdom of the town fathers of Boston?

And what of those Latter Day Saints -- more popularly known by the derisive name "Mormons"? Are they a "cult" too? As late as 1846 the Saints were forced out of their community at Nauvoo, Illinois for -- among other things -- their "unnatural" practice of polygamy. Perhaps their habit of missionary work had something to do about it. God knows, it's up to us to fight for the sanctity of marriage against those dirty homos -- uh, I mean, religions founded in, even if no longer practicing, polygamy.

Of course, those Catholics are also not to be trusted, are they? Did you know that the Pope plans to subjugate this country, by a steady influx of Catholic immigrants! Or so the Know-Nothing Party told us (no, I mean the real Know-Nothing Party, not the party of George W. Bush!) as late as the 1850s. But even as late as 1928, anti-Catholic prejudice -- slanders that he was for "rum, Romanism, and rebellion" -- helped to ensure that Al Smith wasn't elected president. Instead, lucky us, we got Herbert Hoover.

On reflection, it seems that there are so many religions to protect the vulnerable against, doesn't it?

But perhaps the real message, the real "Good News", is that it's precisely this persecution of minority religions -- derisively called "dangerous cults" -- that led to the United States enshrining in its secular Bible, the Constitution, an absolute right of religious freedom. It's no accident that Baptists have historically -- despite the recent behavior of the Southern Baptist Convention -- been strong proponents of religious freedom: they have a equally long history of persecution.

There's also a reason why religious freedom and political freedoms like that of speech, assembly, and petitions for redress are tied together in the same Amendment: because once any government begins to presume to police the innermost dictates of your conscience -- your religious beliefs -- that government is also well on its way to telling you for whom to vote -- or well on its way to declaring that there's no need for you to vote at all.

So we should not fear just for the Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow, we should fear for Democracy in Moscow. And the Russian Orthodox Church should remember, as it suppresses the Jehovah's Witnesses in favor of the Orthodox Church, that not too long ago the State's power was used to suppress the Orthodox Church in favor of official atheism and Joseph Stalin's Cult of Personality.

Finally, let me point out that despite that glorious First Amendment, religion persecution -- official, government sponsored religious persecution -- still goes on in this country (just as the First Amendment did little for the Mormons in the 1830s). As an atheist, I see my faith -- for the lack of faith is, at base, a faith too -- derided every day that Congress opens with an official prayer -- a practiced recently declared constitutional by a Federal Court (but then, it was a (Supreme) Federal Court that decided Dred Scott and Plessy, too).

I see my faith dismissed on every piece of U.S. Currency, with the words "In God We Trust". And worst of all, I see young children coerced every day they go to State schools, to pledge a loyalty oath that includes a reference to a monotheistic God. I see that no one in the U.S. House or Senate professs my faith -- and that no member of the U.S. Supreme Court has ever been one of my co-religionists. And indeed, my people are all too often accused of being members of a dangerous cult, too.

I only hope there are a few historically minded Jehovah's Witnesses, Baptists, Latter Day Saints, and Catholics who might understand that neither my faith nor theirs is safe so long as a tyrannical majority can decide what is, or is not, suitable belief -- whether suitable belief for them, or me, or Michael Newdow's daughter.

I am angry and depressed today.

I've always been a patriotic American, I've always loved my country. Some of my earliest memories are of reading the Declaration of Independence and children's histories of the War for Independence.

As part of that patriotism I've also tried, from a young age, not to blind myself to my country's failures to live up to its ideals: slavery, Jim Crow, internment of the Japanese, Joe McCarthy are all thing I've spent a lot of time abhorring -- my list of "never agains".

Today is another day that history will see as a black mark on the conscience of America: Thomas Butler was sentenced to two years in prison today.

Thomas Butler -- Doctor Thomas Butler -- was one of this country's foremost researchers into Yesina pestis, better known as the "Black Plague". When 30 vials of Black Plague went missing from his laboratory, Dr. Butler informed the FBI and cooperated with the investigation. When the FBI and prosecutors decided they needed a scapegoat -- possibly because the disappearance was widely publicized -- Dr. Butler was arrested.

When Dr. Butler refused to lie by accepting a plea bargain, the prosecutor, apparently in order to force a plea bargain and save face, piled on 57 charges, most of them having nothing to do with the missing vials of Black Plague. The other charges involved Dr. Butler's compensation for work outside his university; the prosecutor alleged these contracts deprived the university of money, even though such contracts are commonplace at the university.

In January, Dr. Butler was convinced. The jury acquitted Dr. Butler on the main charges of smuggling Black Plague. The charges for which he was convicted were incorrectly filling out a Federal Express form by characterizing plague samples as "laboratory materials" rather than "commercial merchandise", and charges related to the contracts. Incredibly, the jury convicted Dr. Butler on 44 of those charges, but found him not guilty on 10 others -- for precisely the same kind of contracts. Clearly, we have a case here where the jury was trying to split the difference.

And again, no one has ever been prosecuted before for these very common contractual arrangements -- this is purely a case of the prosecutor piling on charges in order to get a conviction on something even if that conviction has nothing to do with the original grounds for the arrest.

If you consider yourself a patriot -- if you plan to exercise your right to vote this November -- you owe it to yourself and you owe it to your country to read Dr. Thomas Lehman's account of Dr. Butler's trial and conviction. Dr. Lehman, a university scientist himself, is familiar with the contracts over which Dr. Butler was convicted -- and make sit clear what a horrifying farce this has been.

And then you need to get angry. Angry that one of the best researchers into bio-terrorism will spend the next two years in prison -- and will be barred from research the rest of his life. Angry that that makes you not more safe, but far less safe, because Al Quida's researchers are not in jail.

But more fundamentally, angry that the American "Justice" system is a farce that send innocent men to jail in order to save face for overzealous cops and prosecutors.

(That's a tautology, designed to sound controversial and get your attention. But now that I have your attention, check out this site for an idea of just how easily the RIAA expects to manipulate its customers.)

orthogonal writes "Hey kids! Let me condescend to you. A site with a '60s look and '50s sensibility pretends to be hip and cool as it dispenses RIAA propaganda in a tone as condescending as a junior high school Health class film.

As a bonus, it appears as if it was written by the "Is it cool or is it whack" troll. Here's a sample of the lowdown, kids:

So what's the deal with downloading music from the Internet? Everyone's talking about it - at home, at school, in chat rooms, in the media - and millions of music lovers are doing it. But a lot of people are confused. Some parents are telling their kids not to download; others think it's okay. Some downloaders are being sued by record companies, others are not. Even some of the people who create and sell music aren't sure what to think - or do - about technology and music.

All the cool kids are gonna check this site out after school!"

In this journal, I'm collecting what I consider the "best of" Slashdot comments.

I've long wished that there was a way to browse all the really good comments, across all articles. So here's my poor attempt at collecting the comments that, to steal a joke from This is Spinal Tap, you'd see if you could browse at +6.

Feel free to nominate comments you think should be "+6" by replying to this journal.

(Score:6, Funny):
Approved by two layers of penguins

(After four days of waiting, this was rejected as an article submision. Go figure. Guess it's not as interesting as How to Handle an Internet Outage)

MAPILab.com has reverse engineered the (according to Microsoft) "state-of-the-art" new spam filter in Microsoft Outlook 2003. And if Microsoft is to be believed, the state of the art is unintentionally hilarious. Read the article for what Microsoft thinks is effective spam filtering -- NON-adaptive filters -- and don't forget the extra spam-checking heuristics, some merely mis-implemented, some just incomprehensibly bizarre. (And then, be glad you've got SpamBayes.)

Trust me. If you know anything about spam or programming, this is hilarious.

Here's a dummy entry for anyone wanting to comment on

• My post on teaching via Slashdot or
• on Multi-Level-/Distributed/Bacterial Learning or
• my very incomplete post on free texts and tutotials

I'll add more ideas here if interest is shown any of these subjects.