A pop history account of the competition between John Harrison, who made the first precision marine clock in around 1735, and the astronomers of the time (such as Edmund Halley, who figured out you could determine longitude by the difference between local time and time in some known place in Europe by published tables of when the moons of Jupiter would be eclipsed by Jupiter, or where the moon was in relation to the sun at certain predictable times once the orbits were worked out). Super interesting on the basics of measurement of something incredibly useful.
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Recent Posts
- Reading Nov-Dec 2025 and Jan 2026
- AI as an existential threat – Kevane preliminary draft
- “What can it do?” A living list of computational problems that deep learning/AI/neural nets can or seems likely to “do” (at varying cost and efficacy)
- Reading August-September 2025
- The typical popular sci-fi version of AI posing an existential risk?
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Friends of African Village Libraries (I post regularly here)- Visite du Centre de Lecture et d’Études de Béréba par le coordonnateur de ABVBF
- Animation d’une séance de lect ure à la bibliothèque de Bougounam
- Annual report for 2025 of partner organization in Burkina Faso ABVBF
- Actions récents de l’animateur de ABVBF, Burkina Faso
- Animation d’u e séance de discussion à la bibliothèque de Niankorodugou
- Rencontre d’une équipe de Amis des Bibliothèques de Villages du Burkina Faso (ABVBF) avec le DPEPPNF du Tuy
- Rapport de mission de l’équipe de ABVBF au CEG de Dossi
- Rapport de sortie à la bibliothèque de Dimikuy, Burkina Faso
- Rapport de sortie à la bibliothèque de Dohoun
- Préparation d’un don de livres CMH aux élèves du CEG de Dossi