A Matter of Degrees

[Sherwood, Harrison]

>From: 	millison at online-journalist.com
>
>229.30 `incomprehensibly and perversely, in willful denial of God's
>Disposition of Time and Space, preferring 365 and a Quarter'  Well why
>not?  (AD)
>
>I haven't found a reference yet to verify whether or not the Chinese ever
>divided a circle into 365.25 degrees, but using the same number for days in
>a year and degrees in a circle appears to be an ancient practice, and the
>number seems to have been 360 for some time.

Been poking around the Web for information on Feng Shui.... Golly there
sure are a lot of Kung-Pao Kulture sites for Feng Shui consultants
who'll help you geo-locate your business or home for a (frequently not
inconsiderable) fee.

Out of all the mystical prestidigitation I was able to glean a few
morsels, most at the Pun Yin Metaphysics site at
http://plaza.interport.net/pymetaphysics/index.htm. Mostly this seems a
credible site, but it bears the unsettling copyright notice:

Copyright © 1995 Pun Yin Metaphysics LtdConcept & Design by Fortune-it
Cookie Entertainment Ltd

Most informative are the links to "Tools" and "About Feng Shui." Of
particular interest is the description of the Lo-Pan:

"The Lo-Pan is a disc, six or more inches in diameter, with a magnetic
compass about one inch in diameter in the centre. The disc, usually red,
is inscribed with sixteen or more concentric circles, subdivided by
radial divisions, with appropriate lettering. It synthesises all the
Chinese theories as to the cosmic harmony between the energies of
nature, time-relations as indicated by the sun and moon, and the
directions in space from any point on the earth." [Man, I gotta get me
one of those for my car!]
Master Pun Yin is tantalisingly silent on the number of degrees in a
circle in Feng Shui practice. However, 60s and 24s and such appear at
such regular intervals that it begins to look like Our Tom was having a
bit of poetic license.

Another credible-looking site is at
http://sunflower.singnet.com.sg/~cecil/. Poke around behind the
"Introduction" link. This stuff's not for everybody; it took me about
three minutes before I wanted to run screaming to alt.tasteless for some
Pu-Pu jokes.

Concatenating threads, here, this is from William Karlin:

>As I noted in my last post this "earth-harmonious, cosmologically-
>centered" way of doing things would have had to be changed eventually.
>The ancients, and medieval folk just were unable to see that the stars  
>and their apparent motion were not the absolutes they thought them to be.
So why not make the measurement system coherent and manageable?

And here, I think, you've put your finger on the very heart of the
conflict in _Mason & Dixon_. Faced with the sudden death of comfortable
absolutes, what do you do?

Draw your _own_ Lines, of course...

Harrison