Long Now Foundation, Rosetta disk and Rosetta Space Mission

View fullsize

If you are not familiar with the Long Now Foundation you may want to check it out at http://longnow.org. 

The Long Now foundation “was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long-tern cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide a counterpoint to today’s accelerating culture and help make long-term thinking more common. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.”

View fullsize

Rosetta space probe approaching the 67P comet - photo by ESA

The Long Now blog is always interesting and we are especially interested in their coverage of the Rosetta Probe's Landing. 

The Rosetta Mission will deploy the Philae lander onto the 67P Comet on Wed. Nov. 12, 0214. The event will be streamed live from 6:00 am - 9:00 am PST. We’ll be watching and hope you will be too.

(The European Space Agency also has some more great photos of the Rosetta craft and the 67P Comet on Flickr.)

View fullsize

Rosetta disk - photo by Laine Stranahan

The Long Now has been participating in the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Mission for over a decade and there is even a copy of the Long Now's Rosetta disk, an archive of 1,500 human languages, onboard the Rosetta Probe.

P.S. In September, we wrote about artist Katie Paterson’s wonderful Future Library project and the Long Now did too. Their story has lots of interesting details and is worth a read. 

Everyday Life in a Medieval City

A recent story in the NY Times describes some fascinating birch bark scrolls, preserved for hundreds of years in a kind of magical mud that give us a inside knowledge of Novgorod, Russia in medieval times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/world/europe/where-mud-is-archaeological-gold-russian-history-grew-on-trees.html

The writings and drawings on the birch bark scrolls date from the 1000s to the 1400s and show that people who lived 1,000s of years ago discussed many of the same things we do today. Things of ordinary life are documented including school exercises, doodles, shopping lists and many letters.

"Written in conversational language, on everyday topics, the birch-bark documents provide a remarkable human soundtrack to accompany a vast — and still growing — trove of artifacts including coins, official seals, kitchenware, jewelry and clothing. There are records of business transactions, demands for payment of debts, inventories of goods, accusations of crimes, convoluted discussions of legal disputes, personal letters among family and friends, even love letters."

“The people of ancient Novgorod are talking to us through these scrolls.”

In a way, these preserved scrolls have accomplished what Timebox is working to achieve, but long, long before computers or even paper. It’s intriguing to think how people in the future will discover what everyday life in the 2000s was like.

View fullsize

Keep Track of the Wines You Drink

View fullsize

A couple of weeks ago we had dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants and the people next to us were in the process of choosing a wine. Their conversation went something like this:

Q: Have we had this wine before?
A: I don’t know.

Q: What did we have last week?
A; I don’t remember.

Q: Have we had this one before?
A: Not sure.

Bartender: You had that one last week.

Being into wine ourselves we thought Timebox could help them keep track of the wines they drink. As much or as little info as they want to keep:

• wine name
• producer
• region
• grape varietal
• vintage
• photo of the label
• where purchased
• price
• your rating - 5 stars -  love it, 1 star - plonk.
• drinking partners
• food

We couldn’t help ourselves so we told them about Timebox and they downloaded it right away. 

Making a category for wine is easy:

1. Tap Categories
2. Tap Customize
3. Tap New Category
4. Enter a Category Name like "Wine"
5. Tap the plus sign to add the fields you want to track.
6. Tap done.

To keep it super simple steps 1-4 will suffice.

Cheers!