Talk at the Explorer's Club

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Yesterday I went to a talk at the New York Explorer's Club. The talk was pretty good (more below), but the Explorer's Club was kick ass. I love this place. They have the original sleds fro Arctic explorations, Masai Warrior Statues, stuffed animals from before they were very well known (those are mainly hidden).

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It is a total "Jules Verne Around The World..." type club. It has fallen into slightly decrepit status now. I spoke to a girl who is a student member and she said the Presidents lately have just been kind of old and locked into an older style. They need a little new blood. And yes, of course I am going to have to pull Eddie into it.

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The talk was all about the Mayan Calendar system. The hook is that the Mayan's predict an end of the current age in 2012. It hails the end of the 13th baktun.

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The talk spoke about that, but kind of quickly moved on from the apocalypse to the entire Mayan Time system. It is fascinating. There is lunar cycle calendar, a solar cycle calendar (365 days and more accurate that Georgian until the latest atomic clock changes). There are also cyclical calendars based on Venus, Mercury, Mars and Jupiter / Saturn cycles. There "long calendar" (which the 2012 date is based on) is kind of their "creation" calendar used for marking days from creation and years of royal rule. It has only 360 days.

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Their most basic calendar is based on 260 days, which is pregnancy birth cycle. It is the cycle of man.

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Also, they had an ordinal number cycle - based on base 20 (instead of our's based on base 10). It was set up in order, unlike Greek or Roman numerals - and so math was easily possible. (For example, it is much easier to figure 51-8 in common numbers or Mayan numbers than in Roman numbers (LI - VIII=).

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It was an interesting night, but now I want to join the Explorer's Club.