Eastward or Westward?

“Off with his head!” barks the presiding judge pointing at the defendant Antonio Pigafetta, chronicler and navigator of the first circumnavigation of the world by Ferdinand Magellan. He is one of the eighteen  survivors of the original crew of 270 that embarked three years earlier on the record-breaking journey. “You were sloppy in your duties and your log at the end of the voyage is off by one day.” “Where did you loose this day!” he roars, and Pigafetta lowers his gaze in defeat as indeed one day is missing from the ship’s log.

“Excuse me your Excellency,” a confident voice from the audience reaches across the aisles, “there is a simple mathematical explanation.” Young  men who just uttered these word steps out of the shadows and continues. "Captain Magellan was sailing as if chasing the Sun setting in the West,” he says, “and each of his days was imperceptibly longer because of that”. “In the end, when Your Excellency have seen that many times the Sun setting over the western horizon, upon coming back Pigaffetta recorded one less such event on the account of following the Sun all the way around the globe.”  “Voila!,” he concludes gallantly to the stunned court.

When a mundane event of garroting an incompetent navigator evolves into the discussion of planetary motions it does not go unnoticed. The demonstration of   mathematical thinking that occurred that day lit a fuse that little over a hundred years later led to the creation of the Royal Society and the explosion of creativity in mathematics and physics that followed.

The phenomenon explained to the court had power to surprise nearly 350 years later when Mr. Fileas Fogg, a disciplined man of supreme self confidence, made a wager that he will rely on public transportation and travel around the world in 80 days. The choice of eastward direction shortened his days and upon the completion of his journey gave him, as if by a miracle, an extra day which won his bet and turned his life around in the process.

These days mathematics may be in retreat and shrouded in the fog of incomprehensibility but the phenomenon of gaining or loosing a day when one travels around the globe can still inspire.

For those travelers who embark on a journey around the globe  we have the following recommendations:

If you are sad, depressed and feeling as if you are constantly falling behind, we suggest westward direction. The lost day will provide a burial ground for  your failures where you think  that the success was just behind the corner. Rather than beating yourself you will blame Nature for stealing this one day that could have made the difference. You may finally realize that rather that than running blindly ahead all you need to do is to stop.

On the other hand, if you feel powerful and omnipotent, full of ideas and confident, then travel eastward. A gift of an extra day  will be yet another opportunity to do something nice or important, climb another mountain or prove a theorem. An extra day will fuel your sense of well being and propel you forward for even more conquests and adventures.

Sadly, mathematics offers less to those going North or South and we have only one advice: dress warmly.

The end is near

This is a continuation of my uncle's diaries which started here. The last installment was here.
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The news is out - victory is at hand. Capitalist pigs are on their last legs and up against the wall, and our verking environment is better than ever. It is really a great moment to celebrate and comrades were overheard singing this song. However, our Party is wary of this. Every victory carries germs of a future defeat and comrades ought to be insulated against it. There are several ingenious ways in which the Party helps us to mature and reach a higher alert level.

More with less

Yes, we may be winning but nothing squashes the celebratory mood like throttling resources. The Command Center was put in charge of the process and they cut the Botany Unit by a whole 10%. However, quite generously they let us choose what to eliminate. Comrades are spending countless hours sipping borscht and mulling over the options.
The obvious idea is to shut down a couple of Farming Outposts. The Botany Unit runs eight of them and suddenly it feels like a lot. Botany and farmers existed for thousands of years but Farming Outposts are a novelty that is only several decades old. Quite frankly that is the only thing in botany that would not have happened if not for the Ministry of Everything and that is a reason for considerable pride.
In the old days farmers were working in solitude and misery. Our Farming Outposts gave them an opportunity to mingle, kick back and talk things over. After shaking off initial suspicion the farming community embraced the concept and now they cling to Farming Outposts like barnacles.  Every Farming Outpost has some fanatics that will swear that it is the best thing on the planet. The Party has  a more somber view of these facilities and certainly some of them could freshen up. A Central Committee member commented a while ago that "The comrades running the Corn Outpost are very complementary about themselves; indeed, I wonder that they are not in a hospital somewhere: wrenched arms from incessantly patting themselves on the back.”  Others are complaining about the Underground Farming Outpost - whatever these comrades are doing does not amount to much and it costs a lot. "Have they ever grown anything?" Party members ask with anxiety.  Lastly,  the Potato Farming Outpost is hovering on the brink of irrelevance because nobody seems to care about it except for a few senior comrades who remember it from better times.
It is a tough time and we do our best sowing fear and panic in the farming community in case the Party decides to deal with the wreckers harshly!

Compulsive and unnecessary?

Marx and Engels stated in the Communist Manifesto that the “...bourgeoisie ... rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.” While these words do not cast a shadow over the field of botany directly, the comrades in the Botany Unit were always saddened by the fact that they were on the sidelines of the class struggle and revolution. In the quest for more appreciation and involvement,  and in line with the founding fathers' view of rural life, the  Botany Unit took initiatives that led the botany-trained farmers towards loftier goals that do not involve growing any plants, but rather, processing them. Many comrades worry about it a great deal - someone has to grow the damn stuff after all!
As if this was not enough, the carnivores running the Command Center seem to know something about the farming community that can be exploited for their purposes. Most of its members are phenomenally compulsive; they will do their job anyway, and do it for nothing!  If there is anybody that can absorb austerity and cuts with a shrug it is the beloved farmers supported by the Botany Unit. Who needs the enemies with friends like that!

iTrick

The other way in which the Party tries to wipe the self-congratulatory smiles from our faces involves the newest technology and it is called iTrick.  To be allowed to use iTrick takes a considerable amount of training, and it is quite surprising what one gets in return.

Countless studies showed that comrades who at any given time know what they should be doing, how to go about it and what they have done in the recent past have a high level of personal satisfaction and significant degree of comfort and security. iTrick is a product of a lot of research that aims at shaking these foundations. It is not easy to describe what iTrick is, particularly given that so few are allowed near it. In a nutshell, it is a new way of handling information which is compatible with the rest of the Party units. It utilizes homing pigeons rather than runners and these unruly birds are a part of  the issue. Comrades huddling under the umbrella of iTrick are reportedly shrouded in a dense fog of uncertainty regarding their environment and they are  profoundly disoriented. iTrick originated with detailed studies of how to make workflow faster and more accurate, and how to increase the amount of available information and put it at the fingertips of rank-and-file comrades. The Ministry of Everything and the iTrick designing team came up with a long list of the most desirable features and worked hard to make sure that the final product missed most of them. iTrick makes a walk in the park resemble the siege of Leningrad but the Botany Unit welcomes this new challenge. As always, the Party knows how to keep the fighting spirit up!