<a href="https://survivaltricks.wordpress.com/" title="Additional survival tricks" rel="home">Additional survival tricks

SOCIAL ISSUES CONTENTS BLOG IMAGE OF CONT. OF SOCIAL ISSUES

LIVING BLOG LIVING CONTENTS BLOG IMAGE OF LIVING CONTENTS

HOW TO BLOG HOW TO CONTENTS BLOG IMAGE OF HOW TO CONTENTS

Click here go to Home Page (Navigation-Survival-How To-Money).

ARCHIVAL HOME PAGE CONTENTS HOME PAGE BLOG IMAGE OF CONTENTS HOME PAGE

SUBSCRIPTION: [RSS – Posts], [RSS – Comments]

MENU: [Contents][Blog Image of Contents ][Archives ] [About]

Simple determination of East Asia lunisolar New Year

January 19, 2017August 30, 2018tonytran2015 8 Comments

Simple determination of East Asia lunisolar New Year

by tonytran2015 (Melbourne, Australia).

Click here for a full, up to date ORIGINAL ARTICLE and to help fighting the stealing of readers’ traffic.

(Blog No.49).

#East Asia New Year, #lunar New Year, #lunar leap year, #lunar leap month, #lunisolar calendar, #Vietnamese New Year, #lunar calendar.

When traveling to or working with East Asia countries Westerners are sometimes puzzled by their Calendar and long New Year festivals which vary from year to year on the Western Calendar.

This blog gives simple explanation to Westerners the rules of East Asia Lunisolar calendar which is based on Celestial observations and has been designed to give season information to users.

To easily understand this article, readers are advised to first read the simple summary on stars in the sky [1] to know the declination, right ascension and the date of a star.

Simple calculations [2] shows that each lunar month is 29.530 days. Two lunar months has a length of 59.06 days. The lunisolar calendar used in China since ancient time has had Winter solstice falling on the 11th month of the year since more than 2000 years ago, since 113BC (Han Dynasty II p.38 [3]) .

The solstice point (the point from ecliptic most South of the celestial equator) is moving slowly in the sky and is currently opposite to 90 degree Right Ascension.

1. New Year time is just a convention.

A lunisolar year can be made to start at any of its seasonal point, the point can be in the Winter or in the Summer. It all comes to a matter of convention. For example, the Burmese lunisolar calendar has its New Years starting when the Sun enters the constellation Aries.

For East Asia lunisolar calendar making, there are two major alternatives for determining its New Years as in the following.

2. Simple rules.

Figure 1: Phase of the Moon. A new Moon is the Moon with a thin white crescent on its leading edge (top right corner of the picture) which is first visible right after sunset on the Western horizon.

If the calendar makers want their people to have simple and clear rule on the start of a New Year, they can define the New Year starting on the Second New Moon after Winter Solstice day.

This would be easy for ordinary people and people in remote areas to work out their two last (11th and 12th) lunar months of the year, and have enough time to prepare for the New Year festival.

3. Precision rules with uniform determination of months.

Figure: Inversion map of the Northern Celestial 3/4-sphere. The non-concentric circle is the ecliptic and winter solstice is its most distant point from the North pole (on the left of the North pole).

The Eastern Asia lunisolar Calendar requires each of its lunar month has a characteristic star in the sky to match with the seasons. There are 12 chosen characteristic stars. A lunar year has either 12 lunar months (normal year) or 13 lunar months (leap year). Any lunar month not containing any of those 12 chosen characteristic stars is called a leap month and is named after its preceding month.

Each Lunar month begins with a New Moon and ends before the next New Moon.

If the Calendar Makers insist on astronomical precision with uniform determination of months then they can define each month having to contain a star at regular spacing of Right Ascension, that is 11th month having some star of 90 degree R.A. on the meridian line at midnight on one night of the month and so on [4], [5].

Therefore they would require that

11th month has a star of 90 degree R.A.,
12th month has a star of 120 degree R.A.,
1st month has a star of 150 degree R.A., (Regulus of Leo has 152.05° R.A., 12° decl.)
2nd month has a star of 180 degree R.A.,
3rd month has a star of 210 degree R.A.,
4th month has a star of 240 degree R.A., (Delta Scorpii has 240.22° R.A., –22.60° decl.)
5th month has a star of 270 degree R.A.,
6th month has a star of 300 degree R.A., (Altair of Aql has 297.7° R.A., 8.85° decl.)
7th month has a star of 330 degree R.A.,
8th month has a star of 0 degree R.A.,
9th month has a star of 30 degree R.A.,
10th month has a star of 60 degree R.A.,

any month that has no star in the above list is called a leap month bearing the same name as its preceding non-leap month. Therefore it is hard for ordinary people to know the beginning of the Year.

4. Most probable choice.

I would think that the ancient Calendar makers chose the first alternative rather than the more difficult second alternative.

The second alternative also has an additional complication that there is a precession of Equinox at a rate of 360 degree per(approximately) 25,920 years. In 2000 years the Winter Solstice has moved by 27.7 degrees (about one month). Chines Calendar Makers would have noticed it and saw the need for adjustment had they chosen the second alternative but I could not find any literature about that kind of adjustment.

It is most likely that Chinese Calendar Makers had chosen the first alternative. Their choice may have had influence on Calendar Makers of neighboring countries.

If East Asian Calendar Makers chose the easy rules of for determining New Year day then the 1st month of any East Asian New Year would contain a star that has a date of 18 February(= 21 December + 59.06 days), 59.06 days after Winter Solstice. That would come to a simple rule for star watchers (for the current configuration of Earth orbit):
The New Year starts on the second new moon after Winter Solstice day and the first lunar month of the lunisolar calendar should have a star of 18 February (= 21 December + 59.06 days) of Right Ascension of nearly 152 degrees (near to that of Regulus of Leo) on its meridian at midnight.

The second through to the tenth months of the lunisolar calendar have been anchored to seasons by requiring each to have a star chosen as specified in section 3. If bright stars of approximate Right Ascensions are chosen instead, there would only be more or less leap months repeating the name of the preceding months. The choice of bright stars of approximate Right Ascensions may also have been influenced by superstition and politics.

It is common to find references to Festivals of First Full Moons of the years (Tết Nguyên Tiêu) in ancient Chinese historical texts but it is not easy to find references to Festivals of First New Moons ( Tết Nguyên Đán) in those ancient texts.

References

[1]. tonytran2015, Finding North and time by stars ,survivaltricks.wordpress.com, https://survivaltricks.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/finding-north-and-time-by-stars/

[2]. tonytran2015, Finding North direction and time accurately from the horn line of the Moon, survivaltricks.wordpress.com, https://survivaltricks.wordpress.com/2015/08/12/finding-north-direction-and-time-accurately-from-the-horn-line-of-the-moon/

[3]. Sima Qian, Records of History by the grand historian (translated by Burton Watson), Qin Dynasty, Han Dynasty I (Rev. Ed.) and Han Dynasty II (Rev. Ed.), the Res. Cent. for Transl. The Chinese Univ. of Hon Kong and Colubia Univ. Press, Hong Kong and New York, 1961. Han Dynasty II p.38 showed that in 113BC, month 11 has the solstice.

[4]. Helmer Aslaksen, The Mathematics of the Chinese Calendar, http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/calendar/chinese.shtml, accessed 19 Jan 2017.
[5]. Ho Ngoc Duc, Thuat toan am lich (in Vietnamese), https://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~duc/amlich/calrules.html, accessed 19 Jan 2017.

Added after 2018 April 06:

There are 24 nearly equally spaced, designated (by East Asian Astronomers) marker points on the Ecliptic called “Solar terms” in “Chinese English”. The position of the Sun relative to these markers tell its progress along the Ecliptic and the season in the year. Any leap month is inserted such that the Sun does not go far from its expected positions for the month [6].

Figure: The wavy line in this Mercator map of the sky is the Ecliptic. The Sun travels on it. There are 24 marker points on this line used by East Asian Astronomers to quantify the position of the Sun on this line.

References (cont.)

[6]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_term

RELATED SURVIVAL blogs

Harvest-moon-festival-in-east-asian-calendar, posted September 29, 2017

Shadow stick navigation and graph of solar paths, posted August 19, 2016

Time-keeping-without-using-watches . Posted on September 17, 2017

Finding directions and time using the Sun and a divider., posted on May 6, 2015. <<<—This is my MOST USEFUL novel technique.

Finding North and time by stars. Posted on August 28, 2015

Finding North direction and time by any bright star, posted July 22, 2016

Click here for my other blogs on SURVIVAL

SOCIAL ISSUES CONTENTS BLOG IMAGE OF CONT. OF SOCIAL ISSUES

LIVING BLOG LIVING CONTENTS BLOG IMAGE OF LIVING CONTENTS

HOW TO BLOG HOW TO CONTENTS BLOG IMAGE OF HOW TO CONTENTS

Click here go to Home Page (Navigation-Survival-How To-Money).

ARCHIVAL HOME PAGE CONTENTS HOME PAGE BLOG IMAGE OF CONTENTS HOME PAGE

SUBSCRIPTION: [RSS – Posts], [RSS – Comments]

MENU: [Contents][Blog Image of Contents ][Archives ] [About]

Navigating with an AM MW radio receiver

January 17, 2017August 16, 2019tonytran2015 15 Comments

Navigating with an AM MW radio receiver

by tonytran2015 (Melbourne, Australia).

Click here for a full, up to date ORIGINAL ARTICLE and to help fighting the stealing of readers’ traffic.

(Blog No.48).

#AM, #broadcast, #emergency, #radio, #radio direction finding, #find North, #Medium Wave, #radio navigation.

Every natural disaster emergency kit is recommended by authorities to include a battery operated Amplitude Modulation Medium Wave (AM MW, also called AM Broadcast) radio receiver to receive critical information and instructions.

The radio receiver can actually do much more than receiving information and instructions. It can find the direction to nearby AM broadcasting stations and even find your location on any map showing the stations.

Figure: Map of Melbourne with 2 nearby AM broadcasting stations shown as red dots. Map has been modified from original map used under Open License from Open Street Map, the data are owned by Open Street Map Contributors.

The technique is applicable when there are nearby (closer than 100km) AM broadcast stations. It is useful to regions near the terrestrial magnetic poles where magnetic compasses do not work well, to desert crossing and to coastal boat travel when visibility is very poor and other modes of navigation are not available (such as when in bad or extreme weather, during volcanic emergency and without any working magnetic compass).

1. Basis of Radio-direction-finding.

An AM broadcasting station in Medium Wave sends electromagnetic waves out from its antenna at the speed of light. The invisible EM waves propagate outwards from the broadcast station’s vertical antenna. The antenna continuously releases consecutive, expanding circular magnetic lines of alternating (clockwise then anti-clockwise) orientations. The circles spread out in all directions. When a receiver receives the signal, the alternating magnetic field is at right angle to both the spreading (propagation) direction and the alternating electrical field which is almost in the direction of the broadcasting antenna.

Most AM radio receiving Medium Waves (0.5MHz to 1.6MHz) use ferrite rod antennas to capture these magnetic field lines. The ferrite rod of an AM MW receiver is usually placed inside and along the top edge of the (usually flat) receiver. Figure 4 shows the ferrite rod antenna inside a Sony radio of a common design.

Figure 1: A battery operated multi-band AM radio that can be used in emergency. This battery operated multi-band AM radio with a fair sized signal strength indicator in a small window on the left of the dial was made in the 1960’s. Its pulled out rod antenna is only for Short Wave reception, an internal long ferrite rod antenna is used for Medium Wave reception.

Figure 2: A compact radio receiver WITH an AM internal ferrite rod antenna that can be best for emergency use. This compact AM/FM receiver has an internal ferrite rod antenna for AM MW reception and can properly receive AM signals even without using any earphone.

When an AM MW (also called broadcast band) radio receiver has been tuned to a station, you can notice the signal strength varies when its ferrite rod antenna is rotated on the horizontal plane: The received signal is weakest when either end of the rod is pointed directly at the transmitting station, and it is strongest when the rod is at right angle to the line of sight to the station. The technique has been widely used for ships until the advent of low cost GPS. Reference [1] gives a really interesting long list with pictures of AM radio receivers specially built for the application of this technique on ships.

Figure 3: A 3 band Sony transistor radio with a retractable short wave rod antenna (radio model 838, assembled in South Vietnam in 1970, under license from SONY, as shown on the label on the back of the radio).

Figure 4: The interior of the Sony transistor radio showing a long ferrite rod antenna of grey colour on the top and parallel to the top edge. (Sony radio model 838, assembled in South Vietnam in 1970, under license from SONY, as shown on the label on the back of the radio.)

CAUTION: Many compact AM MW radio receivers do NOT have ferrite rod antennas, they use their earphone wires to receive the electrical component of the broadcast waves. This method of finding directions does NOT work with such receivers.

2. Finding direction by a radio.

Rotate the top edge (with the ferrite antenna) of the receiver by a full horizontal turn and notice the two opposite directions where signal receptions are weakest. When this happens, one of the ends of the ferrite rod is pointing exactly at the station and the station lies on the line through the top edge of the receiver. Additional information from somewhere else is needed to tell in which of the opposite directions the station may lie.

Figure: Openstreetmap for Melbourne with added cooodinates and the locations of Delahey and Lower Plenty. Map has been modified from original map used under Open License from Open Street Map, the data are owned by Open Street Map Contributor.

Examples:

a. “ABC Radio Melbourne ‘s 774 kHz transmitter is located in Delahey (the left red dot in the map), 20 km north-west of Melbourne’s central business district. … at a power of 50,000 watts,… one of two transmitters using the callsign 3LO” [2].

When an AM radio is tuned to 3LO on 774kHz it receives the broadcast with call sign 3LO. When its ferrite antenna is pointed at the left red dot on the map, the signal will be weakest and the reception most noisy.

b. ABC NEWS on radio ABC NEWS on radio Frequency 1026 AM Callsign 3PB Sound Mode Mono Polarisation Vertical Broadcast Pattern OmniDirectional Transmitter Location Bonds Road LOWER PLENTY (the right red dot on the map)” [3].

When an AM radio is tuned to 3PB on 1026kHz it receives the broadcast with call sign 3PB. When its ferrite antenna is pointed at the right red dot on the map, the signal will be weakest and the reception most noisy.

You may be able to find the frequencies and transmitter locations of the AM broadcasts for your area from the useful sites [4] www.dxing.info, [5] wiki List of European medium wave transmitters

3. Finding location by a line through the station.

If the direction of the top edge of the receiver relative to true North is known, the locus of the receiver on the map is a straight line through the broadcasting station.

Your location can be found using the intersection of two such locus lines through two broadcasting stations shown on a map. (The intersection R of the lines RS1 and RS2).

4. Finding location by a circle through two stations.

If two stations S1 and S2 are shown on a map and A is a directed (signed) angle from the line to S1 to the line to S2 then the locus of the radio receiver is the circle through S1 and S2 bearing that directed angle A.

For example, if the angle from R-S1 to R-S2 is 40 degrees (an example value) in the anti-clockwise direction, the receiver must be on the red circle drawn through S1 and S2 on the map. The example circle is called the circle bearing the angle of 40 degree in the anti-clockwise direction for viewing the (direcred) line segment S1-S2.

5. Finding location by three circles through three stations shown on a map.

Figure 1: Finding your location using intersecting angle bearing circles.

Any map showing the locations of the broadcasting stations S1, S2, S3,… can be used to locate the position R of the radio receiver. Any receiver with the angle from R-S1 to R-S2 being 40 degrees clockwise (an example value) in the clockwise direction must be on the circle drawn through S1 and S2 for that example value of 40 degrees. The example circle is called the circle bearing the angle of 40 degree in the clockwise direction for viewing the line S1-S2.

If three stations S1, S2 and S3 are shown on a map as in the figure of the last section and the directed (signed) angles between the directions to S1, S2, S3 are all known, the receiver is on the intersection of all three circles through each pair of S1, S2 and S3 bearing the respective directed angles between them. Usually, only two circles are needed to draw the intersection point, which is the location of the radio receiver R.

6. Limitation of the method.

a. The method works well if there are non-interfering AM broadcast stations within 100km of the navigator and the terrain is nearly flat.

b. When there are high atmospheric electrical activities it may be hard to find the direction for weakest reception by the ferrite rod of the broadcasting signals.

c. Many compact AM MW radio receivers do NOT have ferrite rod antennas, they use their earphone wires to receive the electrical component of the broadcast waves. This method of finding directions does NOT work with such receivers.

d. The method does NOT work with Shortwaves as shortwave signals are not received through ferrite rod antennas.

e. Note that Philips from Holland had a famous radio model, L4X00T, with a fold up/fold down rectangular antenna loop for shortwaves, which can also be used to find out the direction of the incoming shortwaves in the same way as described in preceding sections. However shortwaves bounce and they do not accurately show the directions to the stations.

f. For the method to be useful after an Electro-Magnetic-Pulse event, the receiver and the broadcasting stations should all survive the event. You may have to wrap your radio receiver in many layers of Aluminium foils and the broadcasting stations must know how to protect themselves against EMP events.

Reference.

[1]. Radio Direction Finders, angelfire.com, http://www.angelfire.com/space/proto57/rdf.html, accessed 06 Feb 2017.

[2]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_Radio_Melbourne

[3]. http://www2b.abc.net.au/reception/frequencyfinder/asp/details.asp?transmissionid=2956.

[4]. http://www.dxing.info/lists/

[5]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_medium_wave_transmitters

RELATED SURVIVAL blogs

Finding North with a lensatic compass, posted on August 21, 2017

Finding-north-by-stars-for-beginners, posted on September 20, 2017

Finding-directions-and-time-using-the-sun-and-a-dividing-compass, posted on May 06, 2015

Using GPS in off-grid situations., posted December 6, 2016

Adding longitude and latitude lines to a map, posted August 23, 2017

PREVIOUS SURVIVAL blogs

The Scorpius constellation, posted January 8, 2017, The Orion constellation., posted December 26, 2016, Rice as emergency food, Using GPS in off-grid situations, Slide Sky-Disks with grid masks showing azimuths and altitudes, Slide Sky-Map for displaying tropical stars.,…all.

Click here for my other blogs on SURVIVAL

SOCIAL ISSUES CONTENTS BLOG IMAGE OF CONT. OF SOCIAL ISSUES

LIVING BLOG LIVING CONTENTS BLOG IMAGE OF LIVING CONTENTS

HOW TO BLOG HOW TO CONTENTS BLOG IMAGE OF HOW TO CONTENTS

Click here go to Home Page (Navigation-Survival-How To-Money).

ARCHIVAL HOME PAGE CONTENTS HOME PAGE BLOG IMAGE OF CONTENTS HOME PAGE

SUBSCRIPTION: [RSS – Posts], [RSS – Comments]

MENU: [Contents][Blog Image of Contents ][Archives ] [About]

Your fiat money (Part 2).

January 12, 2017September 24, 2020tonytran2015 18 Comments

Your fiat money (Part 2)

by tonytran2015 (Melbourne, Australia).

Click here for a full, up to date ORIGINAL ARTICLE and to help fighting the stealing of readers’ traffic.

(Blog No.47).

1. Fiat money

Figure 1: Fiat money are paid to government employees. All citizens have to pay their taxes with that fiat money.

The simple basis for accepting the fiat money is that those who had done works for the government have the fiat money (a form of certificates) and the population at large have to exchange goods and service for those certificates to pay their own tax (those who don’t pay will be jailed) and buy some goods or service from the government.

2. Pushing for public use of the fiat money as a storage for wealth.

A government will require that its people pay their taxes and government service fees with its fiat money. They must do it or face having no government service or even face punishment.

People in that country have to obtain the money from government employees (who have been paid with fiat money) by supplying them with goods or service.

So the government has created a demand for its fiat money at the time of tax payment.

It is clear that a fiat money requires neither trust in nor support for the government nor any gold or silver holding by the government.

As long as the fiat money has NO EXPIRY DATES, the population at large may prefer keeping it even outside tax time to keeping perishable goods as a form of storing their “wealth” for rainy days.

This second step of using fiat money to store “wealth” relies (rightly or wrongly) on the belief that the government will not suddenly declare those certificates invalid (demonetize some denominations).

The pre-WW2, National Socialist (1933) government of Germany is most known for operating its economy with neither gold nor foreign currency backing using only its own fiat money called Reich Marchs.

The coupon system in communist countries is also similar to fiat currency with the difference that coupons are not freely transferable and may have expiry dates.

3. Fiat money sets its own value against goods and service.

If all government employees are self-sufficient homesteaders spending little money then the fiat money exchanges itself with a lot of goods or service from other people who need them to pay taxes. The population at large has to compete hard for fiat money in order to pay their tax!

If all government employees are like drunken sailors spending money easily then the fiat money exchanges itself with little goods or service (and the drunken sailors may then complain that they had not been paid much !) .

It all follows the rule of Supply and Demand between government employees and the population at large.

4. A government can influence the value of its fiat money.

A government can lower the value of its fiat money by reducing its tax while keeping the payment to its employees unchanged. It can also do that by offering to buy some type of goods from its citizens for government usage or government storage .

Conversely, the government can increase the value of its fiat money by increasing its tax while keeping the payment to its employees unchanged. It can also do that by selling to its citizens goods in government stores (including foreign currency) or rights to use some government resource.

However, when its tax is too high, a government risks causing a revolt by its people (as the British empire had bitterly found out with its taxes on its American colony). On the other hand, if tax is too low relative to government payments, there is a risk of high inflation and the population may try to avoid fiat money until tax time, when they absolutely need it for paying their taxes.

5. Keeping the value of fiat money constant.

It is easy to see that for an unchanged population and an unchanged economy, the fiat money has a constant value when government’s yearly payment is equal to its collected tax.

If the government’s collected tax is more than its payout (having a budget surplus) it will sit on a stack of its own fiat money. In this case, it can even use its own fiat money to buy gold from the population at large.

If the government’s collected tax is less than its payout (having a budget deficit) it will need to draw from the stack of fiat money it has saved up from previous years or it may even have to sell its gold reserve to the people to get back some of its own fiat money to make up for the short fall for spending.

So the gold reserve is just a buffer to cover for years of low tax collection.

6. The gold reserve of a country does not need to be of any fix ratio to the total of fiat money in circulation.

The gold reserve only determines the total of all consecutive budget deficits before the government run out of gold to sell to the people to uphold the value of its fiat money. (See references [4], [5] for the removal of gold backing to the dollars.)

Any government with good record of never having budget deficit does not need any gold reserve . However, some gold reserve is always kept as a precaution against multiple years of natural disasters. It is noted that a number of countries deposit their gold reserves overseas despite the risk of losing them to the keeper countries (see reference [6], [7]).

A government with reckless overspending will have to sell its gold and rights to use national resources until the day it has nothing left to sell. Then the value of its fiat money may plunge.

Leaving aside the question of whether its gold was undersold or not (see reference [8]), the British government might be right in selling its gold reserve in the 1990’s if it can be absolutely certain to always have NO budget deficit from that time, even in the face of natural disasters.

7. Borrowing from the population.

When the government want to borrow X units of its fiat money from its citizens, it may have to conduct an “auction” of one of the following two types:

a. It may offer to all of its people to give the government any each of their spare $900 now to receive $1000 in 1 year time.

Too many of its citizens may accept the offer and the total amount of their money may far exceed the requirement of the government. If that is the case, it may next say No, not $900 anymore, but $910. The amount may goes up again until the acceptance has only about X units, the amount it requires.

Anti-corruption requires that the bidding process be public and transparent.

This is the idea of Treasury Bills, see [9].

If the final auction price is $970 of current money for $1000 of money in 1 year time then the Treasury Bill rate is (1000-970)/970 or 3.1%.

b. It may offer to all of its people to give the government any each of their spare $1000 now to receive a (transferable, resellable) certificate to receive $30 every year and hold it until the end of 10th year to get $30 plus the principal of $1000.

Too many of its citizens may accept the offer and the total amount of their money may far exceed the requirement of the government. If that is the case, it may next say No, not $30/year anymore, but $20/year. The amount may goes up again until the acceptance has only about X units, the amount it requires.

This is the idea of Treasury Notes, Treasury Bonds.

8. The foreign exchange value and the bond rate of a fiat currency in a growing economy.

When the economy goes strongly, there is anticipation of budget surplus and government developing more growth or adding to its gold reserve and there is more confidence in its fiat currency. Its fiat currency is in strong demand by its neighbors to buy its goods and service, hence its exchange rate may rise.

At the same time, its people feel good and want to use their existing money to set up shops or factories. The Treasury Notes auction offers are now less attractive and there would be fewer participants therefore its Bond rate rises.

The converse applies to a weakening economy.

References

[1] . tonytran2015, your fiat money, https://survivaltricks.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/your-fiat-money/, posted on Jan 9, 2017

[2]. Demonetizing in India robs the poor, posted on December 1, 2016

[3]. Venezuela follows Indias footsteps in demonetization scheme, econotimes.com, http://www.econotimes.com/Venezuela-follows-Indias-footsteps-in-demonetization-scheme-445257

[4]. FDR takes United States off gold standard (1933), history.com, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-takes-united-states-off-gold-standard, accessed 10 Feb 2017

[5]. Nixon shock, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock, accessed 10 Feb 2017

[6]. De Gaulle and international monetary relations, charles-de-gaulle.com, http://www.charles-de-gaulle.com/the-stateman/the-modernisation-of-the-country/de-gaulle-and-international-monetary-relations.html, access 10 Feb 2017.

[7]. Germany brings its gold stash home sooner than planned, cnbc news,
http://www.charles-de-gaulle.com/the-stateman/the-modernisation-of-the-country/de-gaulle-and-international-monetary-relations.html, 10 Feb 2017.

[8]. Sale of UK gold reserves, 1999–2002, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sale_of_UK_gold_reserves,_1999-2002, accessed 10 Feb 2017.

[9]. https://www.treasurydirect.gov/

Added after 2018 Feb 04:

[10]. http://www.gold-eagle.com/article/last-fed-chairman

[11]. https://venitism.wordpress.com/2018/02/23/quantitative-economics/

[12]. http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/top-10-goals-in-the-communist-manifesto-accomplished-in-america/

[13]. https://us-issues.com/2018/08/12/price-of-gold-in-venezuela/

Australian debts and treasury bonds.

[14]. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-12/joe-hockey-one-billion-a-month-interest-fact-check/5478480

Alan Greenspan: “Central banks can issue currency, a non-interest-bearing claim on the government, effectively without limit. A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.”

St. Louis Federal Reserve: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e.,unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.

[15]. https://mythfighter.com/2018/11/14/the-debt-lies-just-keep-on-coming/

[16]. https://counterinformation.wordpress.com/2019/09/12/argentina-returns-to-capital-controls/

[17]. How Hitler Defied The Bankers (https://survivaltricks.wordpress.com/2019/07/13/how-hitler-defied-the-bankers/)

RELATED MONEY Blogs

Your fiat money, posted on January 9, 2017

Your fiat money, part 2, posted on January 9, 2017

Federal Reserve Bank charges undeserved fees to Americans, posted on January 31, 2017

QE may be just another scam to steal national wealth,

Inflation is vicious to fiat money users

Bankers earn more than interest margin on secured loans, posted on December 15 2016,

Bankers given outrageous incomes by their boards, posted on December 22 2016,

Gold for storing wealth, posted on 28 April 2017

Bankers given outrageous incomes by their boards,

Signs pointing to an impending crash for small investors,

Bankers earn more than interest margin on secured loans.

Click here for my other blogs on MONEY

Click here go to Home Page (Navigation-Survival-How To-Money).

CONTENTS HOME PAGE

BLOG IMAGE OF CONTENTS HOME PAGE

ARCHIVALS HOME PAGE

SUBSCRIPTION: [RSS – Posts], [RSS – Comments]

MENU: [Contents][Blog Image of Contents ][Archives ] [About]

Your fiat money

January 9, 2017March 2, 2023tonytran2015 30 Comments

Your fiat money

by tonytran2015 (Melbourne, Australia).

Click here for a full, up to date ORIGINAL ARTICLE and to help fighting the stealing of readers’ traffic.

(Blog No.46).

You need to know about your money in order to understand the many actions of your government.

1. Fiat money

Figure 1: Fiat money are paid to government employees. All citizens have to pay their taxes with that fiat money.

Nearly every country in the world uses money issued based on its governing power. Such a money is called fiat money.

A fiat money is not guaranteed by any goods such as gold or silver. A fiat piece of money is just a certificate of some amount of work done for the government by some of its employees and those certificates can be used by anyone to pay taxes to or buy some goods or service from the government.

Refusal to pay taxes results in jail terms. Therefore the population at large have to exchange their goods or service for those pieces of fiat money from government employees so that they can have fiat money to pay their taxes to avoid jail terms or to buy goods and service from the government.

It is quite risky to keep too much of any fiat money. The threat of demonetization alone can make the holders of the money suffer and submit to whatever oppressive demands from the issuer of the money if they don’t want to lose all its value. (Even China has been under US pressure when it owned about $1200 billions US in debt in 2016.)

Some people can manage to keep just only enough of fiat money to pay their taxes and daily expenses and so they can survive any devaluation or demonetization.

References

[1]. How Much US Debt Does China Own, about.com, http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/moneymatters/ss/How-Much-US-Debt-Does-China-Own.htm., accessed Jan 10th, 2017.

[2]. Tyler Durden, US Treasury Gives Explicit Warning To China, Germany And Japan Not To Devalue Their Currencies, zerohedge.com, http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-29/us-treasury-gives-explicit-warning-china-germany-and-japan-not-devalue-their-currenc, Apr 29, 2016

[3]. Demonetizing in India robs the poor, posted on December 1, 2016

[4]. Venezuela follows Indias footsteps in demonetization scheme, econotimes.com, http://www.econotimes.com/Venezuela-follows-Indias-footsteps-in-demonetization-scheme-445257

RELATED MONEY Blogs

Your fiat money, posted on January 9, 2017

Your fiat money, part 2, posted on January 9, 2017

Federal Reserve Bank charges undeserved fees to Americans, posted on January 31, 2017

QE may be just another scam to steal national wealth,

Inflation is vicious to fiat money users

Bankers earn more than interest margin on secured loans, posted on December 15 2016,

Bankers given outrageous incomes by their boards, posted on December 22 2016,

RELATED MONEY Blogs

Gold for storing wealth, posted on 28 April 2017

Bankers given outrageous incomes by their boards,

Signs pointing to an impending crash for small investors,

Bankers earn more than interest margin on secured loans.

Click here for my other blogs on MONEY

Click here go to Home Page (Navigation-Survival-How To-Money).

CONTENTS HOME PAGE

BLOG IMAGE OF CONTENTS HOME PAGE

ARCHIVALS HOME PAGE

SUBSCRIPTION: [RSS – Posts], [RSS – Comments]

MENU: [Contents][Blog Image of Contents ][Archives ] [About]

The Scorpius constellation

January 8, 2017September 7, 2019tonytran2015 18 Comments

The Scorpius constellation

by tonytran2015 (Melbourne, Australia).

Click here for a full, up to date ORIGINAL ARTICLE and to help fighting the stealing of readers’ traffic.

(Blog No.45).

#find North, #finding North, #direction, #by stars, #Scorpius, #Antares, #Sagittarius, #Ara, #navigation, #constellation.

Celestial navigators who do not use declination and right ascension begin their navigation by learning the various bright, easily identifiable constellations in the sky (There are no more than 10 to learn.). The Scorpius is usually chosen to be the second constellation to be learned since it is as large as Orion and is useful when Orion is out of sight.

The Scorpius is a crowded, large Southern constellation of June. Part of it is always seen in the sky of June for the whole night, attains its highest elevation (or altitude) about midnight and is immediately South of the most Southern point of the Ecliptic. Scorpius can be seen on the rising side before sunrise in January, seen for the whole night in May and seen on the setting side after sunset in November.

It has the size of 30 degree (in angle) and has the shape of a hook oriented 55 degree clockwise from the great circle arc through the Celestial poles. Arabian sky watchers see a resembling to the body and tail of a (now declawed) scorpion and gave it the name Scorpius.

The brightest star of Scorpius is Antares but it is so close to the ecliptic that it is often outshone by the Moon and bright planets traveling on the ecliptic. Antares often requires extra care for proper identification. Identifying Antares give a good practice to star identifying.

1. The Scorpius on a Mercator sky-map.

Figure 1: The Scorpio constellation is in the shape of a hook, is close to the ecliptic and one third from the left edge of this Mercator sky-map.

Figure 2: A common Asian scorpion.

The Scorpius has too many stars and its brightest star Antares can even be over-shone by planets wandering near to it. Therefore its identification often requires additional care.

An observer in the Southern hemisphere can check that the hook shaped stinging tail of the Scorpius is just touching the great circle arc (drawn in yellow) through the two Pointers to the Southern Cross.

Figure 3: The Scorpius is seen as a hook in the top left quadrant of this Polar Inversion map of the Southern hemisphere. Its hook shaped stinging tail is just touching the great circle arc (drawn in yellow) through the two Pointers to the Southern Cross.

2. An alternative method of recognizing stars in the Scorpius

Figure 1: Scorpius Sagittarius and Ara are easily recognized together.

I found that it is easier to recognize the bright stars of three constellations Scorpius, Sagittarius and Ara together. They resemble a tree with two side roots rising at right angle from a ground line.

The two brightest stars of all three constellations are Antares and Shaula in the Scorpius.They are separated by 17 degrees in angle. They line up with two other dim stars to form a straight line (delta Scorpius, Antares, Shaula and kappa Scorpius) which is slightly longer.

The South-trailing end of this line continues to be the bisector of a right angle line formed by five stars zeta Sagittarius, Kaus Australis, Shaula, theta Scorpius, alpha Ara.

The line of two brightest stars looks like a tree sticking up at right angle to the ground line formed by dimmer stars in line with alpha and epsilon Ara. The tree has two side roots (Shaula-Kaus Australis. and Shaula-theta Scorpius-alpha Ara) originating from Shaula and each is at 45 degree from the tree trunk.

After the bright stars have been identified, each constellation can be identified using its conventional map as given in [1] and [2].

3. Taking photos of the Scorpius.

The Scorpius is adequately bright and its photos can be taken using a smart phone such as a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 with no extra attachment.

Figure 1: A photo of the Scorpius Constellation taken with a Samsung Galaxy Note 2. This photo was added on 2018Feb26 and has been digitally enhanced.

The Scorpius constellation is in the center of this picture. There are four brightest dots on the top half of this picture. The far right and far left dots are very bright and are two planets traveling on the ecliptic. The planets on the ecliptic sometimes make it hard to identify this constellation. (This added photo was taken on 2018 Feb 26).

Figure 2: Photo of the Scorpius Constellation taken with a Samsung Galaxy Note 2. The original photo was taken prior to 2017Jan09 and has been digitally enhanced.

Figure 2: Another photo of the Scorpius Constellation taken with Samsung Galaxy Note 2. The original photo was taken prior to 2017Jan09 and has been digitally enhanced. There are three bright dots in a straight line at the top of the first photo. The two on the left are two planets on the ecliptic. The third one on the right is delta Scorpius. Antares is the bright dot under the three in line.

4. Easy identification of Scorpius by a slide sky map.

Figure 1: The Scorpius position by the Mercator slide sky map, with an altitude grid for an observer on 10 deg North (South of India, Thailand, Malaysia, South of Vietnam, the Phillipines, Central America) .

Observers who are not quite familiar with the Scorpius constellation can use the slide sky map described in reference [2] to confirm its identity. The latitude of the observer, time, and North direction are required for identification using a slide sky map. The figure here gives its altitude (elevation) and its orientation at the time of the first photo of the preceding section.

References.

[1]. tonytran2015, Finding North and time by stars in the tropics, survivaltricks.wordpress.com,Finding North and time by stars in the tropics, posted on May 25, 2016

[2]. tonytran2015, Slide Sky-Map for displaying tropical stars, survivaltricks.wordpress.com, Slide Sky-Map for displaying tropical stars., posted on October 7, 2016

[3]. tonytran2015, Finding North and time by stars, survivaltricks.wordpress.com,Finding North and time by stars, posted on August 28, 2015

[4]. The Orion constellation., posted December 26, 2016

PREVIOUS SURVIVAL blogs

Finding-north-by-stars-for-beginners, posted on September 20, 2017

The Orion constellation., posted December 26, 2016,

Identifying moderately bright navigational stars.posted on October 21, 2016

Rice as emergency food, Using GPS in off-grid situations, Slide Sky-Disks with grid masks showing azimuths and altitudes, Slide Sky-Map for displaying tropical stars.…..all.

Click here for my other blogs on SURVIVAL