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The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis, but it has no power of anticipating any analytical revelations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with.
Augusta Ada Byron

In almost every computation a great variety of arrangements for the succession of the processes is possible, and various considerations must influence the selections amongst them for the purposes of a calculating engine. One essential object is to choose that arrangement which shall tend to reduce to a minimum the time necessary for completing the calculation.
Augusta Ada Byron

Many persons who are not conversant with mathematical studies imagine that because the business of [Babbage's Analytical Engine] is to give its results in numerical notation, the nature of its processes must consequently be arithmetical and numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine its numerical quantities exactly as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and it fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly.
Augusta Ada Byron

Write what you know.
Emily Dickinson, American poet, born on December 10, 1830

 
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Be A Goddess

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Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

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Human Rights Day, United Nations

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (also UDHR) is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/217, December 10, 1948), outlining basic human rights. John Peters Humphrey of Canada was its principal drafter.

While it is not a legally binding document, it served as the foundation for the original two legally-binding UN human rights Covenants, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

It continues to be widely cited by academics, advocates, and constitutional courts. International lawyers often debate which of its provisions can be said to represent customary international law. Opinions vary widely on this question, from very few provisions to the entire declaration.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the UDHR is the document translated into the most languages on Earth (as of 2004 about 330 of them).

Simplified Version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Summary of Preamble

The General Assembly recognizes that the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world; human rights should be protected by the rule of law; friendly relations between nations must be fostered; the peoples of the UN have affirmed their faith in human rights, the dignity and the worth of the human person, the equal rights of men and women, and are determined to promote social progress, better standards of life and larger freedom, and have promised to promote human rights and a common understanding of these rights.

A summary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

1. Everyone is free and we should all be treated in the same way.

2. Everyone is equal despite differences in skin colour, sex, religion, language, for example.

3. Everyone has the right to life, and to live in freedom and safety.

4. No one has the right to treat you as a slave, nor should you make anyone your slave.

5. No one has the right to hurt you or to torture you.

6. Everyone has the right to be treated equally by the law.

7. The law is the same for everyone; it should be applied in the same way to all.

8. Everyone has the right to ask for legal help when their rights are not respected.

9. No one has the right to imprison you unjustly or expel you from your own country.

10. Everyone has the right to a fair and public trial.

11. Everyone should be considered innocent until guilt is proved.

12. Every one has the right to ask for help if someone tries to harm you, but no one can enter your home, open your letters or bother you or your family without a good reason.

13. Everyone has the right to travel as they wish.

14. Everyone has the right to go to another country and ask for protection if they are being persecuted or are in danger of being persecuted.

15. Everyone has the right to belong to a country. No one has the right to prevent you from belonging to another country if you wish to.

16. Everyone has the right to marry and have a family.

17. Everyone has the right to own property and possessions.

18. Everyone has the right to practise and observe all aspects of their own religion and change their religion if they want to.

19. Everyone has the right to say what they think and to give and receive information.

20. Everyone has the right to take part in meetings and to join associations in a peaceful way.

21. Everyone has the right to help choose and take part in the government of their country.

22. Everyone has the right to social security and to opportunities to develop their skills.

23. Everyone has the right to work for a fair wage in a safe environment and to join a trade union.

24. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure.

25. Everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living and medical help if they are ill.

26. Everyone has the right to go to school.

27. Everyone has the right to share in their community's cultural life.

28. Everyone must respect the 'social order' that is necessary for all these rights to be available.

29. Everyone must respect the rights of others, the community and public property.

30. No one has the right to take away any of the rights in this declaration.

Source

Bladder festival, Inuit (dates vary)

"The Inuit celebrate the Bladder festival today. To propitiate the souls of the animals they have killed during the year, they undergo a five day purification ritual in a special building called a kashim with the inflated bladders of all the animals they had killed that year. Under the full moon at the end of the five days, the men cut holes in the sea ice about a quarter mile from the shore to dispose of the inflated bladders. After leaping through the flames of a bonfire awaiting them in the village upon their return, they return to the kashim for a final sweat bath and contests of strength."   Source

"By honoring the spirit of an animal that gives itself to a human, the human gives thanks for the harvest and releases the animal spirit so that it may come back again another day. The Animal Spirit Release Dance is also done to honor the hunter and encourage him to be a good provider for his family …

"The Yup'ik Bladder Festival marks the opening of the winter ceremonial season and honors the seals that were taken that year. Traditionally, all the inflated bladders of the seals were placed on the back wall of the qasgiq (men's house) and were treated as honored guests. The bladders were said to contain the souls of the seals and that they were still alive to be caught again."   Source

"Led by the shaman, this observance embodies a central belief of the Eskimo hunters: 'All those perils [of hunting] arise from the fact that we, hunting animals as we do, live by slaying other souls' (Rasmussen, Knud , Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos, Gylden-dalske Boghandel, Copenhagen, 1929, pp 1929:110). During the year the bladders of slain seals were saved. During the festival, the shaman sang a song, inflated each bladder, and hung it in the qasgiq. The festival amused and pleased the shades of the animals, and the bladders were returned to the sea through a hole in the ice. The shades of the animals swam far out to sea where they entered the bodies of unborn animals of their kind. They thus became reincarnated, rendering the game plentiful the following year. If the shades were pleased with the manner in which they had been treated by a hunter, they would not be afraid to meet him again, and they would permit him to approach and kill them without any trouble (Fitzhugh, William W, and Kaplan, Susan A, 1982, Inua: Spirit World of the Bering Sea Eskimo, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1982, p. 200)."   Source

Photo: Ivory model of a Bladder Festival

More  More

Koranda, LD, 'Three Bladder Festival Songs', Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, Volume 14, no. 1  

Liberty festival, France

Advent (Nov 30 - Dec 25), season of the coming of Jesus Christ

Feast day of St Eulalia of Mérida

(Portugal cypress, Cupressus lusitanica, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
From Wikipedia: Eulalia of Mérida, according to the Spanish-Roman poet Prudentius of the 5th century, was a devout child who ran away in 304 at the age of 12 or 13. She went to the law court of the governor at Emerita (as it was then called). She professed herself a Christian, insulted the pagan gods and emperor Maximian, and challenged the present authorities to martyr her. According to Prudentius:

Isis Apollo Venus nihil est,
Maximianus et ipse nihil:
illa nihil, quia factu manu;
hic, manuum quia facta colit

(Isis, Apollo and Venus are nought,
Nor is Maximian anything more;
Nothing are they, for by hand they were wrought,
He, for of hands he the work doth adore)

They burned her on a pyre, and to their shock she enjoyed the torture. Another story says that she was exposed naked in the public square and a miraculous snowfall in mid-Spring covered her nudity. The enraged Romans put her into a barrel with knives stuck into it and rolled it down a street (according to tradition, the one now called 'Baixada de Santa Eulalia'). She is patron saint of Barcelona where she is honoured with a cathedral.

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Hari Kugo; Daitosai, or Good-Luck Market, Omiya, Japan (Nov 30 - Dec 11)

Iyomante Matsuri, Kutcharo, Japan (Dec 1 - 15)  

Geminid meteor shower, radiant in Gemini

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Ganga-Bois, Voudon (Voodoo)   Source

Constitution Day, Thailand

Admission day of Mississippi (20^th state of the USA, 1817)

Whirling Dervishes Festival, Konya, Turkey

"The Commemorative Ceremony for Mevlana, the great Sufic saint (1207-1273), is one of the world's greatest spectacles. More than a million people descend on Konya, the ancient Seljuk capital, for the festival of the Whirling Dervishes.

"At the Mausoleum of Mevlana in Konya, mystical ceremonial dances are performed in honour of the great teacher and thinker. Mevlana (which in Arabic means 'Our Lord') taught the preeminence of complete tolerance, positive thinking and awareness of God through love."   Source

1745 Thomas Holcroft (d. March 23, 1809), English dramatist (The Road to Ruin; The Deserted Daughter) and miscellaneous writer, fellow worker with William Godwin and Thomas Paine. Godwin dined with Samuel Taylor Coleridge at Holcroft's home on December 21, 1794, the first recorded meeting of Godwin and Coleridge.

1815 Augusta Ada Byron (Ada Lovelace or Ada Byron King, later Countess of Lovelace; d. November 27, 1852), mathematician, developer of one of the first mechanical computers; by her own account, an aspirant of being "an analyst and a metaphysician".

Ada Lovelace, as she is commonly known, was the daughter of Lord Byron (1788 - 1824), the great English poet, but when she was a month old he separated from Ada's mother, Anne Isabelle Milbanke, who raised her, and the poet never saw his daughter again.

Lady Byron herself had an aptitude for mathematics, and Lord Byron had called his future wife "the Princess of Parallelograms". One of Anne's aims was to ensure that the girl would not grow up to be a poet like her celebrated father. One of Ada's tutors was Augustus De Morgan (June 27, 1806 - March 18, 1871) the Indian-born British mathematician and logician. In 1834, when Ada was eighteen years old, she met Mary Somerville, who sent young Ada mathematics books and talked to her young protégée about the subject.

Ada suggested to her friend Charles Babbage (1791 - 1871), whom she had met in 1833 when she was just 17 years old, and been fascinated with his invention, that he should write a plan for how his analytical engine might calculate Johann Bernoulli numbers. (Babbage's difference engine was based on Joseph Marie Jacquard's sewing loom, which used punched cards.) Ada wrote:

The distinctive characteristic of the Analytical Engine, and that which has rendered it possible to endow mechanism with such extensive faculties as bid fair to make this engine the executive right-hand of abstract algebra, is the introduction into it of the principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by means of punched cards, the most complicated patterns in the fabrication of brocaded stuffs. It is in this that the distinction between the two engines lies. Nothing of the sort exists in the Difference Engine. We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.

This plan is now regarded as the first computer program.

Her social life also included Sir David Brewster (the originator of the kaleidoscope), Charles Wheatstone (telegraphy pioneer), author Charles Dickens and pioneer of electrical sciences, Michael Faraday, and her interests apart from calculating machines included music and horses.

Ada Lovelace was also a member of the bluestockings women's social movement. 

In 1852, when only 37 years of age, Ada Lovelace died of cancer. Her husband wrote of her,

Her mind was invigorated by the society of the intellectual men whom she entertained as guests. ... She mastered the mathematical side of a question in all its minuteness ... her power of generalisation was indeed most remarkable, coupled as it was with that of minute and intricate analysis. Babbage was a constant intellectual companion and she ever found in him a match for her powerful understanding, their constant philosophical discussions begetting only an increased esteem and mutual liking.

Ada is an international programming language, designed for software engineers, named for the woman known as 'the first computer programmer'.

"She predicted that the Analytical Engine and its future prototypes, i.e. computers, would someday generate not only numbers but images. She further predicted that computers would be used not only by mathematicians and scientists, but in everyday life."   Source

Women mathematicians    Mathematicians' biographies

A History of Information Technology and Systems

Babbage's difference engine, 1822    More    And more

1822 César Franck (d. 1890), Belgian composer who lived at Amherst, Massachusetts, USA

1830 Emily Dickinson (d. May 15, 1886), American poet

"Emily Elizabeth Dickinson … attended Amherst Academy and Mount Female Holyoke Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College), and lived a private life: only ten of her poems were published in her lifetime. She was a good cook (try her Black Cake or Fruit Cake Recipes, updated for modern kitchens), tended a lovely garden, and sent baskets with notes, poems, or epigrams and flowers to friends and sick town folk. After her death on 15 May 1886 over 1700 poems, which she had bound into booklets, were discovered. The fame of her poetry has spread until now she is acclaimed throughout the world."   Source

Dickinson Poems On-Line    Shop Emily Dickinson

THE MOON was but a chin of gold
  A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
  Upon the world below.
 
Her forehead is of amplest blond;
  Her cheek like beryl stone;
Her eye unto the summer dew
  The likest I have known.
 
Her lips of amber never part;
  But what must be the smile
Upon her friend she could bestow
  Were such her silver will!
 
And what a privilege to be
  But the remotest star!
For certainly her way might pass
  Beside your twinkling door.  

Her bonnet is the firmament,
  The universe her shoe,
The stars the trinkets at her belt,
  Her dimities of blue.

Emily Dickinson, written around 1862. It can be found in Introduction to Poetry, Seventh Edition, Edited by X. JU. Kennedy, published by Little Brown, 1990, page 249:

'A Dying Tiger – Moaned For Drink'

By Emily Dickinson

A Dying Tiger – moaned for Drink –
I hunted all the Sand –
I caught the Dripping of a Rock
And bore it in my Hand –

His Mighty Balls - in death were thick-
But searching – I could see
A Vision on the Retina
Of Water – and of me –

'Dickinson sorcery', by Pip Wilson

1851 Melvil Dewey (d. 1931), American librarian, creator of the Dewey Decimal Classification system

1865 August Spies, German-born American labor activist, one of the Haymarket anarchists framed and hanged; victim of anti-anarchist repression.

All the men were found guilty: Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fisher, Louis Lingg and George Engel were given the death penalty; Oscar Neebe, Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab were sentenced to life imprisonment. On November 10, 1887, Lingg committed suicide by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth. The following day Parsons, Spies, Fisher and Engel were executed.

The Haymarket Square Bombing, May 4, 1886: A bomb killed seven Chicago, USA, police officers as they attacked demonstrators at a rally protesting police brutality the previous day at McCormick Reaper Works. On June 26, 1893, Neebe, Fielden, and Schwab, not already hanged by the state of Illinois the previous day, were pardoned by Illinois governor, John Peter Altgeld. The show trial and convictions were a travesty, but this effectively ended Altgeld's political career.

More on Haymarket    The Dramas of Haymarket    Haymarket chronology

Evidence from the Haymarket affair    The Physiognomy of the Anarchists

1882 Otto Neurath (d. 1945), philosopher

1891 Nelly Sachs (d. 1970), writer and recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature 1966

1903 Una Merkel (d. 1986), actress

1907 Rumer Godden (d. 1998), writer

1908 Olivier Messiaen (d. 1992), composer and ornithologist

1909 Hermes Pan (d. 1990), choreographer, dancer