IT’S A CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE
The First Amendment enshrines every American’s right to the freedom of expression. Our goal is to elevate and facilitate the exercise of that right in project planning.
“Chase after truth like hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails,” said Clarence Darrow, US defense lawyer (1857 – 1938).
Sticky notes on a wall for the collaborative generation of the schedule framework (the planning phase) is suboptimal. The first step of sticky notes on a printed time scale is limiting in and of itself. Transferring the information from sticky notes to CPM software (the scheduling phase) creates a further dissipation of the group consensus. Not only is the sticky note process two steps, but the second step is rarely accomplished in a collaborative fashion. Consequently, many of the benefits of a fully collaborative session are not realized.
Until very recently, the two-step process was unavoidable. With NetPoint we are able to accomplish a virtual, real-time, full-wall planning session, utilizing the Graphical Planning Method® (GPM). GPM is a graphical, interactive, real-time planning method anchored on object-oriented principles and network based math rules. We can quickly create a visual model of our plan and then manipulate the model to explore alternative delivery modalities.
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Introduction of the Julian calendar and the Gregorian correction
In 45 BC, Julius Caesar inaugurated the basic calendar we use today. However, his calendar was flawed in that it did not align precisely with the rotation of the planets. Over many years, this creates a misalignment between human seasonal celebrations and the weather. For instance, after many years of being off by a day or so, a misaligned calendar might cause a fall harvest celebration to be scheduled for the middle of the summer. Nearly 1,500 years after its debut, the Julian calendar required a 10 day correction.
Around 1,000 A.D. Ptolemy observed in a published article that the Julian calendar was off, but at this time and for hundreds of years to come, it was potentially life-threatening to question the validity of the calendar. In the 13th century, the western world’s view of the universe was dictated by the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church did not recognize that the earth circled the sun, and in order to work out a truly precise calendar, this bit of dogma would have to adjust to match reality. So it should be no surprise that in the 1300’s it was the outcaste, curmudgeonly, genius, monk with superhuman intellectual abilities and independence, Roger Bacon, in league with Pope Clement IV, who died too young, set the stage for the Gregorian correction of the 1500s. While history does not record the reasons behind Clement the IV’s interest in calendar reform it was his interest and advocacy which propelled Roger Bacon to document the failings of the Julian calendar. Shortly after Bacon’s work reached the Pope, the Pope died, leaving Bacon behind with plenty of knowledge but no power to do anything about it.
It is also important to our overall understanding of the evolution of calendars through history to bear in mind that the telescope was not invented until the 1600’s. It was the telescope and minds like Galileo and Copernicus that literally reoriented the universe. This reorientation of the universe leads to a better understanding of the motion of the planets and the place of the earth in the solar system.
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