Re: building consensus
I belive this was because the year followed the taxation cycle of the government whereas the day+month followed the religiously inherited tradtion. Indeed. For that matter, the start of the U.K. tax year was left alone when the calendar changed, and is now 6 April (it should be 7 April, but for whatever reason no adjustment for 1900 was made). Unsurprisingly, Ireland originally followed the UK tax year. However, in 2000 the tax year ran from April 6 until December 31. Since then our tax year is in sync with the calendar year. (I guess this is a recent example of calendar reform that went relatively smoothly.) David.
Re: building consensus
Rob Seaman said: In the UK in 1750, there were two different Julian calendars in use: the day and month enumeration matched, but year numbers changed at different dates (1st January in Scotland, 25th March in England and Wales). I've heard this said, but what exactly does this mean from the point of view of the people of the time? Could see how the 1st of any month would be as good as any other for marking the count of years. But presumably you are saying something like that the sequence of dates was: 22 March 1750 23 March 1750 24 March 1750 25 March 1751 26 March 1751 27 March 1751 Right? Correct. To quote *current* UK law: That in and throughout all his Majesty's Dominions and Countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, belonging or subject to the Crown of Great Britain, the said Supputation, according to which the Year of our Lord beginneth on the 25th Day of March, shall not be made use of from and after the last Day of December 1751; and that the first Day of January next following the said last Day of December shall be reckoned, taken, deemed and accounted to be the first Day of the Year of our Lord 1752; and the first Day of January, which shall happen next after the said first Day of January 1752, shall be reckoned, taken, deemed and accounted to be the first Day of the Year of our Lord 1753; and so on, from Time to Time, the first Day of January in every Year, which shall happen in Time to come, shall be reckoned, taken, deemed and accounted to be the first Day of the Year; and that each new Year shall accordingly commence, and begin to be reckoned, from the first Day of every such Month of January next preceding the 25th Day of March, on which such Year would, according to the present Supputation, have begun or commenced: What this suggests to me is that the day-of-the-month and year-of-our- Lord counts were considered to be separate entities by folks of that time. Right. Was also thinking to comment that day-of-the-week seems to have been considered quite distinct from day-of-the-month. Our current usage is to tie all three together into a single unitary calendar. Presumably this dates from Gregory, too, along with all the other cycles his priests were seeking to synchronize. No, this seems to be *much* older, coming from Jewish practice. Gregory didn't touch the sequence of days of the week. -- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Tel:+44 20 8495 6138 Internet Expert | Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Fax:+44 870 051 9937 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646 THUS plc||
Re: building consensus
Zefram said: Looks a lot like that. They used not to be, though: it seems that the oldest convention was to start the counted year on January 1, where Julius had put (well, left) the start of the calendar year. Um, March was the first month of the year; look at the derivation of September, for example. It seems that it moved to January in 153 B.C. Wikipedia suggests it was 15th March before that (because the consuls took office on the Ides of March). Counting the year from a different point is a distinctly mediaeval practice. See above. Yes. The seven day week is effectively a small calendar unto itself, and one much older than any of the year-based calendars we've been discussing. The Julian calendar was developed for a society that didn't use the week at all. The week was adopted by the Roman Empire centuries later, as part of its Christianisation. The *seven* day week was, but before then the Romans had a rigid *eight* day week. -- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Tel:+44 20 8495 6138 Internet Expert | Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Fax:+44 870 051 9937 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646 THUS plc||
Re: building consensus
Poul-Henning Kamp said: 22 March 1750 23 March 1750 24 March 1750 25 March 1751 26 March 1751 27 March 1751 I belive this was because the year followed the taxation cycle of the government whereas the day+month followed the religiously inherited tradtion. The 25th March is one of the four Quarter Days in England, when traditionally quarterly rents were paid. In Scotland 1st January is a Quarter Day. -- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Tel:+44 20 8495 6138 Internet Expert | Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Fax:+44 870 051 9937 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646 THUS plc||
Re: building consensus
Ed Davies said: Yes, I think that's right. And, as I understand it, we still keep that change of year in mid-month but now it's on April 5th for the change of tax year. When we switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar the tax year was kept the same length so its date changed. That was another requirement of the legislation: Provided also, and it is hereby further declared and enacted, That nothing in this present Act contained shall extend, or be construed to extend, to accelerate or anticipate the Time of Payment of any Rent or Rents, Annuity or Annuities, or Sum or Sums of Money whatsoever, which shall become payable by Virtue or in Consequence of any Custom, Usage, Lease, Deed, Writing, Bond, Note, Contract or other Agreement whatsoever, now subsisting, or which shall be made, signed, sealed or entred into, at any Time before the said 14th Day of September, or which shall become payable by virtue of any Act or Acts of Parliament now in Force, or which shall be made before the Said 14th Day of September, or the Time of doing any Matter or Thing directed or required by any such Act or Acts of Parliament to be done in relation thereto; or to accelerate the Payment of, or increase the Interest of, any such Sum of Money which shall become payable as aforesaid; or to accelerate the Time of the Delivery of any Goods, Chattles, Wares, Merchandize or other Things whatsoever; or the Time of the Commencement, Expiration or Determination of any Lease or Demise of any Lands, Tenements or Hereditaments, or of any other Contract or Agreement whatsoever; or of the accepting, surrendering or delivering up the Possession of any such Lands, Tenements or Hereditaments; or the Commencement, Expiration or Determination of any Annuity or Rent; or of any Grant for any Term of Years, of what Nature or Kind soever, by Virtue or in Consequence of any such Deed, Writing, Contract or Agreement; [...] but that all and every such Rent and Rents, Annuity and Annuities, Sum and Sums of Money, and the Interest thereof, shall remain and continue to be due and payable; and the Delivery of such Goods and Chattles, Wares and Merchandize, shall be made; and the said Leases and Demises of all such Lands, Tenements and Hereditaments, and the said Contracts and Agreements, shall be deemed to commence, expire and determine; and the said Lands, Tenements and Hereditaments shall be accepted, surrendered and delivered up; and the said Rents and Annuities, and Grants for any Term of Years, shall commence, cease and determine, at and upon the same respective natural Days and Times, as the same should and ought to have been payable or made, or would have happened, in case this Act had not been made; and that no further or other Sum shall be paid or payable for the Interest of any Sum of Money whatsoever, than such Interest shall amount unto, for the true Number of natural Days for which the principal Sum bearing such Interest shall continue due and unpaid; In other words, all financial matters are to be done by day count and not by calendar date. -- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Tel:+44 20 8495 6138 Internet Expert | Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Fax:+44 870 051 9937 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646 THUS plc||
Re: building consensus
John Cowan said: References for this? Your explanation makes a lot of sense and I'm prepared to be convinced, but have been skeptical of experimental design as applied to questions of human behavior since participating in studies as a requirement of undergraduate psychology coursework. And if this cycle is inferred from the behavior of undergraduates, I'm even more skeptical :-) I think there's some confusion here between the 24.7h period of the diurnal mammal free-running clock and the 28h artificial cycles that Nathaniel Kleitman and his student B.H. Richardson tried to put themselves on over a 33-day period in Mammoth Cave back in 1938. No, I think it's just that my memory has converted 24.7 into 27. -- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Tel:+44 20 8495 6138 Internet Expert | Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Fax:+44 870 051 9937 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646 THUS plc||
Re: building consensus
Clive D.W. Feather wrote: So humans will cope until the solar day is about 27 (present) hours long, after which we'll probably start to move to a system of two sleep-wake cycles per day. I doubt our ability to handle a 14-hour sleep-wake cycle. I suspect that (if we're still exposed to the natural diurnal cycle at that time) as we gradually lost the ability to handle the length of the diurnal cycle we'd lose synchronisation fully, or switch to a fractional multiple of the cycle. A 24-hour sleep-wake cycle against a 28-hour diurnal cycle repeats phase correlation every seven sleep-wake cycles (six days), so we might lock to that. Hey, it's a natural justification for the week! Perhaps it would be similar in effect to the present desynchronisation of the Islamic calendar's `year' with respect to the tropical year. When I was an undergraduate I found that my free-running sleep-wake cycle was 40 hours long (24 hours awake and then 16 asleep, to within half an hour). I don't think I phase-locked to the diurnal cycle in the 3:5 ratio that implies, but the whole reason why I got into that cycle was that I wasn't paying attention to the planet's rotation. -zefram
Re: building consensus
Clive D.W. Feather wrote: March was the first month of the year; look at the derivation of September, for example. Makes the zero vs. one indexing question of C and FORTRAN programmers look sane. I've pointed people to the whole 7, 8, 9, 10 sequence from September to December on those (admittedly rare) occasions when the issue has come up. Presumably other languages agree in usage, which would be another indicator of the age of the names of the months. The *seven* day week was, but before then the Romans had a rigid *eight* day week. The latter, of course, persisted all the way into the 1960's, as immortalized by the Beatles' song. Rob NOAO
Re: building consensus
On Thu, 8 Jun 2006, Rob Seaman wrote: Clive D.W. Feather wrote: March was the first month of the year; look at the derivation of September, for example. Makes the zero vs. one indexing question of C and FORTRAN programmers look sane. I've pointed people to the whole 7, 8, 9, 10 sequence from September to December on those (admittedly rare) occasions when the issue has come up. Presumably other languages agree in usage, which would be another indicator of the age of the names of the months. hang on I thought the numbering start Jan=1 ... Dec=10 and got interrupted when Julius Caesar put an extra month in and so did Augustus... Hands up if you wish you had the authority to swing that kind of timekeeping standardization adjustment. Pete.
Re: building consensus
John Cowan wrote: In the cover story, it was used as a final defense against the Invaders and destroyed by them. In the true story, it was destroyed because it constituted a hazard, but I forget exactly how. Thanks! But not sure true story is the opposite of cover story, here :-) Both versions of the book are sitting in a box somewhere in the garage. It must be twenty or thirty years since I read whichever. Few writers other than Clarke had the chutzpah or cleverness to write a viable story placed billions of years in the future. Now that you mention the lunar plot twist, I do remember something about it - strange that other aspects of the story remain much more vivid. Of course, the other civilizations were tossing stars around, not just moons, so it may have seemed pedestrian. Rob NOAO
Re: building consensus
On Thu, 8 Jun 2006, Rob Seaman wrote: I thought Julius renamed some high value summer month and wanna-be Augustus did likewise, stealing a day from February to make August the same length. If they put two extra months in, where were those 62 days originally? Yes of course, and a quick google as usual turns up a well-written account: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/99aughistory1.html
Re: building consensus
Hands up if you wish you had the authority to swing that kind of timekeeping standardization adjustment. It's a lot easier to get consensus if you are willing and able to kill those with opposing viewpoints. :)
Re: building consensus
Rob Seaman scripsit: Of course, any old I, Claudius fan knows that Augustus was originally named Octavius. Mere coincidence that the eighth child would end up naming the eighth month? Almost certainly. The eighth month was Sextilis, as July was originally Quin(c)tilis. -- John Cowan [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ccil.org/~cowan In computer science, we stand on each other's feet. --Brian K. Reid
Re: building consensus
Rob Seaman said: I thought Julius renamed some high value summer month and wanna-be Augustus did likewise, stealing a day from February to make August the same length. If they put two extra months in, where were those 62 days originally? Very briefly: - Julius and Augustus renamed months 5 and 6 respectively; - Augustus moved one day from February to August as you say; - the extra months (January and February) were inserted by Numa in the 8th century BCE; until then there were no names for winter dates; - until Julius's reforms, there was an intercalary *month* rather than day, inserted (I think) after February; - Julius created a single 15 month year as a one-off adjustment to bring calendar back in line with the sun. -- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Tel:+44 20 8495 6138 Internet Expert | Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Fax:+44 870 051 9937 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646 THUS plc||
Re: building consensus
Rob Seaman said: John Cowan wrote: In the cover story, it was used as a final defense against the Invaders and destroyed by them. In the true story, it was destroyed because it constituted a hazard, but I forget exactly how. Thanks! But not sure true story is the opposite of cover story, here :-) Both versions of the book are sitting in a box somewhere in the garage. I don't think John's referring to Against the Fall of Night versus The City and the Stars. Rather, at least in the latter, the official (cover) story of Diaspar (sp?) and the Invaders disagrees in many aspects with the true story as revealed by Vandemar (sp?). For example, the official story is that Diaspar was the centre of a human interstellar empire, while the true story is that man was part of a multi-species federation. It's these two stories that differ in what happened to the moon. -- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Tel:+44 20 8495 6138 Internet Expert | Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Fax:+44 870 051 9937 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646 THUS plc||
Re: building consensus
Clive D.W. Feather scripsit: I don't think John's referring to Against the Fall of Night versus The City and the Stars. Rather, at least in the latter, the official (cover) story of Diaspar (sp?) and the Invaders disagrees in many aspects with the true story as revealed by Vandemar (sp?). Just so. My best recollection now is that the moon was destroyed either by the Empire or directly by Lys because it was approaching the Earth too closely. Presumably this reflects a state of affairs *after* tidal locking, where the Moon's synchronous orbit begins to decay as a consequence of the solar tides. I read TCATS first, and recall it much better than ATFON. -- John Cowan[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://ccil.org/~cowan Heckler: Go on, Al, tell 'em all you know. It won't take long. Al Smith: I'll tell 'em all we *both* know. It won't take any longer.
Re: building consensus
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], John Cowan writes: Rob Seaman scripsit: Old English had its own set of month names entirely unrelated to the Latin ones: if they had survived, they would have been Afteryule, Solmath 'mud-month', Rethe[math] 'rough-month', Astron [pl. of 'Easter'], Thrimilch 'three-milking', Forelithe, Afterlithe, Wedmath 'weed-month', Halimath 'holy-month', Winterfilth '-filling', Blotmath 'sacrifice-month', Foreyule. At least some of these are obviously pre-Christian. They're practically all viking derived. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 [EMAIL PROTECTED] | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Re: building consensus
Quintilis was renamed after Julius Caesar. Later Sextilis was renamed after Augustus Caesar. It is often said that the month lengths were changed at the same time, but at least one version of that story is fabricated and there's a distinct lack of evidence for it. Other emperors had months renamed after themselves too, but those names didn't stick. There's no evidence that any of them was accompanied by changes in the lengths of months either. The Oxford Companion to the Year is pretty explicit about this in its chapter on the Roman Calendar. It says that before Julius Caesar: Ianuarius29 Quinctilis 31 Februarius 28 Sextis 29 Martius 31 September29 Aprilis 29 October 31 Maius31 November 29 Iunius 29 December 29 The reason was most of the months had odd lengths because odd numbers were lucky, but to get the year to have an odd number of days you need one month to have an even number of days. There was a leap month system where Februarius was cut short and an extra month was inserted. After the reform: Ianuarius31 Quinctilis 31 Februarius 28 Sextis 31 Martius 31 September30 Aprilis 30 October 31 Maius31 November 30 Iunius 30 December 31 They also explain where the extra days were inserted. They say Quinctilis was renamed Julius after he'd been murdered. Their entry for 30 February notes: There is no truth in the assertion by some modern (but no ancient) writers that Julius Caesar gave all the odd months 31 days, February 29 days and 30 in a leap year, and all the even months (including Oct) 30, but that Augustus upsets the logical arangement in order to make his month of August as long as Caesar's July. Nevertheless, 30 February has existed three times in the calendars of particular countries: once in Sweden, twice in the Soviet Union. David.
Re: building consensus
On Jun 8, 2006, at 8:08 AM, Clive D.W. Feather wrote: Rob Seaman said: Thanks! But not sure true story is the opposite of cover story, here :-) I don't think John's referring to Against the Fall of Night versus The City and the Stars. Rather, at least in the latter, the official (cover) story of Diaspar (sp?) and the Invaders disagrees in many aspects with the true story Right. Was merely questioning whether a story within a story within a work of fiction could be regarded as true :-)
Re: building consensus
Poul-Henning Kamp scripsit: Old English had its own set of month names entirely unrelated to the Latin ones: if they had survived, they would have been Afteryule, Solmath 'mud-month', Rethe[math] 'rough-month', Astron [pl. of 'Easter'], Thrimilch 'three-milking', Forelithe, Afterlithe, Wedmath 'weed-month', Halimath 'holy-month', Winterfilth '-filling', Blotmath 'sacrifice-month', Foreyule. At least some of these are obviously pre-Christian. They're practically all viking derived. I think it more likely that the English and Norse forms have a common proto-Germanic origin. -- Dream projects long deferred John Cowan [EMAIL PROTECTED] usually bite the wax tadpole.http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --James Lileks
